Perhaps you are among people who love chain stores such as H&M or Zara. What if I told you that these clothes were made by modern-day slaves?
You probably know Mr. Seb as an exploiter of workers. This meme illustrates the situation of some Poles in the labor market, where the employee's boundaries, health, and time devoted to work are not respected.
Today, however, we will discuss the foreign, not Polish, reality of an extremely prosperous business such as the fashion industry. We will look at how chain stores, which you may often pass on your way to school or work, exploit their employees (paying them pennies on wages) and, at the same time, do not respect the natural environment.
In the film "Shopaholic", the main character (played by Isla Fischer) gets into big financial problems due to her shopaholism. A woman cannot ignore shop windows because the clothes scream at her to buy them. The title shopaholic cannot do without buying clothes that are attractively priced, have an interesting cut, and represent newer trends that change even several times a season.
We can therefore say that contemporary fashion is cheap and available. Fashionable clothes cost up to several dozen zlotys and are within reach. From the outside, we see a variety of styles and colors to choose from, good prices, and elegant commercial premises. But there is also the other, dark side of the coin.
All because the fast fashion industry generates huge profits. According to the Fast Fashion Global Market Report 2023, the fast fashion market is extremely profitable. Its value in 2023 is estimated at USD 122.98 billion and by 2027 it is expected to reach USD 184.96 billion.
In short, the fast fashion movement means following dynamically changing trends and adapting collections to designs known from catwalks. It is worth mentioning that there used to be two fashion seasons - spring/summer and autumn/winter. Today there are dozens of them! Global fast fashion brands produce up to 50 collections a year.
Fast fashion are popular fashion chain stores that are characterized by a wide range of products and reasonable prices. Low purchase cost often means the unsatisfactory quality of clothes containing e.g. polyester or acrylic. Importantly, such clothes deteriorate faster - blouses become stretched, sweaters become pilled, and trousers become frayed. In such a situation, the natural step for the consumer is to purchase the necessary clothing again. And so the circle closes - we have to buy more often because clothes, due to poor quality, deteriorate faster.
You may be wondering when this shopping frenzy started? The beginnings of the fast fashion movement date back to the youthful rebellion of the 1960s and 1970s. However, the post-war years were also crucial in the creation of fast fashion. In 1947, a certain Erling Persson opened the first Hennes store in Sweden and sold women's clothes. 20 years later, he took over the Mauritz Widforss store in Stockholm and changed the name of his company to Hennes&Mauritz. In short: H&M. And although the Swedish chain is not the only one in the fast fashion category, it is, among others, has become a symbol of fast, inexpensive, and easily accessible fashion.
The phenomenon of fast fashion is related to the trend of consumerism, which (to put it very simply) involves the pursuit of possessing and accumulating material things. Some of the most serious consequences of consumption are, among others: degradation of the natural environment or the issue of fairness in trade in material goods. This accumulation, however, does not result from the actual needs of the individual - none of us needs countless amounts of items - in this case, clothing. The problem, however, is that the mass media fuels our desire to constantly purchase items because their message says: you need it. As a result, instead of simply dressing in clothes, we consume fashion. And the world was constructed in such a way as to fuel this consumer desire.
Nowadays, due to the fact that we have almost instant access to what is created by designers, as well as due to the possibility of rapid production, trends change practically from week to week. At first glance, we, as consumers, do not incur any costs of fast fashion - clothes such as T-shirts can be purchased for just a few zlotys. However, a huge part of society does not realize that the results of fast fashion are the so-called hidden costs – i.e. consequences for our environment and future generations. The fast fashion industry has a lot of consequences. Among them, among others: polluting the planet resulting from the mass production of polyester, acrylic and nylon, or violating basic workers' rights.
To illustrate how big a problem we are dealing with, let's look at some statistics. On the European Parliament website we can find the following information:
“It is estimated that the production of one T-shirt consumes 2,700 liters of fresh water, which is enough for one person for 2.5 years on average. Textile production is responsible for approximately 20% of global clean water pollution due to the dyeing and finishing of products."
“Consequently, the clothing industry is responsible for 10% of global carbon dioxide emissions – more than emissions from international flights and shipping combined.”
