True Cost of Fast Fashion: Environmental & Social Impact

[00:00:30]Heat. Heat.

[00:00:48][Music] This is a story about clothing.

[00:00:58]It's about the clothes we wear, the people who make these clothes, and the impact that it's having on our world.

[00:01:08]It's a story about greed and fear, power and poverty.

[00:01:13]It's complex as it extends all the way around the world, but it's also simple, revealing just how connected we are to the many hearts and hands behind our clothes.

[00:01:24][Music] I came into the story with no background in fashion at all, beginning with nothing more than a few simple questions.

[00:01:36]What I've discovered has forever changed the way I think about the things I wear.

[00:01:41]And my hope is that it might just do the same for you.

[00:01:48][Music] Maybe just start and and say your name and talk about how this kind of began.

[00:02:03]My name is Lucy Seagull. I am a journalist and broadcaster based in the UK and I have been obsessed consumed with the environmental and social impacts of the fashion industry for about a decade.

[00:02:19]Well, I love everything about clothes, you know. I love I love the poetry. I love the fabric. I love the colors. I love the textures. I love the way that they make you feel. You know, they are our chosen skin. Well, I had the classic massive closet, clothes everywhere, bags constantly coming into my house, you know, every day, every other day with some other item in and never had anything to wear. I could never put together a coherent outfit.

[00:02:52]We communicate who we are to a certain extent through clothing. And this is this is again throughout history. you know, you have the trends at court. You know, again, Marian Tuanet making these huge hats. It's always been it's our personal communication in many ways.

[00:03:07]That's what interests me that it is fundamentally a part of what um we wish to communicate about ourselves.

[00:03:21]And we used to have a system, a fashion system where people would go to the uh shows. So they would do spring, summer, autumn, winter, and those kind of ran like clockwork for very many years.

[00:03:32]Okay, rip that up, throw it out the window. That has absolutely nothing to do with the fashion industry today. It has been reinvented. The shift is moving ruthlessly um towards a way of producing which only really looks after big business interest.

[00:03:56]Growing up, I never gave much thought to anything other than the price of the clothes that I bought. Usually making choices based on the style or a good deal. Looking back, I learned that for a long time, most of our clothing was actually made right here in America. As recently as the 1960s, we were still making 95% of our clothes. Today, we only make about 3%. And the other 97% is outsourced to developing countries around the world.

[00:04:28]I've been in the business for over nine years now. In terms of scale, we got about 25,000 people. Just on government manufacturing side, we produce one in six dresses sold in the US.

[00:04:41]If you actually go to a store and you benchmark the price of a a garment over the last 20 years, you will find that it's actually a deflationary product. I the price has gone down over time. Now, has our cost gone down? Absolutely not.

[00:04:54]Okay, our cost has gone up.

[00:04:57]The more production we've outsourced, the cheaper prices have become on the clothing we buy, making way for a whole new model known as fast fashion. Almost overnight, transforming the way clothing is bought and sold.

[00:05:10]The newest H&M store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan is the company's largest ever and just one of many new stores it's planning around the country. It's all part of a high street revolution, fast fashion.

[00:05:22]Instead of two seasons a year, we practically have 52 seasons a year. So, we have something new coming in every week. And Fast Fashion has created this so that it can essentially shift more product.

[00:05:35][Music] You can get this fringe metallic skirt for $39 at Joeresh, a brand new store in town with price tags that might look a little bit more appealing to budget conscious shoppers.

[00:05:54]American consumers, they really have grasped the fashion part of H&M. And we know from before that American consumers are very valueoriented. If you match these two together with fashion and value, then you have a recipe.

[00:06:06]One Japanese clothing retailer, it's making a fast and furious march here in the US. The price has dropped. The way of making that product has completely completely changed and you have to ask yourself at some point where does it end?

[00:06:22]The global marketplace is someplace where we export work to have happen in whatever conditions we want and then the products come back to me cheap enough to throw away without thinking about it.

