Sweat Shops
Pesticides
Contamination
These problems are arising from the clothes we buy everyday. From the money you spend on cheap clothes to the amount of clothing you chuck away.
Have you ever thought about the lives at risk when you click enter on the card machine?
Have you ever thought about the world you live in when chucking away your clothes?
Many lives are being ended or ruined by the clothes we wear everyday...
After recently watching the Netflix documentary 'The True Cost' I decided it was time to think more carefully about the things I buy. The programme showed the true reality of factory workers in developing countries and how we are affecting their lives.
Throughout history we have expressed ourselves through the clothes we wear and the things we buy. We think that the more we buy the 'richer' we look and the more successful we are. Although deep down we know this isn't true, we ignore the reality. Quality is more important than quantity. We often find ourselves basing our shopping needs on the price tag and how 'on trend' or popular an item is. We think that because an item cost £10 it doesn't matter if we only wear it once and then chuck it away. As people say, it's your money you can do what you want with it but what's important is the fact that someone (most likely a young child or women) has slaved hours making that item and put their own lives at risk for you to simply chuck it away. Is this really fair?
The reality is we are ignoring other peoples lives to get cheap quality fashion that we don't really want!
In places such as Bangladesh, sweat shops are used to create our everyday fashion items. With the poor working conditions, low wages and children working against labour laws to provide for their families, the factories our clothes are created in are unsafe and unfair.
One Bangladesh factory owner said, "The big stores come to us and say this store is selling the same shirt for £5, I want to sell it for £4. Then another store says they are selling it for £4 and they want to sell it for £3. If we don't make it cheaper we don't get business". The only options these owners have is to: keep the price higher and loose out on business, shut down the factory meaning they have no work or to cut corners to make it work. Cutting corners is the only way these workers can make a 'living'. $10 a month is not a living wage. Although cutting corners means disobeying safety measures which can lead to dead's!
In Dhaka, Bangladesh an eight story fashion factory building collapsed killing over 1000 people because the factory owner had ignored a safety warning telling them to leave the building as it was unsafe. This is the price others have to pay for our cheap fashion. Within a few days another factory set fire killing another eight people. Over 1500 lived were lost within a year from three of the largest fashion factories:
Ali Enterprises - 289 deaths
Tazreen Fashion - 112 deaths
Rana plaza - 1,129 deaths
You now know the issues with working conditions but what about where it all starts. In the cotton fields?
Cotton Farmers are creating GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) cotton plants for our fashion. This means that they are using toxic chemicals and pesticides to produce a larger amount of cotton. This in turn means they sell more making them more money. However, these toxic harmful chemicals are causing all sorts of illnesses including cancer. In 3rd world developing counties these cotton farms are polluting the air, soil and water meaning the people in the surrounding areas are suffering majorly. 40/50 children from these areas are effected by the chemicals. However, the companies that make the cotton don't care about the health risks of these people as they are the same companies that make the medicine for curing them. The more people they effect with the chemicals the more people that buy the medicines; Making it a win-win situation for them!
In many cases when the farmer cannot afford to pay for their farm they get their fields taken away from them. This has cause around 250 thousand farmer suicides because they are left with nothing. That means 1 farmer dies every 30 seconds! This isn't right.
Fast fashion doesn't just effect people in developing countries but right here in our own. From advertising, YouTube and even blogs we want to stay on top of fashion trends. However, when we cannot afford something it can get us down and sometimes make us feel like we are failing at life. This creates a whole new area of mental health issues as we feel like we are failures or don't fit in.
Another issue fast fashion holds is what happens at the end when you have finished with your clothes. You either chuck it away or take it to a charity shop right? Chucking it away means it's sent to the landfill. Not only are we running out of room for landfill sites but they pollute the air. "With the average American throwing away around 82 pounds of textile waste a year" our landfills are largely growing. Not only are these products non-biodegradable meaning they sit in landfill sites for more than 200 years but they pollute the air with toxic chemicals causing an increase in cancer. Lucy Siegle, a fashion journalist says "Fashion should never and can never be thought of as a disposable product". Sending your unwanted clothes to a charity shop isn't much better either. Although they can be sold on to a better home; only around 10% of clothes taken to a charity shop is sold on. The rest is packed up and shipped to 3rd world countries such as Hati and then dumped on their streets.
Fast fashion is a major problem within our world. With the fashion industry being the 2nd most polluting industry in the world, after the oil industry, things need to change! You may think that the more you buy the richer you feel but in reality it only makes your poorer! The only people getting richer are the companies selling the clothes we buy. We are not thinking about the important issues behind the top we wear or the shoes we buy. We are simply looking at the finished product and how good it makes you feel. Earning around $2 a day these people are being treated as our slaves and it's just not fair!
Next time you shop in high street stores just think about the effects that item of clothing has had on another human being.
Not only is fast fashion making us poorer it's reducing the lives of others. Just keep that in mind..
Emma Victoria
