Every year in England alone, 1 million tonnes of useable fabric goes into landfill sites. This means thousands of perfectly good clothes rot in a dump, whilst irreparable damage is done to the environment to fill quotas for new ones. Fashion is also renowned for its sweatshops and child labour, whilst conditions for many cotton pickers have not become any better since the slave trade. Read on to find out more.
Places such as Topshop, H&M and Primark sell clothes dirt cheap. But what are the real costs of our obsession with fashion?
- In many countries people work up to 80 hours a week (there are only 168 hours in a week). Overtime is often unpaid and compulsory if you want to keep your job. In Bangladesh, a living wage (which really still only means having enough money to feed someone, their family, pay rent and have a tiny bit left over) is calculated to be about £22 a month. Most companies only pay legal minimums, which means that in Bangladesh, people are only earning around £8 a month.
- Conditions in factories can be shocking – little light, regulated toilet breaks (if you want to go any other time, tough shit…), beatings for being late, 14 hour shifts with little or no breaks…Many adults work 7 days a week to meet big business demands, even though our high street companies have strict guidelines that say that they shouldn’t be doing that. All this for £8!
- Cotton picking is still renowned for its terrible, back breaking working conditions, long hours and terrible pay. The one huge difference now is the amount of people left permanently debilitated or even dead by strong, cheap pesticides and insecticides used on cotton plants. In Uzbekistan a reported 8 children died from chemical exposure in two years cotton picking.
- More and more clothes being made uses more and more resources. In developing countries water and land can be taken away from local communities to instead produce cotton for our huge amount of cheap clothes.
Taken from an article about the ethical considerations of clothes swapping,
by Rebecca Brierley.
Links about Sweat Shops and Shopping Ethically;
www.labourbehindthelabel.org
www.waronwant.org
www.sweatshopwatch.org
www.nosweat.org.uk
www.oxfam.org
www.buynothingday.co.uk
www.buylesscrap.org
www.savethechildren.org.uk
www.pan-uk.org
www.myspace.com/ethicalconsumer
Oh my goodness, all of that fabric could have been perfectly crafted for those who are in need of clothes! Here in Australia charities usually ask for unwanted clothing items (that are wearable) and sell them for low prices and with that money it goes to charity. Does England have the same system?
We do that a lot here, within our family and relatives. There are also charities here that do buying and selling of clothes. I think England should think about that.