[00:06:36]Well, globalized production basically means that all of the making of goods has been outsourced to lowcost economies, particularly where wages are very low and kept low. And what that means is that those at the top of the value chain, they get to choose where the products are being made and they get to switch. If, for example, one factory says, "We can't make it that cheap anymore," the brand will say, "Well, we're not going to come to you anymore.

[00:07:03]We're going to switch to another place which is cheaper in the west. They're using everyday low price. So every day they're hampering me and I'm hampering my workers. This is how it is. They're competing. The stores are competing in there. When the stores are coming to us for order and negotiating, they're telling, "Look, that particular store is selling this shirt with like $5. So, I needed to sell it in the $4. So, you better squeeze your price. So, we are squeezing." Then other store is coming and selling. Hey, they're selling at the $4. So, the target price is three. If you can meet the three, you are getting business otherwise you are not getting because we want that business so badly and we don't have other options. Okay? Every time we are trying to okay survive actually ultimately something's going to give either the price of the product has to go up or manufacturers have to shut down or cut corners to make it work.

[00:08:08]Cutting corners and disregarding safety measures had become an accepted part of doing business in this new model until an early morning in April when an event just outside of Dhaka Bangladesh brought a hidden side of fashion to front page news. Well, state media in Bangladesh say an eightstory building has collapsed near the capital of Dhaka, killing more than 70 people.

[00:08:29][Applause] [Music] Rescue workers are racing against time, searching through the rubble, trying to find as many survivors as they can.

[00:08:48]Hundreds are dead. Hundreds more might still be buried alive after officials in Bangladesh say factory owners ignored and ordered to evacuate. Some 400 dead, hundreds still believed to be missing.

[00:09:00]Garment workers in Bangladesh paying the price for cheap clothing.

[00:09:04]A huge crowd has gathered near the building side. Many of them family members looking for loved ones. And they say they can still hear people screaming from underneath the rubble, crying out for help. Many are simply losing hope.

[00:09:37]Wallet of mercy.

[00:09:48]Anybody who like me had written about problems in the supply chain, particularly for fast fashion, and tried to articulate how the risk was being carried by those who are most vulnerable and the worst paid.

[00:10:14]You tried to articulate that, but you could never have envvisaged that there would be such a catastrophic illustration of what you were trying to say. And Rana Plaza to me was like some horror story.

[00:10:28]2 weeks after the catastrophe and the death toll now stands at a staggering 931, making it the worst garment industry disaster in history. I think one of the the the most profoundly impressing things about the Rana Plaza disaster was that news that the workers had already pointed out to the management the cracks in the building. They they'd already pointed out that the building was structurally unsafe and yet they'd been forced back in. Many survivors are asking how they could have been forced to return to work when management already was aware of the cracks in the building and workers concerns on the very day of the collapse. Lot of clothes in American stores are made in Bangladesh by workers who earn about $2 a day. Last month there a garment factory collapsed, killing more than 1,000. And a few months before that, a factory fire killed more than 100. And as bodies are still being pulled out of the rubble, another factory in Bangladesh caught fire early this morning, killing eight more people.

[00:11:35]As story after story of clothing factory disasters kept filling the news, it was now the case that three of the four worst tragedies in the history of fashion had all happened in the last year. As the death toll rose, so did the profits generated. The year following the disaster at Rana Plaza was the industry's most profitable of all time.

[00:11:55]The global fashion industry is now an almost $3 trillion annual industry.

[00:12:00]Bangladesh is now the second largest apparel exporter after China. How? Well, unlike some of its competitors, Bangladeshi manufacturing remains dirt cheap and unions have limited power. The country cornered the absolute bottom of the value chain. Those 1,000 poor girls lost their life because everybody didn't bother, didn't gave damn [ __ ] and they just wanted the cheap price and a good profit. It shouldn't be like that.

[00:12:33]Everybody should take the responsibility for those kids.

[00:12:41]That's how it is.

[00:12:44]And it might coming coming more. Sorry.

[00:12:46]But uh yeah you know that it's not only the price pressure it is something ignoring other people's life is it's it's it's not it should it's not right.

[00:12:56]It's 21st century it's a global world we are living and we just ignore other people's life. How come this enormous rapacious industry that is generating so much profit for a handful of people?

