And now, for something that has nothing to do with the oil spill.
My athletic socks all had holes in them. They were mismatched, they were graying, they were beyond the help of darning.
I decided, rather than simply buying a few new pairs and supplementing the aging sock drawer with new, also mismatched socks, I'd do the ballistic option.
So I threw out every single pair of white socks I owned. (Normally I advocate donating old clothes to Goodwill, but these were in such sorry shape that even someone wanting used clothes would stick their nose up at them.)
Now, I knew exactly what I wanted to replace them:
- White athletic socks
- Identical, so purchased in 1-2 packs of 6 or one pack of 12
- Made in the USA
Surprisingly, the latter one wasn't as hard to find as I thought it would be. Sam's Club of all places had a pretty nice deal on organic cotton "Eco-Socks" made by Burlington in the USA. Sam's club! Now, they're not as green as they make themselves out to be - they do contain bamboo based rayon, which is a synthetic fiber no matter which way you spin it - but the packaging hyped up the environmentally friendly facilities and the use of organic cotton (which turned out to only be 7% of the blend, but I chalk it up to the same mentality that causes us to pay an extra $10 each month for a guaranteed 200 KWH of 'green' electricity. Every little bit helps.)
However, my conscious started nagging me after I slipped on the first soft white pair. Where in the USA were these socks made? The obvious answer would be Burlington NC, home of Burlington Coat Factory, but multiple searches turned up nothing regarding a sock factory there.
I'd like to see, as part of consumer label disclosures, not only a country of origin, but a specific address where the factory that produces a product is made. Okay, maybe not a mailing address, but at least a city and state. There's a huge difference between a factory in the Northern Marianas Islands and a factory in Ohio.
Consumers have a right to know these things.
I'm happy with the quality of the socks, and I think I paid a reasonable price for them ($20 for 12 pairs - these will last me for years), but every time I put a pair on, I'm going to have that little voice nagging in the back of my head, "Who really made you?"
Update: Found the mega-corp that made them, Kayser-Roth. From their website:
We own and operate four state-of-the-art legwear facilities in North Carolina and Tennessee. Our emphasis is on quality through careful control, consistency and automation. We are vertically integrated in order to ensure quality all the way to final production. Our U.S. based facilities provide a distinct speed-to-market advantage
Well, TN or NC is a much better place than Northern Marianas Islands, so I feel a little bit better now.