GreenEarth Wear Inc.
GreenEarth Wear is based in Seattle, WA. We retail apparel and accessories that are produced and manufactured using sustainable fibers and fair-trade practices. We cater to the growing niche of conscious consumers interested in making their purchases congruent with their environmental and personal concerns.
Our Mission
GreenEarth Wear was established to provide a resource of eco-friendly clothing & accessories for individuals & families desiring to convert everyday wardrobe purchases into lifestyle choices. We are committed to offering products created with fibers that are gentle on the earth, our bodies, and the people that produce them. Through supplying information supporting a conscious lifestyle, we encourage joining together in the stewardship of our planet.
Camey’s Story
Wearing my organic beliefs hadn’t occurred to me, until about a year ago at a trade show when I was introduced to sustainable fabrics first hand. A woman behind a booth at the show said to me, if people knew how many pesticides were used to grow cotton, they wouldn’t put cotton clothing on their bodies or on their children’s bodies. I pondered that sentence for months (hence the influence of words), until it prompted me to study the significance of her statement.
After being introduced to sustainable fibers, I became interested in purchasing eco-friendly clothing to go to the office in. When I was ready to shop for career clothes that were also environmentally in line with my lifestyle choices, I found few options for wearing green to work. The idea was born for an apparel company that made it easy for the shopper to purchase conscious clothing, especially clothes worn to work. We spend a great portion of the day at work, and our values can be connected in all aspects of life.
The business idea was germinating gradually, and I had discussed it only with a few other people. When my daughter Tara returned to Washington from graduate school, we spoke about our emerging concerns, and our mutual desire to make different buying choices regarding our clothes & accessories (read Tara’s personal experience below). Even though I had read about sweatshops regarding apparel only briefly, I had however read, researched and written about fair-trade chocolate. After looking into the apparel industry, fair-trade soon became inseparable from easy-on-the-earth fibers, when making clothing selections.
The current chapters of our lives had just closed, leaving a creative gap for GreenEarth Wear to be birthed. Tara’s husband Caleb joined us by contributing the graphic design & web development. A family business has set forth. The search continued for conscious clothing, but this time for vendors that are aligned with our standards of combining style and sustainability. GreenEarth Wear offers organic hemp, organic cotton, bamboo, wool & alpaca fiber clothing & accessories, all fair-trade. We are providing this site for those who desire, like us, to purchase with a purpose!
Tara’s Story
It was the picture-perfect day for shopping in the Southern California open air mall. My friend and I were visiting one of our favorite stores, and we each found items that we loved. They looked great and were even on sale! I had found a few shirts and a suit coat that looked really great (my friend even said it was the best suit coat that she’d seen on me). I have to backtrack from that day to say that over the months leading up to this shopping trip I had a growing discomfort, even conviction, regarding the clothing industry. I watched a documentary on sweatshop labor in China and the images of young women, some of them only teenagers, working 12-18 hour shifts, 7 days per week, to produce enough products to keep up with Western consumerism was appalling to me. How could I allow my purchase to enslave someone else? But what options are there, I asked myself? Although I could have qualified for a “frequent buyer” card for fair trade chocolate, I hadn’t even heard of fair trade clothing before. Even after hearing about it, I thought, at this stage in my life I cannot afford to pay the ‘premium’ prices for clothes, can I?
Back to the shopping day. As I was digging through a neat stack of shirts looking for the right size, I saw the label “Made in Indonesia” and I froze. Suddenly, I saw faces. I suddenly remembered that some of those who made this garment received only .15 per hour, while I was here purchasing this sale item for $12. As my eyes filled with tears, I became aware of the song ringing out of the speakers above me. “You know that we are living in a material world and I am a material girl…” On and on it went. All I could think of was, ìI want no part in this. All of my well-crafted arguments that sounded so good before [there’s just no other way; we need to buy clothes; it’s a process and I’ll have to change in stages…] just sounded so lame. I didn’t want my dollars to support poor conditions, overworking and practically enslaving individuals in other countries! These are people. Sure, they’re getting ‘paid,’ if you want to call it that, I thought. Sure, many of them are probably glad for the work. But does that give us a right to exploit them because our needs for consumerism match up with their grave need (poverty) for any help they can get?
I had to put everything back, and walk out of the store. I am no longer able to support clothing companies that enslave others.
This is still a process for me. I will be the first to admit that it takes time to change. It takes time to adjust to paying more for food and clothing that resonate with my beliefs. It takes time to realize that I really don’t need all that the advertisements tell me I need. Even as I am going through this process of change, I realize that by living with less and buying according to conscience, I am able to live in a way that is gentler on the globe, the global community, and my body. We can make a difference and I encourage you to think about the difference your dollar can make.