Created by world-renowned designer and hessnatur creative director, Miguel Adrover, the message is simple and direct: Respect your Mother.  But in this case, the Mother he refers to is, literally, the mother of us all, the earth.  It’s a tee your Mom would be happy to see you wear.
Created without harmful toxins or dyes, the pure organic cotton tee respects the people who grew the cotton and produced the tee, as well as the earth.

Win Today’s Tee!
To win this tee, comment below, stating why you feel this tee carries your message.  The winner will be chosen based on creativity and originality.

If you’re chosen, hessnatur will email you and ship the tee to the address provided in your response email.

Contest Rules
Must be 18 years of age to enter.  Please, one entry per person.  Giveaway is available to residents of the U.S. only  If we don’t hear back from the entrant within twenty-four (24) hours, we’ll pick another winner.  No substitutions for cash. By submitting, you are agreeing to the full rules and restrictions.  Open for entries until Thursday, March 18, at 11:59 p.m. EST.

As the Project Manager for Social Standards at hessnatur, each year, with my colleagues, Rolf Heimann, Director of Innovation and Ecology and Maren Moennich, I invite the Fair Wear Foundation (FWF), the Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC), IG Metall (IGM) and the hessnatur workers’ representative to meet together to discuss how to improve social standards along the supply chain.  We were joined this year by HempAge, the second German apparel company to become a member of the Fair Wear Foundation.

Each of us is a stakeholder in ethical working conditions in the supply chain.  We all care about the same issue, but come at it from different perspectives.  FWF audits social standards. CCC campaigns for fair working conditions in the textile industry. IGM is a German labor union which supports the rights of sewers in production facilities.  HempAge specializes in ecological and ethically correct hemp fabrics.

During this important meeting, we exchanged information on our achievements during the past year and discussed what we are currently involved in.  Since hessnatur has worldwide operations, our discussions are wide-ranging.  Are working conditions in Poland the same as in the Czech Republic?  What are the challenges when discussing social issues with our suppliers?  How can we be assured that sewers as well as management are aware of the guidelines of the International Labor Organization?  What experiences have we had with our suppliers at the production sites?

One day seemed much too short to cover all of our topics adequately.  In March I will be traveling to Turkey, and later to Poland and Lithuania.  Meanwhile, teams from FWF will audit hessnatur production sites in Thailand, China, Bulgaria and Macedonia.  Inspection reports will follow.  Until then, you can read about what I have been doing in the past year.  Our annual social report, 2009, has just been published on the hessnatur corporate site.

Having a totally transparent textile chain may sound easy, but believe me, it isn’t.  When you are transparent, it means you must pay complete attention to every aspect of your production process.  This is a particular challenge in the sewing phase, because sewing is very labor intensive, with relatively little automation.  This puts the working conditions in the sewing factories at a substantial risk.

hessnatur controls and monitors the social standards in the sewing factories.  Our monitoring system is in accordance with the internationally recognized Fair Wear Foundation.

1. We inform our suppliers what our social standards are.  Our code of conduct, written in the local language, must be prominently displayed at the work site, so it’s clear to the sewers, not just the management.
2. Social standards are not at the discretion of our suppliers.  We inform them in detail, work with them on implementation to ensure ethical working conditions and insist on compliance.  Suppliers must provide comprehensive information relating to the conditions of the site.
3. We provide workers contact details for the Fair Wear Foundation in order to safeguard the social standards by providing them an impartial contact outside the factory in case problems arise.
4. Audits are performed by the Fair Wear Foundation, other independent experts and hessnatur specialists.  The selection of factories for inspection focuses primarily on those in critical countries, paying special attention to our key suppliers.  These factory inspections oversee both work safety and factory documentation: employment contracts, wage settlements, insurance documentation and hourly work records.  Audits by the FWF also include interviews with the workers.
5. All this data is collected in our specially developed computer management system in order to ensure transparency throughout the entire supply chain.  The data management also lets us continue to develop sustainable solutions for ethical working conditions.  This is a critical step in caring for workers.

If you care about what your clothes are made of, but haven’t paid much attention to how they’re made, you should.  It’s why we believe – and practice – at hessnatur, clothes are more than what you wear, they’re how you choose to live.

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Last February I visited the hessnatur/Helvetas (the Swiss NGO) organic cotton project in Burkina Faso.  I returned in late November to learn more about the planting, growing and harvesting at this important venture.

We arrived in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso in West Africa, and headed eastbound to the town of Fada N’Gourma. As we drove I could see the cotton plants just beginning to grow. The last month had provided perfect conditions under the West African sun.  Most of the fields I saw beside the road were conventional cotton fields. Not the organic fields that I was expecting during my visit.

After driving for two and a half hours to Fada N’Gourma we arrived at a small and simple track that led us to the organic cotton fields of the village of Fuanliedi. Here I met with the farmer Ouba. He  remembered us from our last visit and was happy to see our team again. With me were Georg Felber, the Project Manager from Helvetas, our translator, Daouda, our driver, Samba, and our videographer, Hartmut. I can’t speak or understand the local Oubas dialect (which is call Gourmantché), but Ouba communicated with his eyes, his smile and his body language.

Ouba told me – through our translator – that this year’s harvest wasn’t as good as last season’s because of the heavy rainfall in the past few weeks.  The amount of organic cotton was less than last year, but the quality of the cotton had improved. So, for him the harvest was on the plus side. In addition to organic cotton, he also grows organic peanuts and sesame – important for feeding his family and providing additional income, because peanuts and sesame can be sold at the local markets.

As the sun set, we left the organic cotton field and walked with Ouba and the other farmers to the center of the village. Here the first cleaning of the cotton took place before its journey to Ougadougou. I brought pictures from our last trip with me, also a movie that we made on that journey with Wolf Luedge, our CEO (which can be seen here on YouTube).

Everyone from the village stared with fascination at my laptop. People from the village saw themselves on the computer monitor – quite a never-before happening here in Fuanliedi!

More about my trip to Burkina Faso will follow in my next blog posts.

LOHAS company CEO’s and Founders discuss innovation in LOHAS businesss at the 2009 LOHAS Forum.

See all videos here.