[00:13:13]Why is it that it is unable to support millions of its workers properly? Why is it that it is not able to guarantee their safety? We're talking about essential human rights. Why is it unable to guarantee that whilst generating these tremendous profits? Is it because it doesn't work properly? That is my question.

[00:13:36]Lucy's question sounds like the obvious one, but instead of answering it, everywhere I looked, I found people who were constantly justifying the cost because of the economic benefits being generated.

[00:13:47]So this low-wage manufacturing or so-called sweat shops, they're not just the least bad option workers have today.

[00:13:54]They're part of the very process that raises living standards and leads to higher wages and better working conditions over time. Your approximate causes of development are physical capital, technology, and human capital or skills of the workers. When sweat shops come to these countries, they bring all three of those to these workers and start getting that process going.

[00:14:14]Is it possible that sweat shops are actually good? Yes, horrible, awful sweat shops. The word itself, sweat shop, it evokes terrible images of poor people and children suffering in third world countries slaving away and awful conditions to make products for us selfish Americans. Thank you. What does it does it bother me that people are working in a factory making clothes for Americans or for, you know, Europeans or that they're that's how they're spending their lives?

[00:14:47]Is that what you're kind of asking me?

[00:14:49]Um, yeah, sure.

[00:14:51]Um, no, I mean, you know, they're doing a job. Uh, there are a lot worse things that they can be doing.

[00:14:58]It is live television and I will ask you define sweat shops.

[00:15:02]Yeah, I think we have to be very clear what we're talking about from the outset. So, we're talking about places with very poor working conditions as us normal Americans would experience it.

[00:15:11]Very low wages by our standard, maybe children working, places that might not obey local labor laws. But there's a key characteristics of the type of ones I want to talk to you about tonight, Kennedy, and that's that they're places where people choose to work, admittedly from a bad set of other options.

[00:15:26]Well, I mean, there's nothing intrinsically dangerous with sewing clothes. So, so we're kind of starting out with, you know, with a a relatively safe industry. It's not like coal mining or natural gas mining or, you know, a lot of things that you can that are much more dangerous. So sweat shops jobs look like horrible working conditions and wages to anybody in the West who's wealthy enough to own a TV and watch your video. But we have to keep in mind that the alternatives available for these workers aren't our own alternatives. They are much worse than our alternatives and they're usually much worse than the factory job that the worker has.

[00:16:03]Low wages, unsafe conditions, and factory disasters are all excused because of the needed jobs they create for people with no alternatives.

[00:16:12]This story has become the narrative used to explain the way the fashion industry now operates all over the world. But there are those who believe that there must be a better way of making and selling clothing that does generate economic growth, but without taking such an enormous toll.

[00:16:29]So, we don't know yet um how long this embroidery is taking. Do you think you could ask Shantu just just roughly how long that whole panel is taking because I guess we'll see it later on in the FOB price breakdown, but it would be great to know, wouldn't it?

[00:16:43]So, I'm Safia Mini. I'm founder and CEO of People Tree and uh People Tree is a fair trade fashion brand that started over 20 years ago in Japan.

[00:16:53]You were worried that we had a bit too much navy. What are you feeling now?

[00:16:56]because we did put more black into SS14 and that has worked really really well with um Ola's um designer collaboration. Have we got enough black print in the collection?

[00:17:08]Uh well, we've lost that abstract dust print, this one here in the black. But I think this pink could be really I think it's one of those prints that everyone's a bit nervous of, but actually will do well.

[00:17:21]I think most fashion brands start with a a concept of a collection or a look. Um they don't tend to think uh you know who is going to make the product and um how can I ensure that producers or or suppliers um are going to eat. Um, so what we're what we're trying to do at People Tree is really start with uh the skills that we have at each producer group and then design the collection up whilst also looking at the integrity of the collection in its aesthetic.

[00:17:55]I worked originally with freelance designers and went into Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, India, Nepal, the Philippines.

[00:18:03]And bit by bit, we put together, you know, an amazing network of like-minded fair trade organizations that put women's development, you know, the workers, social development, and environment absolutely central to everything they do.

