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Kevin Check

Good afternoon. Welcome to today's Global Hot Spots. My name is Kevin Check. I'm senior director of Campus Relations at the Wisconsin Alumni Association, and we're pleased to continue our partnership with the Division of International Studies and the UW Continuing Studies Senior Learning Program to bring you the Global Hot Spots lectures. Professor Majid Sarmadi received his PhD from Virginia Tech in 1986 in textile science. A Rothermel Bascom professor, he directs graduate students in the College of Engineering's material science graduate program and the textile science specialization of the School of Human Ecology Design Studies graduate program. His research focus includes chemical properties and structures of textile fibers, plasma modifications of materials, wet-ability, dying and finishing. His teaching and research incorporate the concept of sustainability. He has received many awards including the Harold DeWitt Smith Memorial Medal presented by ASTM International, the Faculty Professional Excellence Award and a Certificate of Award for Excellence and Outreach from the UW Madison School of Human Ecology. He is the author and co-author of more than 60 scientific papers and holds four patents in the area of dying, finishing and plasma modification of films and fibrous materials. He has also served as consultant for textile and related industries, state procurement offices, and the judicial system. He consulted with the Los Angeles Community College district which serves more than 220,000 students with a budget of $5.7 billion. As part of his consulting for that group, he wrote a sustainable carpet specification identified as a best practice that saved more than $40 million for the state of California. That project has received 16 different awards. Professor Sarmadi's work also connects him with forestry, chemistry, the Center for Plasma-Aided Manufacturing, the Medical School and the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. Please join me in welcoming Professor Majid Sarmadi.

