While the world has largely slowed down since the global pandemic outbreak, fast fashion brands have been picking up speed. Although it is not new to say that underpaid garment workers have continuously been exploited by major fashion brands (most of which you probably shop at daily), there is no long standing coverage to aid these workers. Forever21, Zara, Pacific Sunwear, and Urban Outfitters - to name a few - are popular companies known to have no sustainability factor in their mass clothing production.
Especially now with COVID-19 hitting the stores, large corporations have decided to cut their losses. These harmful decisions have been catastrophic on the “40-60 million workers employed by the global garment industry.” Numerous garment workers have been deprived of $5.8 billion in wages from March to May alone. This means that there is a humanitarian crisis happening against impoverished garment workers, who work more than 10 hours a day with less than minimal pay.
Big businesses in the clothing industry are telling the world that they care more about making an extra dollar than someone else’s life. In 2013, approximately 1,100 workers in Dhaka, Bangladesh died from an industrial garment factory collapse. Workers concentrated in Asian countries face worsening conditions that may cost them their lives. To put it at a different angle, these people are essentially being enslaved to mass produce cheap items that wealthy companies can put out on the market at an “affordable price” for consumers. PacSun alone makes an average revenue of $797.8 million a year, while workers are being underpaid by 30% of the living wage. The fast fashion industry itself is the world’s second largest industrial polluter, constantly imposing harm on our environment.
So, if you go out to buy that t-shirt or skirt because it is cheap, you may want to reconsider your choices. It is through awareness and activism that we can truly start to make a positive change. Around 85% of all textiles are thrown away in the US, and the average American throws away 37kg (82 lbs!) of clothes every year. Consumerism pertains to shopping habits that are not only destroying our environment, but are also leading to the continuation of exploiting sweatshop laborers. We can do better. More sustainable ways to shop includes visiting thrift stores, re-wearing old clothes, or upcycling / making your own articles from reused fabric! It would be way cooler to say you made your top from vintage scraps when someone asks you where you’ve gotten your top from, anyways.
What You Can Do
There are countless ways to help. Share this post. Inform your friends on alternatives to products of large corporations. Advocate in your community. Educate a family member on this topic. We are the only hope for workers in dilapidated factories who do not have any other choice in regards to fighting against the violation of their rights. If you cannot do anything else, you can at least make better personal choices yourself and opt for more sustainable ways to shop, or, better yet, cut down on buying clothes you do not need altogether.
- Brianna Zhao