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Bagging bargains – at a price
The Northern Echo
WE all enjoy watching those time warp TV shows where people try living like the Tudors or Victorians.
We shake our heads at the dirt and drudgery our ancestors put up with, and smile smugly when we think how lucky we are.
Well, some of us aren’t. Anyone who saw the BBC Panorama programme about sweatshop conditions in a Manchester clothing factory – 12-hour shifts for £3.50 an hour – would know that some of our fellow citizens experience a working hell that Charles Dickens knew all too well.
(16 January 2009)
Put some of those old clothes to good (re)use
Sharon A. Lathrop, The Claytonnews-Star
The American environmentalist Denis Hayes said that each recycled beer can saves enough electricity to run a television for three hours. That started me thinking. Most of us know we can recycle metal, glass, plastic and paper. On the other hand, if you’re someone who enjoys arts and crafts, you probably know those items can also be repurposed.
What you may not know is you can do the same with clothing or other household textiles. Did you know each American discards about 35 pounds of old clothes, or textiles, each year? Those pounds can represent about 4 percent of your municipality’s solid waste. Locally, there are organizations that accept donations of clothing and home goods such as the Goodwill Store, Salvation Army and others. They’re a wonderful solution for donating our gently used belongings we no longer use.
(21 January 2009)
‘Textiles import will lead to bloodbath’
Chris Holland, Argus & Telegraph
The head of a wool textile firm with an office in Bradford has called for curbs on cheap textile imports from China.
Laurence Modiano, head of G Modiano Ltd, which owns the world’s largest wool combing plant in the Czech Republic, is calling for action to prevent a “bloodbath” among European textile firms.
He wants higher import duties and new quotas to be put on Chinese textiles, which in 2007 were 80 per cent of the total additional textile imports into the EU He has written to the EU Trade Commissioner, Catherine Ashton, and Günter Verheugen, Enterprise and Industry Commissioner, demanding action before EU textile processing disappears altogether.
(20 January 2009)
