"Made in India": Eco fabric bag becomes a political issue in Unterhaching
Small label, big discussion: In Unterhaching, opinions are divided on the municipality's eco-material bags. It almost became an election issue.
Unterhaching - The fact that our editor's 15-year-old daughter can hardly part with the fabric gym bag from the municipality of Unterhaching is due, among other things, to the sewn-in label with the green-blue "Fairtrade Cotton" logo. Fairly traded cotton, in other words. But then came a letter to the editor. In it, a woman from Unterhaching denounced precisely these eco fabric bags distributed during the municipal climate week - because of the "Made in India" label. Where is the climate protection with this transport route? She also keeps thinking "of the pitiful children who had to sew these for a pittance.
Fabric bags trigger discussion on Facebook
And suddenly politics came into play, because in the letter to the editor, the Unterhaching woman praised an allegedly more environmentally conscious alternative: the "rebeutel" made of recycled material from regional furniture stores - which she had received from CSU mayoral candidate Renate Fichtinger. She in turn briefly shared a photo of the reader's letter on her Facebook page, which was diligently discussed elsewhere. Namely in the Facebook group "Our Unterhaching".
This Facebook group is still relatively new - it was only founded a few weeks ago. It was founded just a few weeks ago by noise protection activist Catia Hilgart, who is running for the local council on the CSU list and is considered a bitter opponent of SPD mayor Wolfgang Panzer. Who had personally distributed the "corpus delicti", the cloth bag, at the weekly market.
The fact that on this "censorship-free group page" (as the subtitle says), which has only one administrator, Catia Hilgart, the mood is set for the CSU and against the SPD-led municipality, can easily be seen from the structure of contributions and members. And so a supposedly harmless cloth bag suddenly became a political issue. The question that many are now asking is: Are there good and bad cloth bags?
Made in India, but Fairtrade
Which is indeed true: "Yes, our vegetable and gym bags have been produced in India," confirms city hall spokesman Simon Hötzl when asked by the Münchner Merkur. But there are differences here, too: The gym bags distribute the "memo AG" from Prussia home, the Vegetable nets "Mister Bags" from Essen. Either way, they are multi-certified products.
On two and a half A4 pages, the municipality's head of environmental and climate protection, Leonie Pilar, outlines the details. With regard to the "Made in India" label, she explains that around 80 countries worldwide grow cotton, but only 18 of these grow organic cotton. And 50 percent of that organic cotton comes from India, she said. "About 75 percent of cotton producers are small farmers who cultivate a few hectares and whose yields are mostly insufficient to feed themselves and their families," Pilar says. "That's why it's important to create a stable livelihood as a foundation and fight root causes of flight." The Fairtrade seal ensures this, he says: "Fairtrade pays certified producers a minimum price that is set independently of the world market price." Child labor and forced labor are expressly prohibited. The Fairtrade standards stipulate basic employee rights and take into account environmental aspects such as biodiversity protection, water conservation and pesticide bans. Other seals of the Unterhaching bags are "Blue Angel" (takes into account social criteria in the extraction of raw materials) and "Global Organic Textile Standard" (GOTS), which defines high requirements along the entire production chain. The community bags are also vegan.
The debate also has something good
Ultimately, says town hall spokesman Simon Hötzl, there are two approaches: the regional one, as with CSU candidate Renate Fichtinger, and the global one, which the municipality has consciously chosen. "We invest in fair working and trading conditions in developing countries, thereby helping to prevent child labor," Hötzl counters the reproach from the reader's letter.
And what does Renate Fichtinger think about it, who was involuntarily drawn into the debate via her distributed bags from regional production? "Both approaches make sense and have their justification," says the CSU mayoral candidate.
In the end, the somewhat curious debate has something good to offer, says Simon Hötzl: "Because it helps people to think about climate change. If young people think the community bag is cool, you've done something right. This is also shown by the demand: "We already have to reorder new bags."