Rethinking Fashion
This document was uploaded by user and they confirmed that they have the permission to share it. If you are author or own the copyright of this book, please report to us by using this DMCA report form. Report DMCA
Overview
Download & View Rethinking Fashion as PDF for free.
More details
- Words: 4,191
- Pages: 21
Rethinking Fashion as if people and the planet actually matter
A discussion paper released by Freedom Clothing Project, the fashion thinkanddo tank
Joe Turner, MSc BSc (Hons) Director, Freedom Clothing Project Ltd Coventry, UK http://www.freedomclothingproject.org February 2009
Foreword by JohnPaul Flintoff 'I've been incredibly impressed by the practical work of the Freedom Clothing Project, and its clearsighted analysis of the problems associated with the global trade in clothing. The British public has (largely) woken up to the importance of local food, and this report may finally help to show that locally sourced clothing is no less important not only for the UK but for people everywhere.' JohnPaul Flintoff, The Sunday Times
Acknowledgements This report has been prepared by Freedom Clothing Project Ltd, a nonprofit cooperative. No payment has been offered or received to write it and the work has been entirely funded by Freedom Clothing Project Ltd. No criticism of individuals nor endorsement of organisations referenced should be assumed. We encourage others to contact us regarding the argument made here and to join the struggle to build a more sustainable clothing industry. Finally, we acknowledge the encouragement of JohnPaul Flintoff to complete this report, and the communities we have talked with, visited and worked with in Palestine, Egypt, India and the UK who have shaped our ideas. We accept the responsibility for factual errors and strongly advise readers to follow links and check our sources for themselves.
Introduction For many years, the global textile industry has been an enormous blot on the ethical landscape. The size and scale of it is hard for anyone to comprehend. Millions toil making clothing in unholy conditions for extremely low pay. Many more work the cotton fields, picking and processing the heavilysprayed cotton crop for a pittance. Once it has been used by our disposable British culture, most of this labourintensive product is turned into a waste problem in a landfill site. And it is truly a waste – a waste of millions of lives, a waste of resources to make and fuel to transport the finished products around the world and a toxic waste gift to future generations. In the UK, much has been made of the Organic and Fairtrade movements, with certain sectors of the textile industry racing to embrace the profits of being 'ethical' and 'green'. Whilst in some ways these are positive developments, in reality it translates into very slight ripples in the great ocean which is the global textile industry. However much we might try to hide from the reality, the system requires a large pool of poorly paid people to produce items in poor countries to feed our endless appetite for new clothing at prices we can afford. Fairtrade certainly makes a measurable income difference to people in a small part of the supply chain, but can never force meaningful changes to workers throughout the system because consumers would never pay for the real costs required. Often a major part of the attraction for the large brands is that they can sell the items at a premium which is out of proportion to the extra production costs involved. It also does nothing to address the wanton destructive force of the global textile industry. We fool ourselves into believing that a few extra pennies to the producer does anything more than paper over the structural problems that we would rather not think about.
We have to reinvent the process so it provides for our clothing needs in a sustainable future At some point we have to rethink fashion. We have to reinvent the process so that it provides for our clothing needs in a more sustainable future. In this paper, we will argue that there is an alternative which few have so far examined. We will further argue that the answers lie in front of us and that the moral imperative is within each of us and not in some distant forgettable land.
Fabric of world trade The economic implications of the global fashion industry Figure 1 – Global Exports
© Copyright 2006 SASI Group (University of Sheffield) and Mark Newman (University of Michigan) Figure 1 shows the worldmapper1 image of global fashion net exports where the territory size is related to the net value of exports of clothing in US$ using figures from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development statistics from 2005.
Fashion exports represent 7% of global international trade. 1 http://www.worldmapper.co.uk/display.php?selected=83# accessed 10 October 2008
Figure 2 – Global Imports
© Copyright 2006 SASI Group (University of Sheffield) and Mark Newman (University of Michigan). Figure 2 shows the worldmapper2 image of global fashion net imports where the territory size is related to the net value of imports of clothing in US$ using figures from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development statistics from 2005.
The UK imports 3.6% of the total world production of clothing These figures show that of clothing exports worth nearly US$450,000,000,000 1. About 18% went to North America, 6% to Western Europe and 4% to Japan. 2. The UK net imported 3.6% of the total worth US$16,000,000,000 What is clear from these figures is that most trade is in a certain direction – from the factories of Asia and towards the consumer markets of North America, Europe and Japan.
Figure 3: Global population
2 http://www.worldmapper.co.uk/display.php?selected=84# accessed 10 October 2008
© Copyright 2006 SASI Group (University of Sheffield) and Mark Newman (University of Michigan). Figure 3 shows the worldmapper3 image of population, where the territory size is related to the proportion of the world's population living there. When we compare Figure 3 with Figure 2, we see that the minority of people that live in the consumer countries (less than 15% of the total) are buying a disproportionate amount of global clothing exports. Some of the exporter countries are highly dependent on textile exports. For example 85% of Bangladeshi exports are said to be textiles, in a country where half of the population – 70 million people – live on less than $1 a day4.
85% of Bangladeshi exports are textiles, in a country where 70 million people live on less than $1 a day
3 http://www.worldmapper.co.uk/display.php?selected=2 accessed 10 October 2008 4 BBC report 2005 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4336085.stm accessed 10 October 2008
Trashion The messy industry of waste clothing collection and export
photo used with permission credit: © Copyright Joe Fuller
According to the UK Government5, the UK consumes around 2 million tonnes of textiles per year. At the end of its use, 1.52 million tonnes are disposed of. 63% of that ends up in landfill, 16% is recovered and the other 21% is unaccounted for. Charity shops6 say that they receive 250,000 tonnes of textiles per year which they either sell themselves or pass on to the textile merchants. The merchants sort and bale garments for reuse into other products or export, which in 2003 amounted to 207,000 tonnes.
