Environment

Photo from Borås Tidning (local newspaper)

On Thursday I read in my local news app that a group of people had been making a climate-related protest by tying red scarves around a number of sculptures in the city. So on Friday I decided to go for a walk downtown to see if I could find some of those. 

 

The only statue I actually found (still) wearing a red scarf was this one, though:

 

 Sculpture Ute (= Outdoors) by Charlotte Gyllenhammar.

 

The Non-Violence sculpture by Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd (cf the newspaper photo) was no longer wearing a read scarf when I got there. Whether it was removed by someone protesting against the protest, or someone not having heard/read about the protest (so failing to understand what it was about), or someone perhaps just feeling a bit cold and in need of a red knitted scarf, I'll probably never know...

 

The Non-Violence sculpture stands in Anna Lindh's Park. Anna Lindh was a Swedish politican (for the Social Democratic party) who was tragically assasinated in Stockholm in September 2003. She was Minister for Foreign Affairs since 1998, and before that she had also served as Minister for the Environment for four years.

 

This sculpture was not wearing a scarf, but looked to me like it could have needed one. I was a bit surprised to find it where I did, as last time I saw it, it was somewhere else - and before that, originally, it used to stand outside the Art Museum. I had also forgotten its name, but managed to (re-)find it by googling. It's called Fauna, by Tilda Lovell (2010).

 

A more encouraging find on my walk was the first cherry blossoms on a tree opposite the old church in the city centre.

 

 

 

 On my way back home, I found wood anemones and daffodils growing along the river.

 

 

 

Textile Power

Last weekend I went to visit our Textile Museum - as I do now and then. It's been three years since they moved to new premises, and they've had a number of different exhibitions since then, but it's taken them all this time to get the basic one with all the old heavy textile industry machines re-opened. In the old premises, the machines were all gathered in one huge hall, very high in ceiling. While that did perhaps give an impression of what it might have been like to work in such a place, at the same time it was hard for visitors to get an overview of all the steps in the manufacture. 

In the new exhibition, entitled Textile Power, they have chosen to display machines in a more logical order so that you can better follow the process, from the first steps in refining the fibres, to the final products. 

 

 

Various machines combing and spinning the cotton into thinner and thinner threads.

This is a jacquard loom, weaving patterened ribbons using a technique involving punch-cards that was sort of a predecessor to computer technology.

This is a knitting machine which at the end of the process spits out a complete glove with five fingers. 

Seeing these patterns displayed reminded me of my mum, because she used to sew most of our clothes at home herself, back in my childhood and youth. 

The exhibition also spotlights the conditions for the textile workers in the factories, and how much our whole society and industry has changed in the last hundred+ years. It is easy to forget that only about a century ago, most factory workers in Sweden were still living and working in conditions not all that different from the present-day countries where, in fact, most of the production now takes place - i.e. mostly in Asia. (Low wages, long hours, large families in crowded living quarters etc.)

Borås is still a town with a strong textile focus, and home to various businesses to do with fashion, design and clothes. We have the Textile Museum and also a Textile College; and various companies working with fashion design and smart textile inventions for the future; and shops and mailorder companies selling lots of clothes. But nowadays not much of the actual production takes place here. That has all been moved abroad to far-away places where workers are still living in conditions no longer regarded as acceptable in Sweden... The exhibition at the museum reminds us of that.




Once upon a time, the colour of the water in the river running through this town would shift from day to day, depending on what pigments they were using in the dyeing works at the moment. Nowadays, our river has been cleaned from the old toxic substances from the dyeing industry. A couple of years ago, when a new walk was opened along a part of the river near one such place, as a reminder, they installed lights there that can shift colour. (I wonder if future generations will remember the reason?) 

At the museum, they also had this display of A Teenager's Wardrobe from 1950, 1980 and 2010. Another powerful reminder of how consumption has increased. Born in 1955 myself, I can relate to this. I have a lot more clothes and shoes now than I did back around 1980. (And it's not because of never getting rid of old things.)