[00:18:23]One, two, three. Happy World Fair Trade Day.

[00:18:38]Fore trade.

[00:18:57]Foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] really really great.

[00:19:39][Music] That's beautiful. Fair trade is a citizens response to correcting the social injustice in a international trading system that is largely dysfunctional, where uh workers and farmers are not paid um a living wage and where the environment is is not considered at all to make the products that we buy every day.

[00:20:31]I'm Chima.

[00:20:45]Shima is one of about 40 million garment factory workers in the world. Almost 4 million of these workers are here in Bangladesh, working in almost 5,000 factories making clothing for major western brands.

[00:21:00]Over 85% of these workers are women. And with a minimum wage of less than $3 a day, they are among the lowest paid garment workers in the world.

[00:21:10]Foreign speech. Foreign speech. Foreign speech.

[00:21:39]I'm a man.

[00:22:14]The workers must not have any kind of distrust on their own.

[00:22:22]If they have there will not be any good working atmosphere in the factory. They must respect our owner is paying us as per rule.

[00:22:36]If they do not have this kind of confidence, you won't get the result.

[00:22:46]post.

[00:23:08]Fore! Foreign! Foreign!

[00:23:26][Music] It's estimated that one in every six people alive in the world today work in some part of the global fashion industry, making it the most labor dependent industry on Earth.

[00:23:45]Most of this work is done by people like Shima who have no voice in the larger supply chain. Today, we purchase over 80 billion pieces of new clothing each year. That's 400% more than the amount we bought just two decades ago. The way we buy clothes has changed so much so fast that few people have actually stepped back to understand the origin of this new model or the consequence of such an unprecedented increase in consumption. There's um an article in Printers Inc. uh which is the leading advertising trade journal of of of its day uh by a very famous copywriter named Ernest Elmo Caulkins a grand old man of of uh the art of writing advertising copy was an article called consumptionism.

[00:24:32]In that article he says there are there are two kinds of products. Okay. There are the kind that you use like washing machines, cars and so on.

[00:24:43]Things that you buy and use for a long time.

[00:24:48]And then there are the things that you use up like chewing gum and cigarettes, other perishables.

[00:24:54]He said, uh, consumptionism is all about getting people to treat the things they use as the things they use up.

[00:25:04]With their innovative buy 1 get three free pricing, a zoo from Joseph A Bank is effectively cheaper than paper towels. And now they come in these easy to use dispensers.

[00:25:16]With four suits for the price of a modest dinner, I can feel good about throwing them away when I'm done.

[00:25:25]You just have to look at landfill and you can see in landfill that the amount of clothes and textiles being chucked away has been increasing steadily over the last 10 years. um as the sort of dirty shadow of the fast fashion industry.

[00:25:42]As we get sort of closer and closer to species degradation, to uh trashing our last remaining pristine wilderness, we seem hellbent on producing more and more disposable stuff. It makes no sense.

[00:25:56]Fashion should never and can never be thought of as a disposable product. I think after any big change in any industry, it takes a while to sort of to feel and smell the dirt that comes out of something um that is that is polluting. So I think now there is a change because you can't deny that the fast fashion industry is having a massive impact in developing countries.

[00:26:22]The average American throws away 82 pounds of textile waste each year, adding up to more than 11 million tons of textile waste from the US alone. Most of this waste is nonbiodegradable, meaning it sits in landfills for 200 years or more while releasing harmful gases into the air. the sheer amount of cheap clothing even though people feel perhaps somehow um that they're offsetting by giving to charity. You know, the journey of a t-shirt donated to charity is unpalatable in itself.

[00:27:01]I love the embroidery.

[00:27:02]Shantu is really nice.

[00:27:07]Don't you think we should have the embroidery on both sides? And I think we should definitely add the embroidery here as well. I think it looks a bit mean to have it just on the front. So, let's have it on the sides, too.

[00:27:19]It won't add much cost. It's not so dense, is it?

[00:27:28]Swallows is a fair trade fashion business, but it's also a development society. So, it helps more than 3,000 people in this village.