2 million tonnes of clothing waste per year, 63% goes to landfill A detailed report by in 2005 by Oxfam7, a major player in the second hand export market, examined the impact of second hand clothing (SHC) on developing countries. It found that as a whole, more than 26% by value of all imports to countries in SubSaharan Africa were 5 DEFRA, 2007 http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/consumerprod/pdf/clothingbriefingDec07.pdf accessed 10 October 2008 6 Association of Charity Shops http://www.charityshops.org.uk/recycling.html accessed 10 October 2008 7 Oxfam, 2005 http://www.oxfam.org.uk/resources/policy/trade/downloads/research_shc.pdf accessed 10 October 2008
SHC in 2003. In Kenya, Cameroon, Rwanda, Niger and the Central African Republic more than 80% by value of all imports were SHC. 95% of all Ghanans wear SHC and it represents a staggering 60% of all clothing purchases. Whilst Oxfam recognised that there were likely local economic impacts from the cheap imports, they argued that the trade in SHC was likely to generate some jobs and SHC would only be replaced by other cheap imports if the trade stopped. A study of the impact of SHC in Kenya8 observed that there were 1.5 million people working in clothing reclamation worldwide with 250,000 in Europe. However, as Table 1 shows, the majority of the profit for sale of SHC (94.7%) remains in the UK. Table 1 – profits through the supply chain of SHC from UK grader (textile merchant) to Kenyan retailer Enterprise
Net profit per month (£)
Profit per month (%)
UK Grader
140,000
94.7
Importer
4400
3.0
Wholesaler
3298
2.2
Retailer
137
0.1
Total
147,835
100
Source: Field et al (2007) page 30 So, it is clear that UK SHC often has a useful secondlife as clothing for people in countries where they cannot afford anything else. It provides jobs and some income from something that would otherwise be a waste product. Having said that, not much of the money reaches the retailer selling the clothing and only a small proportion of all the waste produced is reused. Most still goes to landfill.
8 Field, S et al (2007). Who Benefits From the SecondHand Clothing Trade?: The Case of Kenya: Full Research Report ESRC End of Award Report, ESRC
Toxic threads Damaging the planet, one garment at a time
photo used with permission credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/Patti
As the Australian company Instyle point out9, there are negative environmental problems associated with many commonly used materials in clothing. Most obvious are the manmade synthetic fibres, which nearly always originate from petroleum. In a changed climate future, it is hard to see how we will be able to justify the continuation of such processes and the massive burden of disposal it produces, not to mention the energy demands and toxic emissions caused by the processing. Of the others, cotton is the most used material. Whilst some argue that conventional cotton is a highly sustainable crop10, this seems to be mainly justified by the fact that it is a natural rather than a synthetic material.
9 Instyle accessed 9 February 2009 http://www.instyle.com.au/impact_of_textiles/Environmental%20Impact%20of %20Fibres%20%20Print%20Version.pdf 10 Cotton Inc accessed 9 February 2009 http://www.cottoninc.com/sustainability/USCottonMostSustainableCotton/
According to the Deadly Chemicals in Cotton11 report, issued in 2007 by the Pesticide Action Network UK and the Environmental Justice Foundation, cotton production results in • • • •
16% of global use of insecticides, more than is applied to any other crop Pesticide usage worth $US2 billion every year Illness and death to workers caused by the use of highly toxic chemicals on the crop. Pollution to the environment, particularly in places such as Uzbekistan where chemicals are used which are banned elsewhere.
It is a pretty damning catalogue of environmental and social damage unleashed on the farmers, 99% of whom live in developing countries.
16% of insecticides used worldwide are sprayed on the cotton crop As if that is not bad enough, the processing of the cotton into clothing is a longwinded process which causes further pollution12 and damage to human health. For these reasons, the increasing demand for organic cotton by discerning consumers is obviously welcome and far better than conventional cotton. But it still needs to be grown and processed and transported. Whilst global production is increasing all the time, the biggest producer of organic cotton is Turkey and the total crop is less than 0.2% of the global cotton crop. Also, clothing production requires huge amounts of water13 to grow the crops and to process the fibres.
11 Pesticide Action Network 2007 http://www.panuk.org/Projects/Cotton/Resources/downloads/deadly.htm 12 Environmental Health Perspectives 2007 http://www.ehponline.org/members/2007/1159/focus.html 13 BBC Thread accessed 9 February 2009 http://www.bbc.co.uk/thread/features/howdirty/
Hung out to dry How global fashion hurts workers in the UK
photo used with permission credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/lusi
According to the UK government14, in 2005 the UK clothing retail sector represented 5% of all expenditure on consumer items with £21 billion spent on womenswear, £10 billion on menswear and £6.7 billion on childrenswear. UK designers sold £750 million of designer products, two thirds of which were exported. Whilst the sector is expanding, the amount of clothing produced locally in the UK is in steep decline with many established brands going out of business and others moving production offshore. Those that continue with British manufacturing have often significantly downsized and moved into more exclusive markets. This has led to an inevitable reduction in staff and production. Others have been able to sell the fact that they are close to the market and rapidly produce very low quality garments for low cost retail such as market stalls. One group which has been particularly affected by the decline has been the homeworkers. These are primarily women who cannot work ordinary factory hours so complete work on a piecerate basis (ie they are paid for each completed garment). These often are not classed as employees, so do not have the rights associated with employment and are often pressurised into working long hours for little pay15.
