Around the world, fashion’s mostly female labor force is grappling with working conditions made increasingly unbearable and unhealthy by climate change. Women picking cotton in India’s sun-baked fields are toiling in temperatures of roughly 113 degrees Fahrenheit, while workers in Ghana’s Kantamanto — one of the world’s largest second-hand markets where clothing discarded by Western consumers is resold — are losing vital wages when flooding prevents trade. Nour is just one of nearly 1 million garment workers in Cambodia, a country that has experienced roughly 1.4 degrees F degrees of warming per decade since the 1960s.
Fashion has had a devastating impact on the planet, producing more greenhouse gas emissions than aviation and shipping combined. So far, labor experts say, the more than $2.5 trillion industry has mostly focused its climate change efforts on mitigation, such as using more recycled fabrics, while largely ignoring how it impacts workers.
“[Labor] violations in factories are so gross, as in so widespread, and so awful… that that’s where the attention has been,” said Liz Parker, an associate member of Clean Clothes Campaign, an Amsterdam-based alliance of labor unions and nongovernmental organizations. “But workers are suffering from heat stress, from flooding, from water pollution…and we need to protect [them] from that as well.”
This is a painfully bad situation. And what’s worse is that we shouldn’t even call it “fast fashion”, it’s really: “Shitty clothing that most people are stuck with because that’s all they can afford.”
Fast fashion makes it sound like bougie niche brands that 20 somethings put themselves into debt over to keep up with trends. But it’s also everyday people brands sold at Kohl’s, Walmart, Target, etc. I get the analogy intent (fast food, fast fashion) but it’s backfired in that everyone assumes the problem is uncontrolled selfish vapid people. The problem is all of us because we’re trapped without options.
(Bit of a terminology quibble)
The quality of the already shitty clothing is even worse now. Ex: a shirt I bought at Kohl’s in February had several small holes by the end of March - the dye hadn’t even started to fade yet. Same brand, same cut and style of shirt I’d purchased a year before (the bar was already low on quality), the likes of which I’d been purchasing year over year as replacements.
I have to shuffle my budget to find the money to buy higher quality – most people can’t.
I have to find a new retailer/brand with the style, material, and size options – online is fine for some things but most people aren’t like me, buying the same shirt on repeat, and frankly, I don’t enjoy buying clothing online as a non-man because no one uses a standardized measurement system for women’s clothing.
“Higher end” clothing is often garbage quality with a name that inflates the price – most people don’t want, nor should be expected, to become fabric and tailoring experts just to pick out their wardrobe pieces.
Don’t get me started on kids clothes.
Anyway, we can vow to shop used/secondhand all we want but this is a massive system problem that needs heavy regulation enacted quickly to force substantive change.