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Kevin Check

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Majid Sarmadi

Thank you. Where is the clicker? Hello, everyone. Welcome back. And I was hoping that-- okay, I can use my own if they don't have one in here. Welcome to this series, and I really appreciate you taking time from your busy schedule to come and listen to my area of interest. I have several interests and sustainability is one. And thank you for the kind introduction. Let's see if we can make this one work. You know, these days you have heard lots of buzz words. These buzz words are such as environmentally conscious, ethical consumerism, eco-chic, green fashion designs, clothing with conscious. You name it. There is a growing demand for organic clothing these days, or material related to that. But the main question is, are we slowly harming ourselves in the name of progress and convenience? What we are doing to ourselves and what we are doing to the environment. You want to know, what is sustainability? What does sustainability mean to us? What are we trying to sustain? Are we talking about the environment? Are we talking about labor force? Are we talking about consumers? Are we talking about physical sustainability or emotional sustainability, our emotional needs? What happened to the need to express oneself? So, in general, what consumer marketer designers and product developers must know and do to move towards sustainability, what are those things? Those are huge questions and need a long time to discuss every single one of them. We cannot talk about every single one, but we try to give you a summary of what you think we should do. A good friend of mine, Dave Edwards, he was with the Department of Natural Resources Bureau of Law Enforcement, he always said that the environment is not a component of our lives, we are a component of the environment. That's a different way of looking at it. There is a direct correlation between the health of the environment and our health, and I'm going to try to make a few points about that. Now, let us start with the environment. It is a beautiful scenery, everybody likes to enjoy it, it's outdoor Wisconsin, and how long we can survive without air? A few minutes? How long we can survive without good water? If you don't have good water you may last for a few days, but we get sick, different types of diseases. And then how long we can survive contaminating our land, our food and our environment? That's a big question. Do you believe that 48 states have a fish advisory because of the contaminated rivers, according to EPA. Wyoming and Alaska are the two that they don't. If you want to go fishing, that's a good place. Now, what's the difference between me as a human and vegetation and the environment? If you look at us, you see that the human hemoglobin and the chlorophyll of the plants, they have exactly the same structure. There is only one single difference, and the difference is at the center in here, we have iron, and chlorophyll, it has magnesium. That's the only difference. So we are very close relative of the plants. Whatever happens to us and to them are very much related. Asthma. We have coughing. We have sneezing. We are creating problems for ourselves. Exact cause of asthma is not known, but we know that more than 17 million people in the United States have asthma. One-third of our children are affected by that. In 2002 there were 478,000 hospitalizations due to asthma attacks. We are paying a good amount of money to take care of these problems. 5,000 deaths each year. Okay, on September 11, we lost about 2,900 people, and we went all full force to take care of the problem. Well, look at this. There are lots of deaths as a result of environment, what are we really doing about it? How much are we willing to spend on those issues? When air quality is poor, we know that people suffer, we know that. Now, I don't expect you to read these things but I just wanted to show that this is the modern earth that we need to take care of, and there are many ways that heat can trap and create problem, but the problem for greenhouse gases are 41.2% from transportation, for example for the state of California that we have the statistic for, and industrial pollution is 22.8%. 19.6% are from our electrical powers, and agriculture is causing 8%. So when you look at it, transportation is a major part. The way that we are driving, the way that we are using our cars, big SUVs and everything else that we like to do is a problem. We have a direct study, cause and effect relationship. In 2008 -- when the Chinese government decided not to let the cars go and closed some of the factories, there was less problem with coughing, less problem with everything, the sickness, and immediately they find out the number of pollutants in the air decreased. It was a huge success as far as the air condition was and air quality. Now, National Academy of Science in October of 2009 announced that $120 billion a year, we are spending because of the problem that burning fossil fuel is causing us. This is their statistic. People have been quoting me on this issue, and I have used a statement that goes back to thousands of years, changed it a little, but modified for this situation. But remember that we have not inherited this land. We cannot do all the work we want to it. I always say this. How many of you have gone to a buffet, raise your hand? Almost all of you. How many of you after you enjoy your food you said what the heck with the rest of the people and destroyed the buffet. And you didn't care for the people that were behind you? What we are doing to our environment, to our world, that's the way we are dealing with it. We don't care about the rest of the people that are coming after us. Me, me, me, right now. We have 1,270 sites currently on the national priority list to be cleaned up. And then three were added just a few months ago. It means that we keep adding to it. We have nitrates in our water. 