14 Prime Minister's Office, 2006 http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page10308 accessed 10 October 2008 15 For further resources on homeworking, see the National Group on Homeworking http://www.ngh.org.uk
According to a recent survey by the National Group on Homeworking16, the numbers of people working in this way are likely to be more than the 3.1 million people suggested by the Office for National Statistics Labour Force Survey in 2005, since many will not admit to working at home for fear of losing their work. NGH's survey found that 23% of respondents were still sewing at home, even though this was far less than a similar survey found in 1994. There are many reports of low wages, poor conditions and irregular work. Workers are reluctant to complain about conditions as the money they receive is an important part of the family income which they do not want to lose. Hence there are thousands of people working in an ignored and shadowy underground economy. Unfortunately the NGH closed during the writing of this report, leaving some of the most vulnerable, totally ununionised, British workers entirely alone and without an advocate.
16 Subject to Status, An investigation into the working lives of homeworkers in the UK 2007 NGH http://www.ngh.org.uk/resourcefiles/Subject_to_Status1195636482.pdf
End of Line A sad litany of wasted lives and polluted environment
photo used with permission credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/Splenetic
The consequences of this massive international trade include: •
An allconsuming monster of a supply chain causing • Millions of poorly paid factory workers to toil in disgusting conditions • Damage to the environment by overspraying of the cotton crop with agrochemicals • A massive consumption of fuel for transportation
•
A huge waste clothing problem leading to • Millions of people in subsaharan Africa who depend on waste clothing from the UK • A disposal problem in the UK • Destruction of local production in favour of imports of Second Hand Clothing
•
The destruction of our local clothing industry which leads to • Increasing unemployment of workers in the sector • Adverse affects on some of the most vulnerable workers in the UK including the hidden homeworkers
The truth is that we cannot afford this trade – environmentally, socially, morally or economically.
Tailored solutions Rethinking fashion – dressing for a better world
photo used with permission credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/duchesssa
At the end of this document we suggest resources that will enable readers to tackle the problems outlined in this report. These fall within one or more of these concepts:
Swap, mend, make do and Do It Yourself Whilst this sounds like a very old fashioned idea, and evokes unpleasant echoes of wartime frugality, reducing the waste clothing mountain is good for everyone. Given that large amounts of clothing are thrown away without even being worn17 there is huge potential for swapping of unused garments lurking in the back of wardrobes. The next stage on from this is the next guerilla movement to emerge from USAmerica. A growing community of people are arming themselves with a few skills, buying a cheap sewing machine and Doing It Themselves. Imagine if there was a free sewing machine on every street or in every house. Imagine what would happen if people stopped buying clothes when they needed something new, and instead bought fabric and made themselves an outfit. 17 See http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/ethicallivingblog/2009/jan/28/clotheslandfillglobalcoolco2 emissions
Handmade and local production Why not buy local clothing from local producers instead of from the big brands? Why not visit factories or farmers in the UK and see for yourself where the clothing is produced? From a standing start a few years ago, Farmers Markets and Farm Shops now cover much of the country selling locally produced food. There is no reason why something similar could not also occur with clothing – safeguarding local craftspeople and jobs and enabling consumers to have a much closer relationship with the people who are involved in the manufacturing of the things they wear. Given the high costs of importing and retailing clothing, there is no real reason why this need be more expensive than middle range fashion. We would like to see an increase in local clothing markets, cooperatives of small scale producers and homeworkers and a localproduction movement similar to the local food movement. We would like to see charity shops starting to support small struggling makerproducers.
Alternative fabrics and materials Not so long ago we were dependent on materials we could produce on our own land. We can still produce wool, leather and flax. There are other materials we could use if we really wanted to – for example nettles, beech and hemp have all been developed as new fibres and could all be produced in the UK.
Recycled fashion We could chose to view the waste clothing mountain as a resource rather than as a problem. We do not actually need to import any more clothing. We could, at a push, reuse the clothing we throw or send away. If they are not appropriate to be reused, we could treat the material as an extremely cheap fabric which could be turned into something else more interesting and valuable. Some within the movement describe this as 'upcycling'. With some skills and imagination, there is an almost unlimited amount of new clothing that could be created from the waste materials. Given these materials are effectively free – or are extremely cheap – an increase in purchases of clothing made from locally sourced waste materials has the potential to create or protect thousands of jobs, to retain and develop valuable skills, to retain value within our own economy and to bring back creativity into British clothing manufacturing. The only downside is that there is little obvious benefit to the large fashion multinationals who currently run the system. Poetic justice, one might think.
Unpicking ethical fashion Continuing the debate The conclusions of this discussion document may cause some heat within Ethical, Organic and Fairtrade Fashion circles. In anticipation of some of the points, we offer these partial rebuffs and invite readers to engage with us in debate about these issues.
Why are you picking on the Second Hand Clothing industry? This offers a valuable service to people around the world who cannot afford anything else. We are not attempting to suggest that the Second Hand Clothing industry is all bad nor that there is zero value in exporting waste clothing, and we do not suggest that SHC exporters are profiteering – they appear to us to be far more honourable than much of the rest of the textile industry. However, we do feel that the SHC industry is indicative of a culture which globally considers certain people as being worthy recipients of our castoffs. Rather than being scavengers of our waste, it would be better if they could support their own clothing industry, produce their own local clothes and generate their own local jobs. We should not attempt to justify a hugely wasteful industry by suggesting that the waste is needed so we can throw it at poor people.
