To Die For: Is fashion wearing out the world?

To die for: is fashion wearing out the world? by Lucy Siegle
Fourth Estate, 2011

Every year around eighty billion garments are produced worldwide, but when we buy them we are able to learn very little about where it was made and assembled and in what conditions.Today's fast fashion has brought exploitation of people, the planet and in the end, the consumers. This book is intended to guide you to becoming an intelligent consumer who asks the right questions and buys more carefully. Here are just some of the facts Lucy Siegle has unearthed, and that big business doesn't want you to query.

• Where once we bought clothes within income and for changing seasons, and cared for and mended our clothes, since the mid-1980s we buy many more items, wear them on fewer occasions and readily discard them if damaged, and sometimes unworn. In the UK an estimated 2.4 billion garments have not been worn for 12 months, many of them possibly never worn.
• On average, 15% of fabric is discarded during the cutting process. Retailers are known to damage surplus stock so that it is unwearable when put out for rubbish collection.
• In order to have frequent changes of stock and prices that entice us to buy, the industry focuses on how little it can pay and how fast it can be achieved in every aspect of the production process.
• An estimated forty million garment workers toil away, in working conditions that are typically very poor and often dangerous. The use of child labour is common but often concealed. Forced overtime to meet shipment deadlines and impossible task targets keeps people at work for more than 12 hours a day. They are paid a local 'minimum wage' which in many cases is not enough to buy sufficient food to live on, even at a basic level. Many of these workers are women.
• The auditing process, which aims to check the above abuses, is often flawed. Visits are often scheduled leaving factories time to manipulate what is seen and workers cannot be interviewed individually.
• To get the eighty billion kilograms of fabric produced every year takes 1,074 billion kilowatt hours of electricity (for which we need 132 million tonnes of coal) and six to nine trillion litres of water.
• Synthetic fibres made from natural materials (e.g. viscose from wood pulp) are processed using a range of highly toxic chemicals. In poorly regulated places, these can affect workers' health directly and even seep or drain into watercourses. Scientists have calculated, however, that while making a viscose blouse needed eleven megajoules of energy, a cotton t-shirt required twenty-four.
• Dye-houses are typically dangerous places of work, using toxic chemicals and little or no protective clothing available. Again the chemicals leak into nearby water sources. Processes to distress denim can leave workers with respiratory problems.
• The American cotton belt receives large subsidies, allowing them to keep their prices low, and forcing other countries into a desperate plight. The Cotton 4 countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali) are dependent on cotton, but are among the poorest on the planet. The world cotton crop is disturbingly dependent on pesticides, and is one of the thirstiest crops grown (ironically it is increasingly grown in some of the most water scarce areas on earth.
• Cashmere comes from the downy under-hair of a goat (hair from three to six goats is needed for a sweater). The fragile eco-sytems of Inner Mongolia are having to support an ever-increasing goat herd instead of camels which do far less damage.
• Autralian Merino flocks now number 107 million sheep; pasture land is one quarter of the land mass. These herds contribute (through belching and farting) to global methane emissions, a greenhouse gas.
• Leather tanning uses toxic chemicals which often contaminate local water sources. Solid waste containing chromium is dumped on soil tilled by subsistence farmers, and then eaten, with subsequent impact on health.
• Increasingly our discarded clothing ends up in Africa, in the process damaging their own textile industry. Clothes donated to charities are sorted by clothes recycling companies. First grade (just 10%) is good enough to sell in charity shops and another 52% is good enough to be sold on in bales. On arrival in Africa the bales are sold to local stallholders who sell the individual items.

What can we do to change things?

• Slow down the rate of buying and buy better quality. Plan ahead for your shopping trips and don't buy on impulse. Look after the garments you own.
• If donating for recycling deliver direct to charity shops. keep an eye out for bogus collectors who turn up an hour before official collectors arrive (they will have an official registration number.
• In 2011 some large companies were starting to be more ethical in all of their supply chain but will this continue.
• We need more information on labels as to where items were produced. In the absence of labelling and other information, we have to do more research before buying, which has the add-on effect of slowing down our purchasing rate.
• Support organisations that focus on labour rights abuses, for example: War on Want, Labour behind the Label, No Sweat and the Clean Clothes Campaign.
• Look for organic cotton items which do not rely on noxious pesticides and Fairtrade certified cotton which ensures farmers get a better price for their crop.
• Consider buying items made of hemp, cottonised hemp and hemp&cotton or hemp& silk mixtures.
• Buy better quality. The cheapest items are likely to have the most deleterious impact on human health and living standards, and effects on the planet.
• Buy from ethical producers. These come and go but People Tree (sustainable and fair trade fashion) has been trading since 1995. Others listed by Lucy Siegle are Anatomy and From Somewhere.
• Wash clothing at a lower temperature (in the UK we wash at a higher temperature than in other countries) to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Where and when you can air dry clothes outside.
• Use more progressive dry-cleaners who are replacing 'perc' (perchloroethylene) with alternatives such as liquid silicone.
• Keep items carefully, and mend when possible. Look out for local tailors who will do alterations and support local business at the same time.
• Consider clothes swapping events - but you will need to be prepared to donate good quality items as your contribution - and clothes customisation and reworking businesses.

Now it's over to us.