Ómós Digest #32: Table Linen into Chef Jackets.

Wearing your convictions on your sleeve.

Welcome to the Ómós Digest. This newsletter will hopefully bring you on that journey about the food you were looking for, or perhaps never knew existed. It is our quest to expand on what we don’t know and to share with those who care. If you haven’t read Newsletter #1 yet, it can be found here. 

Happy New Year! I hope you all had a relaxing and restorative break just as I have. I am so pleased to be back with you and feel truly invigorated to discover what wonderful encounters, stories and findings lie ahead. 

While many of us go out of our way to eat organically (bravo), filling our baskets with local and sustainably grown groceries to nurture our bodies, how often do we think about the origin of the countless other materials we encounter every day? More specifically, the clothing we put on our backs. It’s easy to forget where the world’s raw materials derive from. Of course, wood, wax and leather originate from organic substrates and obviously wool comes from sheep, but many might raise an eyebrow when told that linen is made from cellulose fibres found in flax or that silk is fabricated through unraveling the strands from silkworm cocoons. 

Although we continue to innovate, finding new and unique manners in which raw materials can be manipulated, interwoven and refined, perhaps we are not as advanced as we might like to think. In 2018, the brand Burberry caused uproar when it was revealed that over $36 million of products were burned at the year-end in an effort to preserve the brand’s reputation for exclusivity. Unfortunately, this story is one of many when it comes to exclusivity through scarcity. The inescapable downside to industrialisation and fast fashion is the impact that such industries have on our planet. Innovations in farming and production methods might mean that these materials have become more accessible, but at what cost? 

Organisms such as cotton or flax are “naturally occurring”, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are eco-friendly. When these natural fibres are not labelled as organic it means they are treated with pesticides. Since the cotton and linen industries are not as identifiably linked to the food industry as the flax crop might be (and their end use is not for human consumption), a higher proportion of pesticides are used. In fact, cotton is one of the most chemically intensive crops in the world, with sources claiming it uses up to 15-25% of the world’s pesticides. Disappointingly, less than 0.1% of the cotton market is represented as organic today. This leads to a plethora of environmental issues such as water contamination affecting our soil and ground roots, a decrease in biodiversity, soil degradation and harmful toxic fumes. However, there is also a direct link to our food system that many are not aware about. It’s called cotton gin trash.