What you are suggesting would decimate my ethical/fairtrade/organic project in a poor country. You would destroy a vulnerable community! First, we understand the difficulties of working with vulnerable communities in developing countries and have personal contacts in many countries around the world. We believe that international trade is a very difficult and unstable thing to encourage any vulnerable community to get involved in. A large proportion of small fairtrade retailers in the UK go out of business each year. Of the others, how many are dependent on large amounts of volunteer labour or are effectively run as a nonprofit? In an economic situation where Sterling has recently devalued rapidly against other international currencies, it is going to become even more difficult to import and sell Fairtrade products from small communities. Whereas those who are involved in supplying larger brands with large volumes of fairtrade cotton are going to be under incredible pressure to reduce costs. Contracts agreed last year, if they were in Dollars or Euros are going to be worth much less.
And if the brands are not able to reduce the costs associated with the cotton, they will try to reduce them elsewhere in the supply chain, which could negatively impact those who work in the clothing factories. Ultimately, if you look at the amount of effort required to import, market and retail Fairtrade products and compare it to the tiny fraction of the sale price that the farmer receives it is legitimate to question whether it is all worth it. The prevailing wisdom of the last few decades has been that “Trade is better than Aid” but maybe we were wrong. Maybe we would have been better investing funds to support farmers accessing more local markets, helping them manufacture products that did not need to be sent around the world. We are not willingly engaged in the destruction of any vulnerable community. The economic situation is doing a good job of that by itself. Maybe we need to go back to the idea of investing our excess wealth in projects that enable poor people to develop themselves without assuming this can only be done with international trade. Regarding organic cotton, the total crop is said to be less than 0.2% of the total cotton crop and the majority of that is grown in Turkey – which is not a developing country but has its own environmental and social problems. We believe in the notion that the overspraying of the cotton crop is a disgrace, but the solution is not to produce even more cotton which needs to be shipped to us, but to make better use of the underused skills and waste materials we already have.
Self sufficiency is a myth, international trade is not going to go away. Self sufficiency is clearly not a myth as we were forced to rely largely on our own resources in wartime. These are obviously different times, but who is to say to what extent we could be self sufficient if we really needed to? International trade is not going to disappear overnight, but neither is it as solid as we might think. We do not need to buy local food, but many of us would argue that it has many advantages. We think exactly the same logic applies to clothing.
New models for new times Being the change we want to see in the fashion industry
photo used with permission credit: © Copyright Joe Fuller
In line with our commitment to both alternative thinking and action, Freedom Clothing Project has recently been attempting to enact the change that we want to see in the fashion industry. Whilst our efforts have been faltering and small, we hope others will be encouraged to pick up the baton, take on the challenge and get involved in the movement. First, in line with wanting to encourage the reuse of waste clothing, we set up a series of competitions. We send out identical pieces of clothing and participants are able to remake them into something more exciting. We then look to use the ideas in a line of clothing we are producing with local British homeworkers. Our first competition was titled The Vvamp and was based around identical overstock v neck tshirts. We sent out several hundred vnecks and received back a wide variety of tops, several bags, a necklace, and a cushion! The winner was Charlotte Brooks who won a cash prize. We will be reproducing Charlotte's design along with several others inspired by vvamp and will be paying a commission from the sales to the designers. For more information about the vvamp, see here: http://www.vvamp.info We also realised that whilst there were a number of designermakers across the country, there were few recognised places to go to view and buy remade/recycled/upcycled clothing and accessories.
We therefore started a series of Remade Fashion Fairs, the first at the Custard Factory which is an arts venue in central Birmingham. More information here: http://www.remadefashionfair.info We hope to develop both of these models in the future.
Appendix Useful links Swap, mend, make do and Do It Yourself http://swaporamarama.org/
http://www.ehow.com/
http://www.bigwardrobe.com/
http://diystyle.net/
http://www.threadbanger.com
http://www.bestitched.com
http://www.instructables.com/
http://blog.makezine.com/
http://craftzine.com/
http://www.themakelounge.com/
http://diyfashion.about.com/
Handmade and local production http://www.etsy.com
http://www.conkershoes.com
http://www.folksy.com
http://www.hoodjeans.co.uk/
http://www.britishwool.com/
http://www.lochcarronknitwear.com/
http://www.greatbritishyarns.co.uk/
http://www.perilla.co.uk/
http://www.oldtown.co.uk/
Alternative fabrics and materials http://www.hempfabric.co.uk/ http://www.nettles.org.uk/ http://www.modal.at/
Recycled fashion http://magsbags.moonfruit.com/
http://www.wardrobesurgeon.com/
http://www.pouchbags.co.uk/
http://paperfairies.moonfruit.com/
http://www.ormeandhall.com/
http://www.kezbirdie.etsy.com/
http://www.nikiguy.co.uk/
http://www.daddysoldshirt.co.uk/
http://www.pennydog.co.uk/
http://www.dirtypretty.co.uk/
http://www.helenwoodward.co.uk/
http://www.stabo.co.uk/
http://www.trashblooms.com/
http://www.sisu.com/
http://www.goodone.co.uk/
http://www.recycleyourjeans.com/
http://www.hettyrose.co.uk/
http://www.thallarsen.com/
http://emmeline4re.co.uk/
http://www.junkshopuk.com/
http://www.extinctdesign.co.uk/
http://www.redmutha.com/
http://www.kirstykirkpatrick.com/
http://www.peetleather.com/
http://www.thegreendoor.co.uk/ http://recollect.net/ http://frillybylily.co.uk/
A discussion paper released by Freedom Clothing Project, the fashion thinkanddo tank
Joe Turner, MSc BSc (Hons) Director, Freedom Clothing Project Ltd Coventry, UK http://www.freedomclothingproject.org February 2009
Foreword by JohnPaul Flintoff 'I've been incredibly impressed by the practical work of the Freedom Clothing Project, and its clearsighted analysis of the problems associated with the global trade in clothing. The British public has (largely) woken up to the importance of local food, and this report may finally help to show that locally sourced clothing is no less important not only for the UK but for people everywhere.' JohnPaul Flintoff, The Sunday Times
Acknowledgements This report has been prepared by Freedom Clothing Project Ltd, a nonprofit cooperative. No payment has been offered or received to write it and the work has been entirely funded by Freedom Clothing Project Ltd. No criticism of individuals nor endorsement of organisations referenced should be assumed. We encourage others to contact us regarding the argument made here and to join the struggle to build a more sustainable clothing industry. Finally, we acknowledge the encouragement of JohnPaul Flintoff to complete this report, and the communities we have talked with, visited and worked with in Palestine, Egypt, India and the UK who have shaped our ideas. We accept the responsibility for factual errors and strongly advise readers to follow links and check our sources for themselves.
