Ethical Fashion covers a broad spectrum, which describes design, retail, production, and purchasing. It uncovers the poor working conditions, exploitation, animal cruelty, and damage to the environment caused by bad practices.
With the onset of globalization, we can cut our costs on production by purchasing labor and materials from different areas of the world where the costs are really low. These savings mean that high-street fashion can be purchased at increasingly low prices. There are ethical fashionistas who state there is a hidden cost that we are unable to see on the price tag.
Issues that surround Ethical Fashion
Ethical Fashion addresses the way the fashion industry operates with regards to environmental damage, waste, the use of hazardous chemicals, exploitative labour and animal cruelty.
Consumers are concerned about the exploitative conditions that workers face in the factories manufacturing these cheaper clothes. They are forced into overtime, unhygienic and cramped surroundings; they are paid poorly and given bad or no food. Children are also exploited alongside adults and are in many cases subjected to abuse and violence.
The cotton industry provides us with much of the world’s fabric, however it takes 2700 litres to produce a single shirt, growing it uses 10% of the world’s pesticides – chemicals that can be harmful to the farmers and dangerous for the environment.
Because of the damage being done to our immediate environment, the current textile practices are considered to be unsustainable. If you consider that the Aral Sea in Central Asia shrunk to just 15% of its former volume and this was largely due to the vast quantities of water being taken, which is required for cotton production and dying, then the problem is self-evident.
The majority of our textiles are treated with chemicals to soften and then dye them – these chemicals are not only toxic to the environment, but can be transferred to the skin. The many hazardous chemicals used commonly in the textile industry are lead, chromium IV, nickel, aryl amines, formaldehyde and phthalates.
It should also be taken into account that 1 million tons of clothing are being thrown away every year in the UK alone. This is mainly due to the cheaply made disposable fashion items, which are fast becoming a major pollution and environmental issue for our planet.
Designer Stella McCartney said in an advert for the animal rights organisation PETA: ‘we address… ethical or ecological… questions in every other part of our lives except fashion. Mind-sets are changing, though, which is encouraging.’
Animals are also farmed to supply fur for the fashion industry and are in many cases mishandled or abused. Many people are taking their welfare into consideration by not supporting the clothing industries involved, thereby playing an important part in the ethical fashion debate.
New York-based research institute Ethisphere announced that the British retailer Marks & Spencer made the Ethisphere’s World’s Most Ethical Companies list for 2014. They also have an advisory panel consisting of leading government officials, professors and attorneys, who are keenly interested in ethical business practices and for the past eight years have published a list of 144 businesses across 41 different industries.
You can also check your clothing labels to see whether they are labelled ethical or not. For more information on ethical labels you can visit the Ethical Consumer for the currently available ethical labels used in the clothing sector.
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