Samantha Murray Greenway
Ion the various changes happening in the jeans space.
have written before about my love of denim. y all-time favourites are men’s Levi’s s, the classic utilitarian design that encompasses history, style and durability. I’ve owned many pairs over the years, and while they remain cherished, I feel increasingly guilty about the number of jeans in my wardrobe. These days we know the cost of denim far exceeds the amount you pay at the till.
There have been reams written about the vast amounts of cotton grown to feed our denim habit (and the impact of pesticides, water and the conversion of habitat to agricultural in order to grow it), the chemicals and hundreds of gallons of water required to dye and finish just one pair of jeans, the massive amounts of fast fashion denim destined for landfill (“less than of all clothing is recycled,” according to the Harvard Business Review), and that’s without even touching upon workers’ health, rights and pay.
The way denim has been produced provokes strong reactions, even among the aficionados. Hélène Bizouerne, a former product developer at alvin lein Jeans, says: “e need to change the way we buy denim and the way we wear it. It’s important to look at the global impact of the denim market. Our system is based on growth development, and that’s just not feasible when we’re dealing with finite resources.”
Look to most of the big brands, rangler and alvin lein among them, and you’ll see sustainable taglines starting to proliferate. Since , Levi’s have been using their ellThread collection as an ideas lab to explore new sustainable technologies.
Their latest jeans launch is a fully recyclable Original, made for circularity, with organic cotton and post-consumer recycled denim.
It’s proving popular: they’re already waiting for a re-stock due in
July. Levi’s have joined the Ellen ac rthur oundation, which describes circular fashion as products that are used more, made to be made again and made from safe and recycled or renewable outputs.
Ontheonehand:great Everyone,frombigbrandstoindividuals, could do more to curb their environmental impact. On the other hand, it seems the industry leaders still have a way to go.
t a recent press launch, the inventors of blue jeans assured us that they are onto it. “e are aiming to be circular-ready by ,” says Jennifer DuBuisson, Levi’s senior director of global sustainability.
hy not sooner In a company this large, it’s a huge undertaking:
“The take-back infrastructure simply doesn’t exist,” says Paul Dillinger, vice president of global product innovation. It’s underway.
eanwhile, the jeanswear giant is putting funding and research into projects such as understanding regenerative agriculture, which makes forwardplanning sense because: “e realise this is the way we need to go, it’s critical for bio-diversity and restoring soil health,” says DuBuisson.
What to do in the garden this week, with Jo McCarroll.
Take part in the Garden Bird Survey
The annual New Zealand Garden Bird Survey finishes tomorrow. I love taking part in this annual citizen science project and it’s a great way to learn more about the birds in your garden, as well as contribute to the nationwide picture of biodiversity in Aotearoa New Zealand.
It’s easy to do too, you just need to spend one hour counting the native and non-native bird species in your garden (or in a local park or reserve), and record the highest number of each species seen at any one time. There are numerous resources online, including printable tally sheets with helpful ID pictures of the birds most likely to visit your garden. Once you have done the count, you submit your results online and the surveys are analysed by the scientists at Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research.
I got quite a charge, when I spoke to a couple of the scientists involved for a story in NZ Gardener, to hear that the data from previous years of the survey contained enough positive signs to suggest actions such as home predator control were helping out native bird populations. So if you are trapping at home, keep it up!
Brrrr, it’s freezing!
It was the shortest day on June 21, and temperatures have tumbled, so many gardeners in the South Island and in inland North Island areas have woken to frosts recently. Which is no bad thing, to be honest. Think of a frost as a circuit breaker – it can wipe out whole populations of certain pests and diseases, kill off weeds (although, like Lazarus, they do tend to come back!) and help break up heavy soil.
There are plenty of plants that need a winter chill to flower or produce fruit, and a cold snap turns the starches to sugar in winter crops such as parsnips and swedes, so they should taste sweeter after a visit from Jack. But not every plant in your garden likes a frost, so keep frost cloth handy for the likes of citrus and tamarillos. But, if you forget and they get frosted, don’t cut off any frost-damaged stems or foliage. Doing so will encourage a rush of soft new growth, which will suffer the next cold night.