Introduction For many years, the global textile industry has been an enormous blot on the ethical landscape. The size and scale of it is hard for anyone to comprehend. Millions toil making clothing in unholy conditions for extremely low pay. Many more work the cotton fields, picking and processing the heavilysprayed cotton crop for a pittance. Once it has been used by our disposable British culture, most of this labourintensive product is turned into a waste problem in a landfill site. And it is truly a waste – a waste of millions of lives, a waste of resources to make and fuel to transport the finished products around the world and a toxic waste gift to future generations. In the UK, much has been made of the Organic and Fairtrade movements, with certain sectors of the textile industry racing to embrace the profits of being 'ethical' and 'green'. Whilst in some ways these are positive developments, in reality it translates into very slight ripples in the great ocean which is the global textile industry. However much we might try to hide from the reality, the system requires a large pool of poorly paid people to produce items in poor countries to feed our endless appetite for new clothing at prices we can afford. Fairtrade certainly makes a measurable income difference to people in a small part of the supply chain, but can never force meaningful changes to workers throughout the system because consumers would never pay for the real costs required. Often a major part of the attraction for the large brands is that they can sell the items at a premium which is out of proportion to the extra production costs involved. It also does nothing to address the wanton destructive force of the global textile industry. We fool ourselves into believing that a few extra pennies to the producer does anything more than paper over the structural problems that we would rather not think about.
We have to reinvent the process so it provides for our clothing needs in a sustainable future At some point we have to rethink fashion. We have to reinvent the process so that it provides for our clothing needs in a more sustainable future. In this paper, we will argue that there is an alternative which few have so far examined. We will further argue that the answers lie in front of us and that the moral imperative is within each of us and not in some distant forgettable land.
Fabric of world trade The economic implications of the global fashion industry Figure 1 – Global Exports
© Copyright 2006 SASI Group (University of Sheffield) and Mark Newman (University of Michigan) Figure 1 shows the worldmapper1 image of global fashion net exports where the territory size is related to the net value of exports of clothing in US$ using figures from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development statistics from 2005.
Fashion exports represent 7% of global international trade. 1 http://www.worldmapper.co.uk/display.php?selected=83# accessed 10 October 2008
Figure 2 – Global Imports
© Copyright 2006 SASI Group (University of Sheffield) and Mark Newman (University of Michigan). Figure 2 shows the worldmapper2 image of global fashion net imports where the territory size is related to the net value of imports of clothing in US$ using figures from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development statistics from 2005.
The UK imports 3.6% of the total world production of clothing These figures show that of clothing exports worth nearly US$450,000,000,000 1. About 18% went to North America, 6% to Western Europe and 4% to Japan. 2. The UK net imported 3.6% of the total worth US$16,000,000,000 What is clear from these figures is that most trade is in a certain direction – from the factories of Asia and towards the consumer markets of North America, Europe and Japan.
Figure 3: Global population
2 http://www.worldmapper.co.uk/display.php?selected=84# accessed 10 October 2008
© Copyright 2006 SASI Group (University of Sheffield) and Mark Newman (University of Michigan). Figure 3 shows the worldmapper3 image of population, where the territory size is related to the proportion of the world's population living there. When we compare Figure 3 with Figure 2, we see that the minority of people that live in the consumer countries (less than 15% of the total) are buying a disproportionate amount of global clothing exports. Some of the exporter countries are highly dependent on textile exports. For example 85% of Bangladeshi exports are said to be textiles, in a country where half of the population – 70 million people – live on less than $1 a day4.
85% of Bangladeshi exports are textiles, in a country where 70 million people live on less than $1 a day
3 http://www.worldmapper.co.uk/display.php?selected=2 accessed 10 October 2008 4 BBC report 2005 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4336085.stm accessed 10 October 2008
Trashion The messy industry of waste clothing collection and export
photo used with permission credit: © Copyright Joe Fuller
According to the UK Government5, the UK consumes around 2 million tonnes of textiles per year. At the end of its use, 1.52 million tonnes are disposed of. 63% of that ends up in landfill, 16% is recovered and the other 21% is unaccounted for. Charity shops6 say that they receive 250,000 tonnes of textiles per year which they either sell themselves or pass on to the textile merchants. The merchants sort and bale garments for reuse into other products or export, which in 2003 amounted to 207,000 tonnes.
