On April 24th, 2013, an eight-story building called Rana Plaza collapsed in Bangladesh. 1,129 human beings lost their lives and 2,515 were injured.
Rana Plaza was a garment factory. Workers were being paid $38 per month to create clothing for several well-known clothing brands. This was a tragedy of epic proportions that made headlines across the globe. But on a smaller scale, tragedies in the garment industry go unnoticed every day.
As consumers, we typically purchase from the brand that will sell us a product for the lowest possible price, so naturally the fashion labels compete for market share by dropping prices. The only way for them to do this – without cutting into their profits (fat chance!) – is by putting pressure on their factories to lower manufacturing costs. But after a certain point, the only way a factory can reduce costs any further is by paying their workers a slave’s wage, providing unsafe working conditions, using cheaper and cheaper materials and environmentally harmful manufacturing practices. The factories that are willing to do this are rewarded with manufacturing contracts and the brands that are encouraging it are rewarded when we purchase our clothing from them.
This trend is called the “race to the bottom”. The brand with the cheapest and lowest quality product wins. From the farmer that grows the cotton, all the way down the supply chain to the consumer, all eyes are fixed on the bottom line… damn the consequences. The effects are widespread and the death toll is much higher than we first realize.
Local shop owners can’t compete with major chains, so small business dies.
Domestic factories can’t pay workers as little as overseas factories, so American industry dies.
Farmers can’t grow cheap cotton without poison and chemicals, so the planet dies.
Overseas factories can’t drop manufacturing prices any further without treating workers like slaves, so human beings die.
And on it goes until one day we realize that cheap fashion actually carries an incredibly high price tag
But, there is good news: as consumers, we are 100% in the driver’s seat. When we spend our money we send a message, and the message we send will create change, for better or worse. To ensure we are making a change for the better, Treadlight would like to invite you to participate in Fashion RevolutionDay (www.fashionrevolution.org). Let’s put the breaks on the race to the bottom by asking one simple question, “WHO MADE OUR CLOTHES?”
On April 24th, the anniversary of the tragedy in Rana Plaza… to remember and celebrate lives lost and highlight the need for change, Fashion Revolution Day is asking us to take a picture of the label of whatever shirt we are wearing and asking the brand responsible for it (via social media) “who made our clothes”. The idea is to force the brands we wear to take responsibility for the supply chains they feed. But to me, the greater value is… Fashion Revolution Day will force us, and those around us, to look at the labels in our garments and think about how they were made; from what material and by whose hand. It will force us to think about how much we pay for our clothes, the number of people that played a part in creating each piece, how far our apparel had to travel to make it to our closets, and where it will end up when we’re done with it. It will force us to be AWARE. Because the further we remove ourselves from the process, the less responsibility we will feel for it, when in fact, we are entirely responsible.