At another station in the exhibition, visitors are asked to look at the labels in their clothes to check where they were made. It was not very practical for me to do that just then and there - but I gave it some thought when I got home. The only item I had on that was actually made in Sweden was my socks...

In this recent photo, I'm wearing leggings and skirt made in China, and t-shirt and sweater made in Bangladesh... An inspection of my wardrobe showed the majority of my clothes to have been made in those two countries + India. (Not really surprised, but have to confess I've never really given it much thought.)

Yesterday, I went shopping for a (rain)coat. The one I fell for and bought was neither cheap, nor on sale; and for a change it's from Denmark. Well - er - at least the label says "Danish design and fine processing", and also claims to meet "high ethical standards and health requirements"... Whether that actually means it was made in Denmark, I can't tell from the labels... Really, being a "conscious consumer" is not made easy!!!

(herluf-design.dk)


Anyway, besides being water repelleant and breathable and washable... this coat is also reversible! Which means it can be turned inside out and worn that way instead (mauve outside and dark purple inside), still with pockets and buttons etc in the right places. So it's really two coats in one. I love that, and also the flexible collar, which can also be pulled up over your head and used as a hood. It really is a very smart design. So I hope I'll be able to use it for several years to come.

 
The exhibition really did set me thinking a lot about these topics. If only it were as simple as paying a bit more for a certain item and knowing the money would end up in the right pocket. Or buying less, and be sure that this would improve the environment... But it's never quite that easy - is it...?

Instead, it's all more like this room in the exhibition, where they had turned the manufacturer's office into a giant board game... Two steps forward, three steps back etc.

Now I'm curious to know what you think....
For example:
How has your wardrobe changed over the years?
Do you buy things on impulse, or do you plan your purchases carefully?
And do you check labels to see where things were made??

Through My Lens

Mosaic Monday
 

Reflections in Orange & Green

Yesterday, 5th June, was World Environment Day. It was also the Grand Opening of the new Orangery (‘Orangeriet’) in the Town Park here in Borås.

Besides housing a café/restaurant, this glasshouse is supposed to serve as information centre for things to do with environmental sustainability and recycling.

I’ve not yet seen the inside. (I’ll go back and explore on some ordinary day when it’s less crowded!) But most of the furniture, like tables and chairs, are supposed to have been collected from the town’s own storage rooms and ‘upcycled’ for a new life.

So far, so good… But according to an article in the local paper, not every aspect of the planning fits as well with the enviromental ideas. For example, one big “ooops” that seems to have been discovered only shortly before opening, is that the restaurant kitchen is too small and lacks enough storage space. This means they will need very frequent deliveries instead; which will mean an increased flow of vehicles driving into the park.

(Before, there was only a small kiosk in the park, for hot dogs and ice-cream, and only open in summer. The new place is supposed to be a fully licensed restaurant, open all year round and also late in the evenings. One might think that someone, somewhere along the long way of planning, should have given a thought to the not-so-environmentally-friendly implications of that…)

Anyway, it was a great day for the opening ceremony. After weeks of mostly grey and rainy weather, at last we got a sunny day and almost summer-like temperature. So quite a few people turned up to enjoy this event.

I’m afraid I did not find the musical entertainment all that environmentally friendly – the volume was loud enough to make me “feel the earth move under my feet”… Remember that old Carole King song? No, they weren’t singing that… I don’t know what they were singing, I had to stick my fingers in my ears and flee. Actually I even left the park; and did not approach it again until perhaps half an hour or so later… Just in time, as it happened, for my camera to catch those balloons flying off (2nd photo) – and a speaker-voice assuring me that these were of course bio-degradable ones. (But even so - and even though I got a good photo out of it! - I have to say a balloon-release does not strike me as the best way of celebrating this kind of event?) 

Weekend Reflections