10% of all of the private wells in Wisconsin are contaminated, and 26% of agricultural areas, the wells are contaminated with nitrates. We use it everywhere. We use it on our own yard. Every time that you see a nice green lawn, we are using nitrates, fertilizers. How much we are using and how we are dealing with it? Now we have other junk in our waters, and this one is showing that atrazine, the herbicides that we use. Look at the midsection. We are contaminating our wells in middle section and in other areas are just beyond belief. In the United States we are saying three parts per billion is okay, but we have found that even 0.5 parts per billion according to the program that was on BBC, I'm sorry public radio, is not good. That means our limit is six times of what scientists are saying we have to have in our water. We are destroying our foods. We are wasting our foods. Even in Britain $8 billion worth of food goes to the trash. So if Britons are more careful, have you traveled to Britain and seen the size of the food that they are consuming, compared to us? We super-size everything, don't we? So what is the source of our problem? AIG. How many of you have heard about AIG? Okay. This is not the insurance company we are talking about. Arrogance, ignorance, and greed. Calvin DeWitt is a professor in the Nelson Institute. And his student came up with this AIG abbreviation that I thought that was nice. So what is the role of technology? Technology could be our friend, and technology could be our worst enemy. Technology is good when it helps us to consume less and conserve our resources. Technology is bad when it increases the total consumption. So, for example, where the technology is good, BBC just announced that scientists have made a battery that is one million times holding more power, one million times more power than any batteries that you have created so far. But it is an atomic battery, and we have to know how to make it safe before you and I to have it. It means your cell phone never needs to be charged, your laptop never needs to be charged. So in this type of occasion we are not throwing anything into the landfill because how many batteries we are disposing every time that we are changing those alkaline batteries or the batteries on our watch or other things, we keep putting them in the environment. It's not only the batteries alone but the packaging, the transportation, everything else, it adds up. So we have to look at the nature for answer. Bio-mimicry is another one the scientists now are looking at because nature is very good in creating efficiency. So we've got to work with nature. Now this train is modeled after the beak of this bird. Now technology is good when I don't need to send lots of paper for people to review, and I can use it from the computer and email. From that point of view it's good. Believe it or not all of these stacks of paper that you see in here and in here is only for one meeting. I have to read and go through and mark them and those things, and I kind of blurred the faces of some of my colleagues in here because I didn't want to show their faces. But nevertheless. Now, if we have to use email and computers and I take my laptop, I'm saving the trees. The problem is so bad that United Nations has come up with some goals. And one of the goals of United Nations, goal number seven, is to ensure environmental sustainability. That's the goal of United Nations. Now, I decided to talk about textile material not only because it is close to my heart as a textile scientist, but as something that every single person can use and every single person purchases, and you can make a very nice contribution on that. Textiles have a very bad footprint as far as the pollution is concerned. There are lots of hazardous material that we are using. We are using tremendous amounts of water. We are polluting the water, and the air emissions that has come from textile factories are much to be desired for. And energy use is extremely high. And we have lots of solid waste that we send to the landfills. So, in general, we are contaminating our planet. Oh, professor, wait I minute, when I buy textiles I never see anything made in US anymore, so I'm okay. Well, you know, if I burn something in this corner of this room, it affects the whole room. The Earth is that small when you look at it. Same thing. So there are 8,000 different chemicals that they are using in the textile industry. 8,000 different chemicals. And these are some top five of them that they are major offenders. So let's define what is sustainability. I have my definition and international committee has another definition. I define it as the ability to use the universe's resources because now we are going to Mars, we are going to moon, we are exploring everything, it's not anymore planet Earth. What we do may have a major impact in the future. But the World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987 defined it a little bit different than mine, but essentially it's the same thing. I have brought a different concept of universe into it. But basically it indicates the ability to use the universe's resources including human resource, we forget about human resource all the time, without significantly depleting or harming its future use. That's a general description for sustainability. Now, how many of you have heard about the word recycling? Recycling is good, yeah? But many people do not know the difference between recycling and other types of words that we call, what they do is not recycling. Recycling is when converting, manufacturing, or post-consumer used product into the same product. For example, you have this bottle, you create this bottle from it. That's recycling. Upcycling is when you convert this bottle to something of higher value. Okay? Such as the bottles have been converted to fabric. Now it is a higher value product. Nature does wonderful in doing what we call upcycling. It gets the manure and makes a nice apple for us. What could be better than that? The fruit and vegetables. Downcycling is when you have this valued item or this one, then you make a bumper stopper for the parking lot or something like this, or polymers of lesser value. That is downcycling. So, many times when people say we recycle these things to this, I say wait a minute, we are downcycling not recycling, be careful what we are talking about. Anytime that you talk about recycling or sustainability you have to look at the social impact, you have to look at the environment, you have to look at the finance and economics of it, and therefore you got to make sure when everything is okay right at the middle we have sustainability. So we cannot just look at the product in isolation. Everything has to be taken a look at. We don't need to go to this extent to be sustainable. This is a picture from one of the India trips. Now, 11.8 million tons of textile materials are landfilled annually. That's