Thread by @WhittenAnn

Climate Change, blah, blah let's talk some truth. From fashion to music if you want to make it big and become rich the United States is the place to be, right? Yes, but at what cost? read below for some interesting facts that few talk about in the climate change hysteria.

Most of us think that the US shipped jobs overseas due to cheap labor which lowers the price of goods and services, but does it really and if so at what cost to the planet and humans?

The fashion industry has a disastrous impact on the environment. In fact, it is the second largest polluter in the world, just after the oil industry. And the environmental damage is increasing as the industry grows.

When we think of pollution, we envision coal power plants, strip-mined mountaintops and raw sewage piped into our waterways. We don't often think of the shirts on our backs. But the overall impact the apparel industry has on our planet is quite grim.

In most of the countries in which garments are produced, untreated toxic wastewaters from textiles factories are dumped directly into the rivers. Wastewater contains toxic substances such as lead, mercury, and arsenic, among others.

These are extremely harmful for the aquatic life and the health of the millions people living by those rivers banks. The contamination also reaches the sea and eventually spreads around the globe.

Another major source of water contamination is the use of fertilizers for cotton production, which heavily pollutes runoff waters and evaporation waters. Ever wondered why the South is no longer the largest producers of cotton?

85 % of the daily needs in water of the entire population of India would be covered by the water used to grow cotton in the country. 100 million people in India do not have access to drinking water.
— Stephen Leahy, The Guardian

Clothing has clearly become disposable. As a result, we generate more and more textile waste. A family in the western world throws away an average of 30 kg of clothing each year. Only 15% is recycled or donated, and the rest goes directly to the landfill or is incinerated.

Synthetic fibers, such as polyester, are plastic fibers, therefore non-biodegradable and can take up to 200 years to decompose. Synthetic fibers are used in 72% of our clothing.

Chemicals are one of the main components in our clothes. They are used during fiber production, dyeing, bleaching, and wet processing of each of our garments. The heavy use of chemicals in cotton farming is causing diseases and premature death among cotton farmers.

The apparel industry accounts for 10% of global carbon emissions. The global fashion industry is generating a lot of greenhouse gases due to the energy used during its production, manufacturing, and transportation of the millions of garments purchased each year.

Most of our clothes are produced in China, Bangladesh, or India, countries essentially powered by coal. This is the dirtiest type of energy in terms of carbon emissions.

Cheap synthetic fibers also emit gases like N2O, which is 300 times more damaging than CO2.
— James Conca -

The fashion industry plays a major part in degrading soil in different ways overgrazing of pastures through cashmere goats and sheep raised for their wool; degradation of the soil due to massive use of chemicals to grow cotton; deforestation caused by wood based fibers like rayon

Every year, thousands of hectares of endangered and ancient forests are cut down and replaced by plantations of trees used to make wood-based fabrics such as rayon, viscose, and modal.

This loss of forests is threatening the ecosystem and indigenous communities, as in Indonesia where large-scale deforestation of the rainforests has taken place over the past decade.

Fast and cheap is what we demand. It has become a challenge to wear a garment more than five times. Why?
1) Garment quality is declining every year. As a result, our clothes immediately look faded, shapeless, or worn out.

2) Trends are changing so quickly that we cannot keep up. We continue to purchase just to stay up to date.

This is Fast Fashion: Mass-production of cheap, disposable clothing. Countless new collections per year make us feel constantly out of date and encourage us to keep buying.

We have known this for decades: most of our clothes are made in countries in which workers’ rights are limited or non-existent. In fact, production sites are regularly moving location, on the lookout for ever cheaper labor costs.

We often hear company owners saying that "for these workers, it is better than nothing”, “at least we give them a job”, and to a certain extent, they are right.

But it is also right to say that they are exploiting the misery and taking advantage of poor populations who have no choice but to work for any salary, in any working conditions.

Even the European Parliament is using the term “slave labor” to describe the current working conditions of garment workers in Asia.

We know that if working conditions improve in one country, companies will just move to another.

Many fashion brands assure their customers that the workers who made their clothing are paid "at least the minimum legal wage". But what exactly does that mean?
First of all, it means that many other brands do not even pay the minimum legal salary!

Many fashion brands assure their customers that the workers who made their clothing are paid "at least the minimum legal wage". But what exactly does that mean? First of all, it means that many other brands do not even pay the minimum legal salary!

In most of the manufacturing countries (China, Bangladesh, India...), the minimum wage represents between half to a fifth of the living wage. A living wage represents the bare minimum that a family requires to fulfill its basic needs (food, rent, healthcare, education, etc).

Garment workers are often forced to work 14 to 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. During peak season, they may work until 2 or 3 am to meet the fashion brand's deadline.

Their basic wages are so low that they cannot refuse overtime - aside from the fact that many would be fired if they refused to work overtime. In some cases, overtime is not even paid at all.

The collapse of the Rana Plaza in 2013, killing 1134 garment workers in Dhaka, Bangladesh, has revealed the unacceptable working conditions of the whole fashion industry to the world.
Employees usually work with no ventilation, breathing in toxic substances, inhaling fiber dust

Remember this when you buy a new swimsuit this summer.

Need a new prom dress? Maybe a wedding dress?

On top of that, clothing workers regularly face verbal and physical abuse. In some cases, when they fail to meet their (unreachable) daily target, they are insulted, denied breaks, or not allowed to drink water.

168 million children in the world are forced to work.
Because the fashion industry requires low-skilled labor, child labor is particularly common in this industry.

Oh well, I need a new pair of jeans.

In South India, for example, 250,000 girls work under the Sumangali scheme, a practice which involves sending young girls from poor families to work in a textile factory for three or five years in exchange for a basic wage.

and a lump sum payment at the end to pay for their dowry. Girls are overworked and live in appalling conditions that can be classified as modern slavery.

Hey! Check out my new Michael Kors handbag.

The most infamous example takes place in Uzbekistan, one of the world’s largest cotton exporters. Every autumn, the government forces over one million people to leave their regular jobs and go pick cotton. Children are also mobilized and taken out of school to harvest cotton.

Studies show that certain chemical substances contained in pajamas can be found in a child's urine 5 days after wearing those pajamas for one night.

A recent study found hazardous chemicals in 63% of the items tested from 20 different textile brands (including fashion giants).

Information in this thread was taken from sustainyourstyle.org. and The True Cost movie now playing on Netflix. So climate changers let the right wing know when you really want to get serious on climate change and we will gladly take a seat at the table.

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