Sunday Brunch Round-up | Jan 31-Feb 6th
This week’s feast for your senses.
READ
“Sustainability”, “conscious”, “green”, and “eco-friendly” are all popular buzzwords fashion brands have been using to talk about their clothes for years. The usage of these terms has increased as the climate crisis is put front and center, but as Vogue breaks down in, “The flawed ways brands talk about sustainability”, these terms are loosely regulated—at best—which means brands can define them for themselves and the definitions remain nebulous.
“A lack of a standardised and legally binding framework to govern the information brands have to disclose has given them the ability to describe their own sustainability-led initiatives, marketing campaigns and capsule collections. The result is a selective and, at worst, misleading picture of what effective efforts really look like.”
““There’s no good or bad, is there?” Annat says. “There are various shades of better but only on specific indicators. [If] the product is great, it doesn’t mean all the products are great and it certainly doesn’t mean the company is great.””
WATCH
“Unravel: The final resting place of your cast-off clothing” is a 13-minute look at one of the things that can happen to your clothes once they’re donated. It’s a sobering reminder that ‘away’ goes somewhere. The conclusions people draw in the countries that end up dealing with our textile waste are searing. TW//brief fatphobia
LISTEN
When people think of clean water issues in America these days, they mostly think of Flint, Michigan. Some may even point to water accessibility constraints that indigenous peoples face. Few would think of rural America and hookworm. In an interview of Catherine Coleman Flowers by NPR, she breaks down how septic waste and sanitation impacts the rural poor.
“An Alabama native, Flowers has been awarded a MacArthur fellowship for her work on behalf of rural Americans living without proper sewage treatment. She says the hookworm study was a "smoking gun," that highlighted the sanitation and environmental problems the rural poor face.
Lowndes is a predominantly Black community, but Flowers notes that sanitation issues — and the health problems that tend to accompany them — are as much about class as they are about race.”
TASTE
I listened to a podcast episode about the history of pimento cheese and it has me craving it so much! Pimento cheese is one of my favorite foods and I’m thinking I may try to make some in the coming weeks. The NY Times recipes have treated me well in the past (I made my birthday cake from one of their recipes last year!), so I may attempt The Lee Brothers’ Pimento Cheese soon. Perfect as a sandwich or as a dip.
in coziness,