The next statistic is that every year at least 39,000 pieces of used clothing are collected in the Atacama Desert. It's worth asking a question here - do you realize what journey your pants had to go through to be able to buy them?
Let's imagine that a given manufacturer produces hundreds of thousands of pairs of jeans every year, including: in Bangladesh. These pants are sent to stores e.g. in the USA. If they sell, that's the perfect scenario. But what if not? Then they will go on sale. From the sale, such jeans go to the so-called second circulation - outlet or second-hand store. However, it is worth remembering that such businesses are usually not very profitable because they involve activities such as selection, packaging, description and transport. And here we come to the point.
Often, companies cut corners and send unsold jeans to a landfill, somewhere in Africa, Asia or South America. Therefore, the jeans we see in the store can end up in a landfill again in just a few months.
Consumers are often blamed for the increased popularity of fast fashion, but it is companies that are trying to generate more and more interest in their products due to the enormous profitability of the clothing sector.
Behind the production of things that we can see every day in chain stores, there is huge exploitation of workers. The factories where clothes are made are located in uncontrolled buildings. Sometimes it happens that the building collapses, resulting in the death of sewing workers. Just like the factory in Bangladesh. Youtuber and propagator of minimalism, Anna Grzelczak, said this about the fast fashion phenomenon:
“When I think about fast fashion, the first thing that comes to my mind is the disaster that happened in Bangladesh in 2013. As a result of the collapse of the Rana Plaza building, 1,100 people died and 2,500 were injured. The building collapse is the largest construction disaster in modern history. Rana Plaza was a factory that produced clothes for fast fashion companies.”
Every year, the Baptist World Aid report looks at the condition of the fashion industry and reveals which companies do not adopt ecological solutions. This time it turned out that only 10 percent fashion brands around the world pay their factory workers decent wages that are enough for them to live on. According to a report by Baptist World Aid, employees work an average of 13 hours a day and earn $85 a month, while 40 percent companies cannot indicate where the raw materials used to produce their clothes come from, nor have they established a way to track them.
The clothes we buy in shopping malls are usually made in Asia. Sometimes also in Eastern Europe. As we can read in one of the articles, there are as many as 4,000 clothing factories in Bangladesh. However, their number is decreasing - in 2013 there were as many as 5.9 thousand of them. In the "What She Makes" report from 2017 we can read, among others, that:
“Fashion is a huge business and the industry has flourished over the last two decades. Global clothing exports have more than quadrupled, from $108 billion in 1990 to $445 billion in 2015. (…) All this money flowing around the world shows why many governments in developing countries see the apparel industry as key to the success of their economies and to increase revenues. Clothing is one of the largest exports in Bangladesh, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Indonesia," writes Oxfam.
What are the earnings of employees of these sewing factories? According to Oxfam, the situation is worse in Bangladesh. The average hourly wage is just 30 cents.
The Fairwear Foundation has published a graphic showing who earns how much from the clothes we buy in chain stores. Assuming that the t-shirt costs PLN 59.90, as much as 59% of the price (i.e. PLN 35.30) is taken by the store's margin. The brand profit is 12%, the material cost is also 12%, and the transportation cost is 8% respectively. But what about the wages for a factory worker? As the graphic shows, the employee receives only 0.6% of the price of the T-shirt, or 40 cents!
Unfortunately, the exploitation of employees by large corporations is simply profitable for them. On the surface, everything looks inconspicuous - a pleasant image of a company that is involved in various social initiatives, such as ecology, is created. However, there is no mention of the enormous exploitation that lies behind this image. A fashionable term used by large corporations is the so-called cost optimization, which (through various methods) bypasses employee rights. What does this optimization mean? This is nothing more than trying to squeeze as much energy and commitment from employees as possible, with minimal financial outlay. And this is nothing new - cost optimization has always existed and is embedded in the functioning of capitalism. In short - someone offers you a job, and someone else cashes it in, keeping the profit for themselves. The less he pays and the more work he does, the greater his profit.
The best solution is to simply not contribute to the development of the fast fashion movement. You should use the available resources - try to repair clothes instead of throwing them away, buying second-hand, or giving clothes to friends. However, let's try to use our wardrobe for as long as possible to respect the planet.
I hope that this material will trigger some reflection in you that will help you resist the constant temptations of big sales and constantly changing clothing collections.
Sources:
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