RACE TO THE BOTTOM

Golf Refugees are proposing a new customer information label for all sportswear apparel. Based upon a simple traffic light symbol indicating how your apparel is made.

You may feel it highly unlikely any of the major sportswear brands would even consider introducing a new labelling system. Until you learn this year one of the leading sportswear brands will introduce a new labelling concept advising consumers about which of their products fit them best in terms of their performance level.

Instead of the ‘race to the bottom’ mentality. Informing consumers of how their apparel is made will provide incentives for all sportswear brands to start a race to finding alternative, safer chemicals, using sub-contracted factories who recycle their toxic dye-water instead of causing widespread pollution in local rivers and paying textiles workers, who are predominantly young and female a living wage.
How does that fit with you?

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IS BILL MURRAY A GOLF REFUGEE?

Is Bill Murray a golf refugee?
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RENO IN DIEGO

San Diego's Cortney Reno playing the original black ball and wearing ethically made, organic, screen printed white polo shirt. There are not many golfers who wear ethically made apparel. Most sport brands do not consider the 'environment' as a priority.
They must believe we all play golf on a different planet and no one will notice widespread pollution.
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JUST HOW APPEALING IS POLYESTER?

Granted polyester is the most popular fibre used in sports apparel. I wonder why?
Do you know it takes annually 70 million barrels of oil to make your polyester fibre for textiles..
The same polyester abbreviated to PET, yes there are numerous varieties, is also used to make plastic drinking bottles. Handy for sports brands to make and provide you with both plastic clothing and plastic drinking bottles from the same source material. To manufacture PET you need to use a catalyst and the catalyst of choice, bonded into 85% of all sports apparel, is Antimony. Now, Antimony just happens to be a cancer causing heavy metal. But don't worry about that, as the chemical industry will tell you it is firmly bonded into the finished polymer. The only trouble is it is released into the environment as a gas; antimony trioxide during production and when incinerated for landfill.
So there you are, most of you are playing sport in plastic shirts, derived from petroleum, bonded with a cancer causing element. Isn't it refreshing to know what you are really wearing next to your skin and interacting with via sweating?
Funny how none of this is mentioned in sports apparel reviews or by sports brands or their sponsored athletes. Perhaps we all need to start asking questions about the sport apparel we endorse, if we want to leave a safer, less polluted environment for our children.
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DRUG USE WIDESPREAD IN AUSTRALIAN SPORT

"The use of substances, including peptides, hormones and illicit drugs, is widespread amongst professional athletes. We are talking about multiple athletes across a number of sports. We're talking about a number of teams.
The findings indicate the drugs are being facilitated by sports scientists, coaches, support staff as well as doctors and pharmacists. In some cases, sports scientists and others are orchestrating the doping of entire teams. In some cases, players are being administered substances which have not yet been approved for human use."
The report said that organised crime was involved in the distribution of the drugs, which exposes players to the possibility of being co-opted into match-fixing.
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IF ONLY

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LOOKS GOOD

This is what 'made in China' really looks like. Off the scale pollution from coal fired power stations. Next time you're playing golf, whether you are a golf professional or a golf fan, breathing in the fresh air on your local course, take a second to read your golf apparel label.
You may not live in China but you do live on the same planet. How sustainable is it for western brands to use high polluting coal to make their goods? There is a price to pay, maybe not for you immediately.
For affluent golf professionals do you really want to continue to endorse this pollution? Alternatively, how about promoting apparel made from renewable wind and solar power?
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