Photo by courtesy of Karolina Grabowska/kaboompics
Since the Industrial Revolution, apparel has become a commodity that is obtainable by nearly every social strata. With the incredible boom in the fashion industry brought on by various advancements in technology - from weaving, knitting, and sewing machinery to transportation methods, and from the chemical composition of fibers to personal computers - the world has been revolutionized by a calendar of fashion trends. Founded out of a cottage industry on locally-produced goods, the multi-trillion dollar industry is in trouble on more than a few fronts. (https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-insights/the-state-of-fashion)
It is easy for a Western brand to oversee a domestic mill or factory. However, regulation is the adversary to profits. Thus, supply chains were cemented in developing countries where labor is cheaper. Overseas mills and factories are still somewhere between the West and the Wild West.
The fashion food chain is undeniably a two-fold problem: labor and environmental. Furthermore, the chain is made up of section - raw material cultivation, fabric weaving or knitting, garment construction, and international and domestic transportation. Although I cannot address everything here, I’d like to provide a stepping off point.
Consequences of Creation
It’s no secret that developed countries, including the US and EU members, take part in an outsized share of the global fashion industry’s consumption without getting their hands dirty from the hazards of the industry. Developing countries and their citizens are oftentimes forced to sacrifice their environment’s wellbeing in order to make profits.
A prominent example of this is how the USSR developed its cotton industry and decimated one of its largest lakes. In the late 1940s whilst the country was in the midst of drought and famine, Stalin’s Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature was devised. The Plan, in part, laid out the intent to cultivate cotton in its Central Asian territory. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/25764488)
Irrigation canals were hand-dug, stemming from the Aral Sea’s feeder rivers. As the industry grew in the 1960s, so saw the sea’s water level rapidly shrink. The Aral Sea, formerly the fourth largest lake in the world, had nearly disappeared. The USSR’s high regard for the cotton crop and its profitability came at the expense of the area’s fishing industry, which had previously provided between 20,000-40,000 tons of fish a year. The vanishing lake additionally exposed salts, pesticides, industrial chemicals, and fertilizer run-off which are still today hazardous to the surrounding population. (https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias/2015/02/150225_gch_mar_aral_sequia_lp)
Photo by courtesy of NASA
Not only was the environmental devastation a problem. Forced labor was, and still is, utilized in order to harvest the valuable cotton. Modern day Uzbekistan is the sixth largest producer of cotton in the world; cotton makes up 11.3% of the country’s export earning. And, up until recently, Uzbekistan’s government organized and forced children to harvest cotton. Adult forced labor is still utilized in the harvest. (https://www.fergananews.com/archive/2012/fieldcottonreport.pdf)
Children? What is being done?
Well, 314 fashion brands (many belonging to the same parent company) signed a pledge to never knowingly use Uzbek cotton (https://www.sourcingnetwork.org/cotton-pledge-signatories-complete-list). However, this pledge is no fail-safe. As raw goods get funneled to China and Bangladesh, the origin of the fiber can easily be concealed.
Quite simply, it’s unreasonable to think a country can easily transition into a more costly model without it being forced upon it.
Accountability through Auditing
Fashion brands often employ third party organizations to certify their factories, textiles, products, and various other steps in the supply chain as OK. There are no requirements for brands to receive such certificates and thus creates a voluntary system that does not guarantee the wellbeing of the environment or factory workers (https://ecocult.com/eco-friendly-ethical-sustainable-labels-certifications-clothing-fashion/).
Through my professional experience, I’ve worked extensively with Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production (WRAP) which is a social complaisance certification based in Arlington, Virginia, USA. They monitor factories for safe work environments, adequate compensation of employees, and adherence to environmental standards set forth by the factory’s home country. Although WRAP is a fairly good indicator of how a factory is doing, it only takes into account a small part of the supply chain.
Oftentimes factories source their own trims - elastics, thread, zippers, buttons, and even decorative trims. Fashion brands many times will rely on their factories to self-source without having any visibility into the trim supplier’s environmental and work conditions. I specifically recall one instance when I was working with a huge international retail brand; a tank top was far behind in production and we were given no indictor of what the problem was. Months after the fiasco, our factory sent us an excel file giving explanations on various delayed goods. Buried in it was a note about the tank top: “ribbon-supplier commit suicide.” I still have no idea the full extent in which this comment entailed, but it was incredibly unsettling to have been informed of such a tragedy so late in the process. Though, honestly, I’m surprised we were ever informed of it at all.
Factories intentionally leave fashion brands in the dark on a platitude of things because, simply, they can and must in order to turn a profit and meet deadlines. The high speed of the fashion industry does not allow fashion brands to double-check every aspect of their supply chain every time an item is made. Certifications can only indicate so much - WRAP audits factories only every 6 months. Although their audits are thorough, the disconnects throughout the supply chain leave much room for abuse.
Regulations need to be global in order to protect all. Although brands may vet factories throughly before committing to a buy, there’s no guarantee that a factory won’t subcontract a project to another factory or independent suppliers which may have an unsafe work environments or use child labor.
Clearly, not only do consumers have no visibility into a brand’s the supply chain, but in many cases a brand does not have the full scope either.
Tragedy Without Responsibility
Oftentimes the largest push for regulations happen after tragedy. One of the most recent and most devastating has been the 2013 Rana Plaza Factory collapse in Bangladesh. After 1,132 people lost their lives, it’s become clear how polarized even the developed world comes to regulation.
The Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh was an accord devised by EU-founded labor unions. Signed by over 200 fashion brands, it was a legally-binding agreement setting forth to ensure safe working environments within the Bangladeshi textile and clothing industry. (https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/the-accord-on-fire-and-building-safety-in-bangladesh)
The most notable names missing from the Accord, though, were some of the US’s largest retailer. Walmart, one of the brands that produced apparel in the collapsed factory, refused to sign. The retail giant instead helped spearhead a less stringent, non-binding voluntary Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety.
Not surprisingly, Walmart failed to live up to the expectations of the Alliance. “In a statement, Walmart said that its standards for suppliers ‘specifically address working hours, breaks, the cultivation of a safe and healthy work environment, and freedom of association.’ The retailer said that it does not own or operate facilities in Cambodia or Bangladesh, but that it expects suppliers to ‘uphold these standards in the factories from which they manufacture products.’” (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/31/business/international/top-retailers-fall-short-of-commitments-to-overseas-workers.html) It’s a feeble excuse to scapegoat a factory for one’s own lack of oversight.
The Alliance and Accord blacklisted over 300 factories due to extreme safety hazards which have led to continued deaths within the Bangladeshi fashion industry. It doesn’t take a genius to guess that Amazon, the e-comm giant that signed neither Accord nor Alliance, still sells goods from these factories. (https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-sells-clothes-from-factories-other-retailers-shun-as-dangerous-11571845003)
So What’s Next?
If these vignettes are not clear: sovereign countries cannot independently regulate themselves. Nor can the free market. The fashion industry is now on a global scale and contributes heartily to the degradation of the planet. It is clear that there needs to be reform on a global scale with every facet of the equation. Together, developed and developing countries, fashion brands and suppliers, can build a safer industry.
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