What is Fashion?
We think of fashion, we have in mind the clothing industry, luxury, cosmetics, and brands that create and develop accessories to enhance the look... Fashion is also a means of asserting one's social status. , purchasing power, or personality.
Impacts of fashion on society;
1 Production of raw materials:
Synthetic materials: polyester is the most produced synthetic material. Polyester represents 70% of fiber production from petroleum. When caring for these synthetic garments, an estimated 500,000 tons of microplastics are released into the oceans every year
Plant materials: cotton represents ¼ of the world's production of fibers produced in the world. The environmental impact of conventional cotton cultivation is alarming: the use of fertilizers and pesticides is excessive. Water, in large quantities, is essential for the production of this fiber.
Animal materials: widely used in the fabric or textile industry, wool (sheep, goat, and alpaca), fur (rabbit and mink), leather (calf, cow, or lamb), and silk are coveted. This is at the cost – too often – of animal abuse and intensive farming.
The manufacture or processing of raw materials
In the manufacturing process, the use of chemical substances during the various stages of production is the main cause of water pollution in the textile industry. Waste and untreated water are discharged directly into the oceans.
2 Transportation;
For the sake of profitability, multinational firms outsource their production to countries in the South. It is considered that jeans can travel up to 65,000 km from the cotton field to the sales store, or 1.5 times around the planet.
Thus, the 1.2 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases generated by the textile industry result from the manufacture and transport of products. These emissions are equal to those of global air and maritime traffic combined.
3 Care of textile products;
Pollution from the textile industry does not stop at the production cycle. Indeed, it continues after the sale of the products. According to ADEME, half of the environmental impact of our clothes is due to their maintenance. As a result of this, 500,000 tonnes of non-biodegradable microplastic particles (too small to be filtered in wastewater treatment plants) are found each year in the seas, and oceans, i.e. the equivalent of 50 billion plastic bottles.
4 Clothing waste;
In this system based on overconsumption, disposable fashion lives up to its name. In Europe, 4 million tons of clothing waste are thrown away every year. The news site Novethic summarized the extent of clothing waste with these few figures:
70% of the clothes that make up our wardrobe are not worn.
Every year, a French person buys 9kg of clothes and donates 3kg.
The equivalent of a dumpster of clothes is thrown away every second in the world.
However, clothing waste does not only affect consumers but also fast fashion brands. Indeed, for prices to remain affordable, brands must produce in mass. Thus, unsold goods are stored but this has an expensive cost: the rent of storage warehouses and taxes on storage. Also, the use of incineration of unsold items is very common. It is common for companies themselves to throw away their products and contribute to clothing waste.
Modern slavery is linked to unacceptable practices in the fabric industry;
The fashion industry employs 75 million people worldwide. The so-called “disposable” textile industry has social consequences: exploitation of children, and women, precarious wages, and, indecent working conditions. Indeed, multinationals subcontract and outsource their production for the sake of profitability.
The choice of countries where the clothes are produced and then imported meets “strategic” criteria: labor is less expensive there and regulations on the use of pesticides and fertilizers are not always in place. In Europe, labor law protects employees about their salary conditions. The implementation of the “Reach” procedure on the European market ensures, for example, partial control over the manufacture and use of chemical substances.
5 Children, exploited in the textile industry
According to the International Labor Organization, 79 million children between the ages of 5 and 17 perform hazardous work around the world. In Bangladesh, 15% of children from the slums of the capital of Dhaka aged 6 to 14 work full time. Out of school, they work 64 hours a week for 30 euros a month.
6 The glaring inequalities in the production chain
Novethic compares the "sweatshops", workshops of the 19th century in Great Britain and the United States in which the exploitation of employees prevailed, to the current textile and toy industries. The working conditions of sweatshops meet the following criteria:
7 Indecent salary, below the poverty line.
Overexploitation is linked to working time (too high daily hourly volume, insufficient rest days, forced and unpaid overtime).
Precarious work (no social, union, and job security protection).
In the "Sans Dessus Dessous" report by ADEME, the risks of poisoning (linked to the tanning of animal materials and the processing of raw materials) and diseases (such as silicosis, an incurable lung disease, due to special treatment).
The dossier “Textile: Let’s stop widening the abyss of inequalities”, produced in September 2017 by Oxfam Belgium, highlights the international division of labor in the textile industry. It highlights the inequalities within the production chain as the global environmental and social impact of the sector.
8 The overexploitation of women;
Women represent 60 million workers or employees in the industry worldwide, with an average daily workload of 12 hours. On a t-shirt sold for €29 in stores, the chain only receives €0.18, or 0.6% of the price of the product.
In a report by the NGO Human Rights Watch, many violations of labor rights have been denounced, particularly in Pakistan by "invisible workers". These workers or employees in the fabric industry are exploited from their homes, thus escaping the regulation of labor law.
Promoting second-hand goods in the service of solidarity in Oxfam stores
Oxfam France has had several "Charity shops" for ten years, that is to say, second-hand solidarity shops, on the model of the shops developed by Oxfam in Great Britain since the 1940s. 550 second-hand Oxfam stores in the UK.
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