At White Ginger, we strive to translate into our business our personal desire to live lightly on the earth. Our goal is to provide unique clothing of exceptional quality, while supporting the best practices on both the economic and environmental levels.

We are committed to the small group of tailors that sew for us in Cambodia, as well as the seamstress we have worked with in Taipei these last nine years. The Tabitha Foundation, Cambodia, with which we are closely involved, continues to thrive and offer support to the poorest of the poor in Cambodia through a micro-economic program that the founder, Janne Ritskes, created more than ten years ago. Funds to support Tabitha’s programs come through the sales of their silk – our history with Tabitha goes back almost to their beginning when they were simply trying to make enough to pay the bills at the end of the month. Through our eight-year history with Tabitha, we have been able to witness incredible growth; they now work with more than 35,000 families throughout the poorest areas of Cambodia.

With most of our clothing, we use fiber-reactive or low-impact dyes, which have the least amount of toxic run off (5% versus 50-60% with traditional dyes) and meet the more rigid EU dye standards. This is, of course, important for the environment, as well as the dyers and the villages where the silk is dyed. We continue to learn more about viable alternatives and to search out people and companies that have a similar philosophy. If you would like additional information, a very extensive discussion of dyes can be found at: http://www.luxuryredefined.co.uk/docs/dev/stand.html

As many of you know, we have expanded our offerings to include more casual/lounge wear. All of the items that we bring in are organic cotton, or other sustainably-grown fibers. This is very important to us as conventional cotton is one of the most chemically intensive crops grown in the world. According to Sustainable Cotton, “United States farmers applied nearly one-third of a pound of chemical fertilizers and pesticides for every pound of cotton harvested. When all nineteen cotton-growing states are tallied, the crop accounts for twenty-five percent of all the pesticides used in the U.S. Some of these chemicals are among the most toxic classified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In developing countries, where regulations are less stringent, the negative impacts are even more severe.”

For more information on what this California based organization is doing to encourage the sustainable production of cotton, please visit http://www.sustainablecotton.org

We are continually assessing our own practices and how we can improve. In the summer of 2007, we introduced an organic cotton shopping bag, in an attempt to forgo paper bags. Our hope is that these bags will serve many other purposes and serve as a small reminder to reuse.