2 million tonnes of clothing waste per year, 63% goes to landfill A detailed report by in 2005 by Oxfam7, a major player in the second hand export market, examined the impact of second hand clothing (SHC) on developing countries. It found that as a whole, more than 26% by value of all imports to countries in SubSaharan Africa were 5 DEFRA, 2007 http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/consumerprod/pdf/clothingbriefingDec07.pdf accessed 10 October 2008 6 Association of Charity Shops http://www.charityshops.org.uk/recycling.html accessed 10 October 2008 7 Oxfam, 2005 http://www.oxfam.org.uk/resources/policy/trade/downloads/research_shc.pdf accessed 10 October 2008
SHC in 2003. In Kenya, Cameroon, Rwanda, Niger and the Central African Republic more than 80% by value of all imports were SHC. 95% of all Ghanans wear SHC and it represents a staggering 60% of all clothing purchases. Whilst Oxfam recognised that there were likely local economic impacts from the cheap imports, they argued that the trade in SHC was likely to generate some jobs and SHC would only be replaced by other cheap imports if the trade stopped. A study of the impact of SHC in Kenya8 observed that there were 1.5 million people working in clothing reclamation worldwide with 250,000 in Europe. However, as Table 1 shows, the majority of the profit for sale of SHC (94.7%) remains in the UK. Table 1 – profits through the supply chain of SHC from UK grader (textile merchant) to Kenyan retailer Enterprise
Net profit per month (£)
Profit per month (%)
UK Grader
140,000
94.7
Importer
4400
3.0
Wholesaler
3298
2.2
Retailer
137
0.1
Total
147,835
100
Source: Field et al (2007) page 30 So, it is clear that UK SHC often has a useful secondlife as clothing for people in countries where they cannot afford anything else. It provides jobs and some income from something that would otherwise be a waste product. Having said that, not much of the money reaches the retailer selling the clothing and only a small proportion of all the waste produced is reused. Most still goes to landfill.
8 Field, S et al (2007). Who Benefits From the SecondHand Clothing Trade?: The Case of Kenya: Full Research Report ESRC End of Award Report, ESRC
Toxic threads Damaging the planet, one garment at a time
photo used with permission credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/Patti
As the Australian company Instyle point out9, there are negative environmental problems associated with many commonly used materials in clothing. Most obvious are the manmade synthetic fibres, which nearly always originate from petroleum. In a changed climate future, it is hard to see how we will be able to justify the continuation of such processes and the massive burden of disposal it produces, not to mention the energy demands and toxic emissions caused by the processing. Of the others, cotton is the most used material. Whilst some argue that conventional cotton is a highly sustainable crop10, this seems to be mainly justified by the fact that it is a natural rather than a synthetic material.
9 Instyle accessed 9 February 2009 http://www.instyle.com.au/impact_of_textiles/Environmental%20Impact%20of %20Fibres%20%20Print%20Version.pdf 10 Cotton Inc accessed 9 February 2009 http://www.cottoninc.com/sustainability/USCottonMostSustainableCotton/
According to the Deadly Chemicals in Cotton11 report, issued in 2007 by the Pesticide Action Network UK and the Environmental Justice Foundation, cotton production results in • • • •
16% of global use of insecticides, more than is applied to any other crop Pesticide usage worth $US2 billion every year Illness and death to workers caused by the use of highly toxic chemicals on the crop. Pollution to the environment, particularly in places such as Uzbekistan where chemicals are used which are banned elsewhere.
It is a pretty damning catalogue of environmental and social damage unleashed on the farmers, 99% of whom live in developing countries.
16% of insecticides used worldwide are sprayed on the cotton crop As if that is not bad enough, the processing of the cotton into clothing is a longwinded process which causes further pollution12 and damage to human health. For these reasons, the increasing demand for organic cotton by discerning consumers is obviously welcome and far better than conventional cotton. But it still needs to be grown and processed and transported. Whilst global production is increasing all the time, the biggest producer of organic cotton is Turkey and the total crop is less than 0.2% of the global cotton crop. Also, clothing production requires huge amounts of water13 to grow the crops and to process the fibres.
11 Pesticide Action Network 2007 http://www.panuk.org/Projects/Cotton/Resources/downloads/deadly.htm 12 Environmental Health Perspectives 2007 http://www.ehponline.org/members/2007/1159/focus.html 13 BBC Thread accessed 9 February 2009 http://www.bbc.co.uk/thread/features/howdirty/
Hung out to dry How global fashion hurts workers in the UK
photo used with permission credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/lusi
According to the UK government14, in 2005 the UK clothing retail sector represented 5% of all expenditure on consumer items with £21 billion spent on womenswear, £10 billion on menswear and £6.7 billion on childrenswear. UK designers sold £750 million of designer products, two thirds of which were exported. Whilst the sector is expanding, the amount of clothing produced locally in the UK is in steep decline with many established brands going out of business and others moving production offshore. Those that continue with British manufacturing have often significantly downsized and moved into more exclusive markets. This has led to an inevitable reduction in staff and production. Others have been able to sell the fact that they are close to the market and rapidly produce very low quality garments for low cost retail such as market stalls. One group which has been particularly affected by the decline has been the homeworkers. These are primarily women who cannot work ordinary factory hours so complete work on a piecerate basis (ie they are paid for each completed garment). These often are not classed as employees, so do not have the rights associated with employment and are often pressurised into working long hours for little pay15.