Yes, you can save money growing veges in winter
Growth in the garden – and most gardeners (myself included) – slows down almost to a stop in winter, but you can still plant and sow edible crops now to help stretch your food budget a little further.
My three simple rules of winter vegetable gardening success are:
Grow in pots
Focus on cut-and-come-again crops
Plant seedlings rather than start from seed
To explain, the soil in pots is a degree or two warmer and so crops in pots grow more quickly over winter than crops in the soil; plus you can move pots into a glasshouse, if you have one, or into the warmest sunniest spot under the eaves of your house to protect what you are growing from the extremes of winter weather.
Cut-and-come-again crops such as loose-leaf lettuces, mesclun, kale, silverbeet and spinach let you harvest leaf by leaf – as opposed to say, heading brassicas such as cabbages, which you basically pick and eat all in one go – which means you can harvest from the same plant over a longer period.
And yes starting from seed is, vastly, more cost-efficient than planting seedlings as a rule, but seedlings save you a lot of time... especially useful at this time of year when growth is so slow.
Cost-saving and relatively fast-growing crops you could plant over the long weekend include Asian greens, rocket, kale, spinach, perpetual spinach, silverbeet, mizuna and lettuces. In the very coldest parts of the country, definitely keep them in pots under cover: elsewhere grow in pots outside or if you live in a region with a fairly temperate winter, even in the garden (unless your soil is too wet to be workable).
You can also plant brassica seedlings such as broccoli, cabbages and cauliflower now, as well as garlic, elephant garlic and shallots, and sow peas and broad beans: none of those are particularly quick to produce, so they won’t help out with your winter food bills, but you will certainly be grateful for them later in the season!
“And yes starting from seed is, vastly, more cost-efficient than planting seedlings as a rule, but seedlings save you a lot of time...”
WIN! A $50 GIFT CARD
A $50 gift card goes to the first correct entry opened for Barbara Brown’s Weekend Prize Crossword. Email answers to cryptic@stuff.co.nz. The competition closes at noon on Friday and the solution will be published next week.
WINNER
from
of the $50 voucher for crossword 715 on June 18 is Wellington. Congratulations, Carol.
CROSSWORD SOLUTION 716 Across:
6 Smart, 8 Plutocrat, 10 Psyche, 11 Salt away, 12 Take note, 13 Over, 15 Erasure, 17 Beagles, 20 Aces, 22 Platoons, 25 Man alive, 26 Lubber, 27 Turn heads, 28 Table.
Down:
Carol Stewart
1 Crackers, 2 Blushed, 3 Stallone, 4 Octave, 5 Sagas, 7 Massacre, 9 Nero, 14 Mean well, 16 Respites, 18 Grosbeak, 19 Spreads, 21 Cranny, 23 Ally, 24 Gamut.
// ACROSS 1
Coins you and I return for the nut (6)
Dark horse with strange perfume (3,3)
Plenty upset about a punishment (7)
Theologian intercepts a creature for sheets and blankets (7)
Carnivores in the Tower of London? (10)
Louts rearranged the sofa (4) Boudicca’s people are unusually nice with the interim leader (5)
Leave standing when not in form (8)
Die for a rude remark (4-4) An actress gets fish with a bad smell (5)
The leaders of the Eden Valley store chain at last are flush (4)
Thrived when less than five accommodated the learner with one shanty (10)
Almost pausing for a burglary (5-2)
Smartest when she’s into the marijuana (7) Removes wild civets (6) Interrupt the conversation to make a donation (4,2)
4 8 9 11
12 13
14
16 18
20 21 23 24
25 26 // DOWN 1
Material for the traveller in church (5)
Quickly seize a bit (7) Run with the sentence to get more playing time (5,4) Regions within the Far East (5) Communist election of a bird (7)
Obvious, love the party promises (9)
Work under a dud doctor to get a sweet (5,4) Backing the fashionable vicar with the Gaelic language (2,7)
Mother loses hesitation after Pooh’s friend discounts a grand aircraft (5,4)
The Indian leader follows the wordplay with a dig at an Asian language (7)
Plant fruit climbed over the joint (7)
Slight bluff reported (5) The messenger reveals the German city (5)