[00:27:40]I come here every four months. Um we we call them production trips and um and we're working with the producers trying to find out, you know, what are the barriers to making a great product and to to getting it to the market and we're also doing fair trade capacity building.

[00:27:55]So looking at you know what what are the obstacles to delivering more social benefit or improving you know the environmental protection in the in these areas. For me this this is about partnering. This is about finding creative solutions together with them with the team here. Um, and really listening to what their problems are and finding a way that that works together.

[00:28:25]I want to invite um the best employee here at Swallows. I want to invite one women, one female representative from Swallows to come to London in autumn or next spring and I would like you to think who would be that best representative.

[00:28:45]But I want you to know who your customers are and I want you to really understand the marketplace and come back and tell all your friends.

[00:28:53][Music] foreign [Applause] obviously. foreignch.

[00:30:10]The same low wages that have made places like Bangladesh so attractive for brands to do business have left millions of workers here working incredibly long hours unable to afford to keep their children with them even in the city's worst slums. In order to give their children an education and the chance of a better future than life in the factories, many garment workers here, like Shima, are leaving their children to be raised by family or friends in villages outside the city, only getting to see them once or twice a year.

[00:31:00][Music] Baba mobile.

[00:31:59]Huh?

[00:32:09]No [Music] sugar.

[00:32:32]Foreign speech. Foreign speech. Foreign speech.

[00:32:40][Music] foreign.

[00:33:34]Foreign speech. Foreign foreign foreign speech.

[00:34:00]Operating within a system that only measures profit, companies have little incentive to do anything other than to make this quarter better than the last, no matter what damage is caused along the way. As corporations that make up the global fashion industry, major brands as well as seed and chemical companies are growing today to reach unprecedented global size and power, this mandate for profit at all cost is beginning to stand in direct opposition to the values that we share.

[00:34:29]Richard Wolf is an economist who after graduating from Harvard, Stanford and Yale became convinced that the real problem is within this system itself. So America became a peculiar country. You could criticize the education system to make the schools better. You could criticize the transportation system to make that work better. You could crit but you couldn't criticize the economic system. That got a free pass. You couldn't criticize just, you know, and if you don't criticize something for 50 years, it rots. It goes to seed. But one of the ways a healthy society works is a subjects its component systems to criticism so that we can debate it and hopefully fix it or improve it or do better. Capitalism couldn't be questioned.

[00:35:16]Capitalism is the reason the fashion industry looks as it does today. It's the reason why workers in Bangladesh are paid so little. Because if you're operating in a capitalist system, the main thing you have to do is create profit. And you have to create more profit than your competitors. And this is what drives companies to push wages down and down and down. Like they don't like companies don't go like fashion retailers don't go to places like Bangladesh for any other reason except they can get the cheapest labor possible. Like there's no um collective rights in Bangladesh. There's no trade union rights. There's a very very low minimum wage. There's no like maternity benefits. There's no pensions. That is why the fashion industry is in Bangladesh because it can reap the biggest profits out of those people that are that are making the clothes for them.

[00:36:08]Before you can solve a problem, you have to admit you got one. And before we're going to fix an economic system that's working this way and producing such tensions and inequalities and strains on our community, we have to face the real scope of the problem we have. And that's with the system as a whole. And at the very least, we have to open up a national debate about it. And at the most, I think we have to think long and hard about alternative systems that might work better for the environment.

[00:36:39]The great threat is that capital must continue to expand infinitely in order to survive. It it can't have any limits on its expansion and its growth. The natural world clearly does have limits.

[00:36:52]There are very defined limits to how much the world can sustain in terms of production, in terms of trade, in terms of transport and distribution. And it's quite clear that we've already overstepped a lot of those limits, which is why you're seeing such stress in the natural world at the moment.