a lot of textiles. Fashion means change. And change creates waste. Does it have to be this way? That's the big question. Can we have sustainable fashion? What do we need and what do we desire is two different things. I don't need 10 different suits. I like to have 10 different suits. I don't need another sweater this fall, but I wore my sweater last fall and everybody saw that I had those five sweaters, that every day I was wearing one, and I don't want to look cheap. I want to look fashionable. Peer pressure. Fashion and sustainability are not necessarily an oxymoron term. We can have innovative technologies to produce fibers, fabrics, dyes, finishes and new printing techniques to create smart clothing, to create materials that they last, they don't go out of fashion as quickly. So we can do that. Many people say, I want everything natural. I want everything natural. I keep saying, not everything that is natural is good for us. Is poison ivy good for me? It's natural. How about rattlesnake poison? Scorpion poison? It's all natural. Asbestos is natural. So we want to be careful what we are talking about and what we are wishing for ourselves and what we are advocating. Anytime that you want to say okay let's go get rid of all the manmade fibers, synthetic fibers and go natural. I say where do you get your farmlands? As it is we have enough problem cultivating enough food for the world. Now where is the land coming from? Now, I showed you how we are contaminating our world and our waters by herbicides and pesticides, didn't I? So if I have to produce more fibers, don't I have to use more of those chemicals? Can I just go organic? Organic alone is going to survive? They need a long season to grow, and cleaning and bleaching of those material to prepare them for your use and my use, it means a lot of chemicals. 1.2 billion cubic meters of water is being used. 2.4 billion tons of detergents and chemicals a year. Look at these numbers. Where do they go? After I finish the material and I clean and bleach and make that material nice and white for the consumption of my customers, do I repackage this thing and send it back to the factory? No. It goes to the water, it goes to the land, it goes to the river. We try to kind of neutralize them to the best ability that we have. And to me anytime that a textile factory or another factory in the United States, the chief executive officer of that one went and every morning had a cup of water from the effluent that is discharging to the rivers, and said this is good water to drink, that's the time that is a good day for me. Farm equipment transportation, maintenance of those things, creating them, all needs energy. Lack of certain properties, not every single fiber has the properties that you want. That's the reason that you use polyester in some places, nylon in another one, cotton in some other places, silk in others. There are different fibers for different properties, and we are using it that way. Wool is a natural fiber, but the sheep, you know when the sheep is burping, it's creating a gas that has 20 times more greenhouse effect than your car exhaust. Even the sheep. Raising the cattle, the methane that is coming from raising cattle. But, of course, they are biodegradable. That's the advantage of it. Now scientists are working to come up with a pill that every morning like a vitamin you give it to the sheep and say okay, open your mouth, take this one and don't burp, honey. Some people are advocating natural dyes. Do you know how much matter, how much vegetables I have to take to my lab and extract in order to get a gram of dye out of them? Is that the answer? We need farms to cultivate materials to extract dyes. And remember the fashion dictates that this shade of red is out of fashion, and I have to go and change my tie. A new season is coming and I get this red is not good no more. So I have to come up with a plant or another vegetable to give me a new shade. Genetically modify that one constantly to create different shades. We have changed. It was in the past that people had only one, or two, or three dresses or suits, and those things. Our closets are really full. We have low yield transportation of the matter to the factories for extraction, and those things cost money. Limited color range and color fastness or fading is a problem. And then in many times you have to use heavy metal in order to bind it to the fiber, that they are not very friendly to the environment. So, manmade fibers, what's the problem in that? Depletes our oil reserves. We have oil only for 70 more years. The way that we are consuming, if this rate stands, the oil reserve of the world is estimated to have only 70 more years. So I don't know what they're going to do after that. Advantages of manmade fiber is that the garment drying time is less. You don't need to dry the garments for a long time. Have you noticed when you have cotton you have to use more time in the dryer to dry it? And then you need to iron it, you have lots of those things. It needs more ironing. It costs less, that is the advantage, one of the advantages. And we don't have as much shrinkage problem, and transportation is not as major problem because from small farms gathering the fibers or big farms and sending them to different parts-- Average garment, now how much travels? How many miles travels? 14,000 miles for the average garment. Travels 14,000 miles. Color fading is not as bad. Manmade fibers last forever, that's one other problem. Also no need for pesticides and herbicides. So we are not contaminating our resources. Dry cleaning is a major problem. If you try to stay away from dry cleaning, better. If you buy a garment that you need to dry clean, you are adding to cost of maintaining the garment. And you don't want to do that. You don't want any time you that wear a shirt then give $15, $10, $8 to dry clean it. Unless you are not worried about money. Now, what is the biggest threat to the environment? When you ask Dave Edwards, you know what he said? What is it? What is it to you? Our attitudes. Our attitudes is the biggest threat to the environment. So textile recycling in the United States. Remember in America recycling day is November 15, and 90% of used textiles are recyclable really. You can recycle 90% of them. And each American disposes of 35 pounds of old clothing each year, on average. There are people that they don't do, they keep collecting them and put them in their basements.