14 Prime Minister's Office, 2006 http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page10308 accessed 10 October 2008 15 For further resources on homeworking, see the National Group on Homeworking http://www.ngh.org.uk
According to a recent survey by the National Group on Homeworking16, the numbers of people working in this way are likely to be more than the 3.1 million people suggested by the Office for National Statistics Labour Force Survey in 2005, since many will not admit to working at home for fear of losing their work. NGH's survey found that 23% of respondents were still sewing at home, even though this was far less than a similar survey found in 1994. There are many reports of low wages, poor conditions and irregular work. Workers are reluctant to complain about conditions as the money they receive is an important part of the family income which they do not want to lose. Hence there are thousands of people working in an ignored and shadowy underground economy. Unfortunately the NGH closed during the writing of this report, leaving some of the most vulnerable, totally ununionised, British workers entirely alone and without an advocate.
16 Subject to Status, An investigation into the working lives of homeworkers in the UK 2007 NGH http://www.ngh.org.uk/resourcefiles/Subject_to_Status1195636482.pdf
End of Line A sad litany of wasted lives and polluted environment
photo used with permission credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/Splenetic
The consequences of this massive international trade include: •
An allconsuming monster of a supply chain causing • Millions of poorly paid factory workers to toil in disgusting conditions • Damage to the environment by overspraying of the cotton crop with agrochemicals • A massive consumption of fuel for transportation
•
A huge waste clothing problem leading to • Millions of people in subsaharan Africa who depend on waste clothing from the UK • A disposal problem in the UK • Destruction of local production in favour of imports of Second Hand Clothing
•
The destruction of our local clothing industry which leads to • Increasing unemployment of workers in the sector • Adverse affects on some of the most vulnerable workers in the UK including the hidden homeworkers
The truth is that we cannot afford this trade – environmentally, socially, morally or economically.
Tailored solutions Rethinking fashion – dressing for a better world
photo used with permission credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/duchesssa
At the end of this document we suggest resources that will enable readers to tackle the problems outlined in this report. These fall within one or more of these concepts:
Swap, mend, make do and Do It Yourself Whilst this sounds like a very old fashioned idea, and evokes unpleasant echoes of wartime frugality, reducing the waste clothing mountain is good for everyone. Given that large amounts of clothing are thrown away without even being worn17 there is huge potential for swapping of unused garments lurking in the back of wardrobes. The next stage on from this is the next guerilla movement to emerge from USAmerica. A growing community of people are arming themselves with a few skills, buying a cheap sewing machine and Doing It Themselves. Imagine if there was a free sewing machine on every street or in every house. Imagine what would happen if people stopped buying clothes when they needed something new, and instead bought fabric and made themselves an outfit. 17 See http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/ethicallivingblog/2009/jan/28/clotheslandfillglobalcoolco2 emissions
Handmade and local production Why not buy local clothing from local producers instead of from the big brands? Why not visit factories or farmers in the UK and see for yourself where the clothing is produced? From a standing start a few years ago, Farmers Markets and Farm Shops now cover much of the country selling locally produced food. There is no reason why something similar could not also occur with clothing – safeguarding local craftspeople and jobs and enabling consumers to have a much closer relationship with the people who are involved in the manufacturing of the things they wear. Given the high costs of importing and retailing clothing, there is no real reason why this need be more expensive than middle range fashion. We would like to see an increase in local clothing markets, cooperatives of small scale producers and homeworkers and a localproduction movement similar to the local food movement. We would like to see charity shops starting to support small struggling makerproducers.
Alternative fabrics and materials Not so long ago we were dependent on materials we could produce on our own land. We can still produce wool, leather and flax. There are other materials we could use if we really wanted to – for example nettles, beech and hemp have all been developed as new fibres and could all be produced in the UK.
Recycled fashion We could chose to view the waste clothing mountain as a resource rather than as a problem. We do not actually need to import any more clothing. We could, at a push, reuse the clothing we throw or send away. If they are not appropriate to be reused, we could treat the material as an extremely cheap fabric which could be turned into something else more interesting and valuable. Some within the movement describe this as 'upcycling'. With some skills and imagination, there is an almost unlimited amount of new clothing that could be created from the waste materials. Given these materials are effectively free – or are extremely cheap – an increase in purchases of clothing made from locally sourced waste materials has the potential to create or protect thousands of jobs, to retain and develop valuable skills, to retain value within our own economy and to bring back creativity into British clothing manufacturing. The only downside is that there is little obvious benefit to the large fashion multinationals who currently run the system. Poetic justice, one might think.
Unpicking ethical fashion Continuing the debate The conclusions of this discussion document may cause some heat within Ethical, Organic and Fairtrade Fashion circles. In anticipation of some of the points, we offer these partial rebuffs and invite readers to engage with us in debate about these issues.
Why are you picking on the Second Hand Clothing industry? This offers a valuable service to people around the world who cannot afford anything else. We are not attempting to suggest that the Second Hand Clothing industry is all bad nor that there is zero value in exporting waste clothing, and we do not suggest that SHC exporters are profiteering – they appear to us to be far more honourable than much of the rest of the textile industry. However, we do feel that the SHC industry is indicative of a culture which globally considers certain people as being worthy recipients of our castoffs. Rather than being scavengers of our waste, it would be better if they could support their own clothing industry, produce their own local clothes and generate their own local jobs. We should not attempt to justify a hugely wasteful industry by suggesting that the waste is needed so we can throw it at poor people.