[00:37:09]The system we live in isn't one that most people want to live in. I think it's a system that makes most people very unhappy and I don't think people want to live on a slowly dying planet or to be exploiting um you know their neighbors. So I think I think we need huge systemic change. If you don't change this system, you're leaving intact the decision makingaking of these enterprises, which means a small group of executives and shareholders are going to be working in the same system, subject to the same pattern of rewards and punishments, which will sooner or later make them reimpose there or elsewhere the very conditions you're fighting against. So, stop this stuff about improving their conditions. deal with a system or else you're not serious.

[00:37:59]Our economic system is one of consumer capitalism. And that's why the government needs to have consumption at very high levels. Um, and why of course the corporations do and why at some level most people then buy into it. You know, I can't tell you the number of people I talk to who say, "Well, but if we became less materialistic, our economy would tank." Well, they're right in some level because our economy is based on materialism. It's based on these kinds of values. That's what it needs in order to survive. That's part of the fuel that it needs. The problem is that comes at a really high price.

[00:38:41]Black Friday's here. Can we go go shop?

[00:38:47]Black Friday shopping mania still playing out tonight at malls across America. In some places across this country tonight, it's as if someone announced we're in danger of running out of stuff. And those who need stuff had better go out and buy it now cuz it's going away forever.

[00:39:02]Walmart doing more than 10 million transactions in the first 4 hours of the frenzy. A record 15,000 people at Macy's in New York City. Shoppers hung tough.

[00:39:12]Black Friday will be the single largest day of the retail year. Certainly in the case of Macy's. We'll do more business on this day uh than on any other uh day of the year.

[00:39:22]Nation, this orgy of Christmas shopping proves America is back. We are once again Yes.

[00:39:31]Oh yes.

[00:39:33]We are once again spending money we don't have on things we don't need to give to people we don't like.

[00:39:42]Yeah. USA. USA. USA. USA.

[00:39:49][Music] Oh my god.

[00:39:58]I've kept my grip so tight.

[00:40:03]I won't let anyone get in my way. I want beautiful things. Golden rings. Golden rings. And I get what I want.

[00:40:18]I live just to get what I want. And I want it all.

[00:40:26]I want it all.

[00:40:32]And I want it all.

[00:40:39][Music] Heat. Heat.

[00:40:50][Music] [Music] Foreign speech. Foreign speech. Foreign speech.

[00:41:55]Foreign speech. Foreign speech.

[00:42:19]Foreign [Music] forchech.

[00:42:49][Music] foreign.

[00:43:16][Music] This is the beginning of a turning point, not just for, you know, a responsible way of doing fashion, but for a new way of doing capitalism, for a new way of doing economics.

[00:43:47]I'm I'm sure that we we will see a significant change over the next 10 years. Um whether it's in time or not is another question.

[00:43:59]If you know Martin Luther King Jr. at a speech in a Brooklyn church, he said that what what America needed was a revolution of values. It needed to stop treating people like things. Needed to stop treating people in ways that were just about profit, but instead to treat people in a real and human way, my god, we can do better than this. If if what we want is to spread as I would argue we do spread industry around the world not concentrated in one place let it let the benefits be shared globally then let's do that in an orderly reasonable careful way we need to recognize that capital is just money is a means and people should be accountable for how it's used to celebrate the creative power of human beings and we need to talk of creative work. We must stop talking about labor.

[00:44:59]We need to look at the land as not a commodity to be speculated on and traded but as the very basis of our life as mother earth. If you change all consumers into activists, all consumers asking ethical questions, all consumers asking quite simple questions about where their clothes are from, all consumers saying, "I'm sorry, it's not acceptable for someone to die in the course of a working day." We can't just roll over and say, "Yes, have it. Do what you like." It's too important. It's too significant in industry. It's has too much impact and effect on millions of people worldwide and common resources.

[00:45:45]Will we continue to search for happiness in the consumption of things?

[00:45:50]Will we be satisfied with a system that makes us feel rich while leaving our world so desperately poor? Will we continue to turn a blind eye to the lives of those behind our clothes? Or will this be a turning point, a new chapter in our story when together we begin to make a real change as we remember that everything we wear was touched by human hands.

[00:46:14]In the midst of all the challenges facing us today, for all the problems that feel bigger than us and beyond our control, maybe we could start here with clothing.

[00:49:15][Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]