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Majid Sarmadi

And they leave it for the kids to deal with it afterward. Remember businesses are here to make money. If you demand sustainable product, they will do it for you. So we are spending less. In 2006, Americans spent $1 trillion on clothing. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of power you have in your hand. The best way to vote is to vote with your pocketbook. That's the way you have heard it, don't you? Now, what can I do? I'm just one person. I'll give you a story. There were three old ladies in Wisconsin, three old ladies in Wisconsin. They were sitting around the table, and when they were walking for a walk, they find out that they are, close to the river and close to the creeks, there are lots of plastics and lots of bottles. They were fed up with it. And you don't want to deal with Wisconsin ladies. They are serious in what they do. So they said that, wow, how about we find a way to recycle these things. So they start to write to the companies. Calling the companies. Everybody made fun of them. Nobody wanted to deal with them until a company in Chicago said, I'll sell you a grinder that you can grind these things and deal with it. Sell it, repackage it and do whatever you want with it. These three old ladies, they put all of their resources together, came up with $5,000, bought that grinder and chopped down the bottles and the plastics in order that they can compact packaging them and sending them to the polymer companies and those things. Now those three old ladies are celebrities around the world. They go and give speeches. They have been on public radio. They have been invited in India, China, any place else. Have you seen those numbers on the bottles and those things? They came up with that. So when I say, what can I do, I'm just one person? I say if an old lady that is not having any university education can make a change in our recycling programs and using our resources, every single one of us can do that. So practice energy conservation whenever you can. Learn about the issues. And you are here, I'm preaching to the choir, thank you for being here. But remember, choir needs practice. Don't stop coming to these types of talks. So learn about the issues. Reuse. Reduce your use. Recycle. Attend public programs. Contact your legislators. Believe me, when they keep hearing from you, they have to do something about it. Get involved. Combine car trips when you can. Walk when you can. It's good for your health, but at the same time saving you some dough. When it comes to washing your clothes, can you use your clothes one more time without washing it? Even one more use out of your clothes and less washing saves lots of water, lots of detergent, lots of heat, lots of electricity. You stop washing your car once a week, can we wash it a few times a year? Anytime that it rains hard I put my car outside. I say, okay, God made it dirty, let him wash it.

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Majid Sarmadi

So then when it rains, I put it in the garage, and then I wipe it up and it's shiny and good as new. I didn't use no detergents, no chemicals, no heat, no energy. My wife laughs at me anytime that it's raining and I'm running toward the cars, she says, "Are you putting the cars out?" Plant a tree. Anytime somebody is giving a birth, what a nice gesture of planting a tree in the name of that child. Anytime that somebody dies, what a good thing to plant a tree in the memory of the person that has died.

Let's give the gift of life

oxygen. Trees are the lungs of our planet. Planting a tree and doing messy things is not going to do it. But planting trees in conjunction with good conservation, it does wonderful things for us. Do I need to change my cell phone? My cell phone is ringing. Speaking of cell phones, they know. These cell phones have a way of getting to us. Do I need to change my computer very often? Now, what manufacturers need to do? They have to reduce, recycle any time that they can, about the water and energy. Whatever they can, they have to reduce and recycle. They have to implement environmentally responsible purchasing. Buy from companies that are environmentally responsible. And when you get the raw material, buy the one that are less harming to our environment. Use nontoxic material. They should use nontoxic material. They have to pay fair wages and safe working environment, provide a safe working environment for the workers. I cannot recycle, but don't care about the workers. And the material that is used to manufacture, sometimes they are toxic to humans that are working with those things. They are less toxic to you and I as a user at the end, but the process is more toxic to them. So we've got to be careful of that. Extend the life of a product. I don't see many women are wearing pantyhose these days. But usually they're used to their pantyhose running. Why the textile industry cannot create a pantyhose that doesn't run as fast? We can do that. But you're used to it and I'm used to getting the income from it, why change my ways? As long as you know that before you go to a function you have one pantyhose on your legs and another one in your purse in case it has a problem, or some nail polish, clear nail polish, to just stop the running. So you do that, I do my business, who cares? Reduce packaging size. The manufacturers have to reduce the packaging size. You get something that is this big and has a big package like that because they are competing for the shelf space. They want to grab your attention. You've got to see their products. So prevent loss and implement sustainable training program. They got to make sure that if there is any water leakage, any gas leakage, any other things, we have to be careful of that one. And, for example, look at this. China is becoming wise. China just announced that this September they stopped making 710 million meters of material. And that one is a small portion, it's only 3% of Chinese production. So they want to reduce their energy use, their water contamination and other things. But as long as the demand is over there, they are shifting it from China to Southeast Asia such as in Vietnam or to India. Because we are demanding those products. The demand is there. Chinese say I don't want to be close to this contamination anymore. So we've got to be careful. What is the energy? We are saying that we do not have enough uranium to make power plants because that's a limited resource, it's scarce. And we do not have enough oil to last. We can create lots of solar power plants. Solar power plants, they are a renewable energy. We got to spend lots of time and effort in solar and in wind energy in order to reduce, I think. Remember, think globally and act locally. I cannot say that the problem is not in my corner anymore. And thank you. And if you have any questions, I'll be more than happy to try to answer.

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