What you are suggesting would decimate my ethical/fairtrade/organic project in a poor country. You would destroy a vulnerable community! First, we understand the difficulties of working with vulnerable communities in developing countries and have personal contacts in many countries around the world. We believe that international trade is a very difficult and unstable thing to encourage any vulnerable community to get involved in. A large proportion of small fairtrade retailers in the UK go out of business each year. Of the others, how many are dependent on large amounts of volunteer labour or are effectively run as a nonprofit? In an economic situation where Sterling has recently devalued rapidly against other international currencies, it is going to become even more difficult to import and sell Fairtrade products from small communities. Whereas those who are involved in supplying larger brands with large volumes of fairtrade cotton are going to be under incredible pressure to reduce costs. Contracts agreed last year, if they were in Dollars or Euros are going to be worth much less.
And if the brands are not able to reduce the costs associated with the cotton, they will try to reduce them elsewhere in the supply chain, which could negatively impact those who work in the clothing factories. Ultimately, if you look at the amount of effort required to import, market and retail Fairtrade products and compare it to the tiny fraction of the sale price that the farmer receives it is legitimate to question whether it is all worth it. The prevailing wisdom of the last few decades has been that “Trade is better than Aid” but maybe we were wrong. Maybe we would have been better investing funds to support farmers accessing more local markets, helping them manufacture products that did not need to be sent around the world. We are not willingly engaged in the destruction of any vulnerable community. The economic situation is doing a good job of that by itself. Maybe we need to go back to the idea of investing our excess wealth in projects that enable poor people to develop themselves without assuming this can only be done with international trade. Regarding organic cotton, the total crop is said to be less than 0.2% of the total cotton crop and the majority of that is grown in Turkey – which is not a developing country but has its own environmental and social problems. We believe in the notion that the overspraying of the cotton crop is a disgrace, but the solution is not to produce even more cotton which needs to be shipped to us, but to make better use of the underused skills and waste materials we already have.
Self sufficiency is a myth, international trade is not going to go away. Self sufficiency is clearly not a myth as we were forced to rely largely on our own resources in wartime. These are obviously different times, but who is to say to what extent we could be self sufficient if we really needed to? International trade is not going to disappear overnight, but neither is it as solid as we might think. We do not need to buy local food, but many of us would argue that it has many advantages. We think exactly the same logic applies to clothing.
New models for new times Being the change we want to see in the fashion industry
photo used with permission credit: © Copyright Joe Fuller
In line with our commitment to both alternative thinking and action, Freedom Clothing Project has recently been attempting to enact the change that we want to see in the fashion industry. Whilst our efforts have been faltering and small, we hope others will be encouraged to pick up the baton, take on the challenge and get involved in the movement. First, in line with wanting to encourage the reuse of waste clothing, we set up a series of competitions. We send out identical pieces of clothing and participants are able to remake them into something more exciting. We then look to use the ideas in a line of clothing we are producing with local British homeworkers. Our first competition was titled The Vvamp and was based around identical overstock v neck tshirts. We sent out several hundred vnecks and received back a wide variety of tops, several bags, a necklace, and a cushion! The winner was Charlotte Brooks who won a cash prize. We will be reproducing Charlotte's design along with several others inspired by vvamp and will be paying a commission from the sales to the designers. For more information about the vvamp, see here: http://www.vvamp.info We also realised that whilst there were a number of designermakers across the country, there were few recognised places to go to view and buy remade/recycled/upcycled clothing and accessories.
We therefore started a series of Remade Fashion Fairs, the first at the Custard Factory which is an arts venue in central Birmingham. More information here: http://www.remadefashionfair.info We hope to develop both of these models in the future.
Appendix Useful links Swap, mend, make do and Do It Yourself http://swaporamarama.org/
http://www.ehow.com/
http://www.bigwardrobe.com/
http://diystyle.net/
http://www.threadbanger.com
http://www.bestitched.com
http://www.instructables.com/
http://blog.makezine.com/
http://craftzine.com/
http://www.themakelounge.com/
http://diyfashion.about.com/
Handmade and local production http://www.etsy.com
http://www.conkershoes.com
http://www.folksy.com
http://www.hoodjeans.co.uk/
http://www.britishwool.com/
http://www.lochcarronknitwear.com/
http://www.greatbritishyarns.co.uk/
http://www.perilla.co.uk/
http://www.oldtown.co.uk/
Alternative fabrics and materials http://www.hempfabric.co.uk/ http://www.nettles.org.uk/ http://www.modal.at/
Recycled fashion http://magsbags.moonfruit.com/
http://www.wardrobesurgeon.com/
http://www.pouchbags.co.uk/
http://paperfairies.moonfruit.com/
http://www.ormeandhall.com/
http://www.kezbirdie.etsy.com/
http://www.nikiguy.co.uk/
http://www.daddysoldshirt.co.uk/
http://www.pennydog.co.uk/
http://www.dirtypretty.co.uk/
http://www.helenwoodward.co.uk/
http://www.stabo.co.uk/
http://www.trashblooms.com/
http://www.sisu.com/
http://www.goodone.co.uk/
http://www.recycleyourjeans.com/
http://www.hettyrose.co.uk/
http://www.thallarsen.com/
http://emmeline4re.co.uk/
http://www.junkshopuk.com/
http://www.extinctdesign.co.uk/
http://www.redmutha.com/
http://www.kirstykirkpatrick.com/
http://www.peetleather.com/
http://www.thegreendoor.co.uk/ http://recollect.net/ http://frillybylily.co.uk/
Related Documents
Rethinking Fashion
December 2019 12
Fashion
November 2019 59
Fashion
November 2019 62
Fashion
May 2020 50
Fashion
November 2019 57