It may not be pretty, but several weeks ago a group of designers unveiled a genuine 100-mile suit with all parts and labor sourced within 100 miles of Philadelphia. The blog following progress of the 100-mile suit includes fascinating details of the sourcing and labor, as well as close-up images of the work in progress and finished.

The 100-mile diaper stash that we suggested last year was only BOUGHT within 100 miles. There are more steps to take after buying local.

• Item bought locally
• Product manufacturered locally
• Materials sourced locally
• Resources grown locally

How far can you go? It’s a great experiment.

Ode Magazine has a beautifully photographed story this month on cotton in India — on conventional, pesticide-laden cotton in India. The farmer suicides continued at a rate of one every eight hours as the photographer was visiting. Expensive pesticides and genetically modified seeds (which mean they can’t save seed for planting next year) have meant soaring costs, leaving the farmers in debt they can’t overcome.

Add to this the rising cost of water, decreasing soil quality, health problems caused by chemical exposure and the absense of other jobs in the rural areas, and it’s easy to see why India’s farmers are desperate.

They don’t see any other way out. The situation is not better in other cotton growing countries.

At London Fashion Week a couple of weeks ago, Kathrine Hamnett (known for many slogan T-shirts in the 1980s) did not show a new collection. She showed a film on the impact of the global cotton industry’s pesticide use. The film is part of the Environmental Justice Foundation’s Pick Your Cotton Carefully campaign. Why whitewash cotton? The true of child labor, slavery, and health and environmental degradation is nasty.

• White Gold: The True Cost of Cotton – short film with Uzbekistan focus. (The You Tube link works better for me.)
• Pick Your Cotton Carefully PSA. Quick wake-up call to middle class.
• The Deadly Chemicals in Cotton. Report.

Cotton is a serious choice, not a pleasant way to make yourself feel good about your environmental choices. When you choose cotton, organic cotton is essential to the well being of other humans.

Pick your cotton carefully. Ode could only manage to list a couple of high-profile celebrity designers using clean cotton. You can find many more organic sources than that. Ask for organic cotton. DEMAND organic cotton.

As Kathrine Hamnet said, “It’s not about choosing something else, it’s about choosing the right cotton.”

No, I’m not necessarily suggesting you try it on your baby, but I find it fascinating to know what was used for diapers historically.

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From the west coast to the east coast, you can find cattails growing in wetlands and at the edges of ponds. Native people used the down from mature female cattail flowers around their babies for warmth and for absorbency. The fluff of cattails was used as a natural baby diaper.

When the cattail flower is green, it can be boiled and eaten like corn on the cob. (Just in case you are looking to expand your diet.) The mature female flower is the soft brown part that looks like the tail of a cat. When this flower is picked mature, it can be torn apart or left to explode into a mass of soft bits that allow the seeds to float on the air and spread far and wide.

I had heard about people using cattail down in diapers, and I wanted to see how well cattails absorb fluid. You can see the steps I took in images below.

• Down (catch it before it blows away). Very silky.

• Pour water out and use the cattail down to sop up the water.

• The outside doesn’t feel very wet, but the inside absorbs.

• When I squeeze, the water drips out and the outside feels dry again.

• As I try to get the sopping fluff off my hands, it starts to dry at the edges and blow away.

• The down that is soaked the most is difficult to get off my hands. For those who used cattail down for diaper and menstrual absorption, I can’t quite imagine how difficult it must have been to get rid of it all again. Maybe you just get in the river and let it wash away.

I can see that cattail down would make an absorbent baby diaper. It even feels like it could be dried out and used again. It’s sticky when wet, though. If I had a choice, I would rather use it away from the skin as stuffing for a toy or inside a pillow or mattress for fluffy bedding.

Yesterday I read about Sim Sweatshop. I like a challenge. How would I do as a worker in a sweatshop–beyond that of my own making, of course? Not so well. The game is made to help you lose. That is the point. If you are a visual learner, try playing Sim Sweatshop. This is a digital art piece commissioned by a growing arts festival in Nottingham (England). At each difficult choice you have to make (Do I join a union? Do I buy shoes for my own child?), there is a background story from labor reports.

Put that together with an article on Wal-Mart this past week, and I’ve been grinding away on the idea of fair labor for the masses. Is it possible? Is fair labor clothing already available around the corner? Are Behind the Label and the Clean Clothes Campaign soon to be obsolete? Not so fast. Hold on to your greenback dollars if you plan to buy green.

Dave Robert’s article last week on TomPaine.org reported on the Wal-Mart CEO’s speech to employees last October on greening the company. Even the Rocky Mountain Institute is helping them green their trucking fleet.

One thing that bothered me about organic standards when I first joined the Organic Trade Association (OTA) was the lack of social standards to match the environmental standards of the USDA program. National Organic Program only covers food, though, and cotton is only certified organic under this program because cotton seeds and cottonseed oil are used in food products. Only on the level of agriculture is cotton currently certified organic.

There are several organic textile standards in the world that cover every stage from agriculture through processing, and discussions are advanced to adopt an international standard to harmonize all of the existing standards. The Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS), which will be adopted by OTA, will allow certified products to cross freely into markets around the world. The best thing about GOTS, as far as I am concerned, is the adoption of the adoption of the base code of conduct for trade.

Back to Wal-Mart. I already knew that Wal-Mart has become the biggest single buyer of organic cotton in the world, but I realized the Wal-Mart CEO isn’t a treehugger. I hadn’t read about the CEO-to-employee speech before, though, so I was curious to know what impact this commitment to organics would have on their notorious lack of concern for fair labor in production as well as in store.

It must have been interesting to employees to hear their big boss talk about all of the good Wal-Mart was doing in the world, anticipating what this would mean for them. Will they be paid a fair wage? Will they get health care? “Even slight overall adjustments to wages eliminate our thin profit margin.” Oh. So, is that a no?

How odd is that? If Wal-Mart’s clothing is to be certified under GOTS as it is adopted by the Organic Trade Association and other world certifying bodies, their agriculture and processing will have to follow GOTS minimum social criteria. Producers of Wal-Mart clothing will have the right to collective bargaining and living wages, among other promises. But the sales people in the store will still lack living wage and health care.

Where do you draw the boundaries of sustainability? If you are going to buy organic, make sure your whole supply chain is committed to the environmental and social standards that implies in at least a minimally convincing way. Better yet, by from the small stores committed to whole sustainable communities.