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John Carroll University and the Campus Effort Toward Ethical Purchasing

BY KELLY SWAN | September 21, 2022

This fall, shoppers at the John Carroll University (JCU) bookstore in Cleveland, OH, have access to a new option to show their school spirit—an ethically and sustainably made t-shirt and socks made from repurposed socks

John Carroll University and the Campus Effort Toward Ethical Purchasing

The shirt is produced by COLLECTION, a sustainable textile products brand operating under the umbrella of The Industrial Commons (TIC), a North Carolina-based collective of employee-owned social enterprises and industrial cooperatives. TIC works to found and scale businesses that build a diverse local working class in a region that has seen steep economic decline. 

John Carroll University and the Campus Effort Toward Ethical Purchasing

John Carroll University students in North Carolina during a March 2022 ethical purchasing immersion trip.

In March of 2022, Shelby Smyth, a resident minister and graduate student at JCU accompanied a group of JCU undergraduate students on an immersion trip through ISN’s Catholic Ethical Purchasing Alliance (CEPA) during their school’s spring break to North Carolina. 

That week, they visited a host of manufacturing facilities, including those affiliated with TIC—many operating under a triple bottom line business philosophy—one that centers people, planet, and profit. They also examined the concept of a circular economy—one that “operates through a collective business model: sharing resources among factories, empowering workers through worker-ownership, educating the community on skills-building and entrepreneurship, and recycling and reusing materials.” Students were able to witness beanies being created from yarn destined for the landfill, new socks manufactured from old socks at the end of their lifecycle through a partnership with SmartWool, and even visited a local cotton gin. 

After the immersion, Smyth and her students worked to engage the JCU campus in the type of work they witnessed in North Carolina. They partnered with campus sustainability interns and residence life to collect over 300 socks for recycling. Smyth and her colleague and fellow resident minister and immersion leader Miles Tiemeyer also supervise the school’s fair trade and sustainability interns, who they have been working with to increase JCU’s engagement with CEPA. Smyth and a student participant from the immersion trip are also sitting on the school’s newly formed Laudato Si’ Committee—working to more fully and effectively integrate sustainability and care for creation into the life of the campus. 

“Students at JCU are broadly interested in sustainability,” Smyth shared with CEPA director Grace Adams, “particularly clothing.” The presence of the new COLLECTION t-shirt in the school’s bookstore is a confluence of this interest and JCU’s growing engagement with CEPA, providing an avenue for students, faculty, staff, and alumni to further live the Jesuit mission and enact the principles of Catholic social teaching—to live a faith that cares for the dignity of all people, upholds the rights of workers, builds strong families and communities, fosters a tangible solidarity, and cares for the vulnerable and for all of creation.

1 reply
  1. Dr.Cajetan Coelho
    Dr.Cajetan Coelho says:

    It’s a win-win situation. Ethically correct and relevant world-building is a beautiful project. At the beginning of each academic year, students need to be welcomed into a sustainable model of proceeding.

    Reply

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