Have you ever felt like you’re running around in a frantic attempt to stay ahead of the latest fashion styles and consumer trends? Each season brings a new look, the latest colors, changes in heel height and different bag sizes. One year it’s big and brightly colored, the next it’s small and dull.
Most of us don’t realize that this trendy treadmill, the one that constantly keeps us focused on our next purchase, is actually an invention of the American economic system. Sure, it’s hard to break free from the spinning treadmill, but if you’re serious about embracing a lifestyle that takes sustainability seriously, you’ll need to hear the shocking truth about the true cost of the garment industry and the economic system that supports it. keeps running from one trend to another.
It is a story that will take us down a dark path, through a path of labor inequity and environmental exploitation. But after exploring this world of the apparel industry, you’ll be better equipped to put your consumer dollars to work—for the planet, for your fellow humans, and for a better world.
Our consumer culture, that crazy wheel of life we’re on, hasn’t always been around. In fact, just over half a century ago, bartering, trading, and living within our means was a staple of every community. Individuals in these communities organized their lives around close-knit main streets where locals brought their specialized products to sell and trade with their neighbors, products that had been created using the resources at hand, a system of quality products that kept the profits. in the pockets of the producers. People were valued for what they could contribute to the community; they were known as farmers, bakers, blacksmiths, seamstresses, ranchers, and cooks.
That is a far cry from how things are today. In our current market economy, we as individuals are no longer valued as productive members of society: mothers, soapmakers, and pharmacists. Instead, our greatest value is as consumers. But how did this come to be? It all started shortly after World War II. Corporations were desperate to boost the economy and their own profits. So they put their ideas together and determined that the solution was to turn the average American into a consumer: keep people buying and buying and buying. His plan was to keep prices low so consumers would continue to move inventory, and quickly. The bottom line of this system is just that: the bottom line.
Unlike the producers of yesteryear who prided themselves on creating quality products that would benefit the community, corporations, which control a larger share of the world’s economies than our governments, are now primarily concerned with maintaining profits by keeping the consumption system treadmill. It does this by stimulating the constant need (yes, the need!) for people to throw away what they have in favor of something new and “better.” And the system is working very well…for corporations at least. Consider these facts from CorpWatch:
– Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations; only 49 are countries (based on a comparison of corporate sales and country GDP),
– Sales of Top 200 companies are growing at a faster rate than overall global economic activity. Between 1983 and 1999, their combined sales grew from the equivalent of 25.0 percent to 27.5 percent of world GDP,
– The combined sales of the top 200 corporations are greater than the combined economies of all but the 10 largest countries,
– The combined sales of the Top 200 are 18 times the size of the combined annual income of the 1.2 billion people (24 percent of the total world population) who live in “severe” poverty,
– While the sales of the Top 200 are equivalent to 27.5 percent of global economic activity, they employ only 0.78 percent of the global workforce,
– Between 1983 and 1999, the profits of the Top 200 companies grew by 362.4 percent, while the number of people they employ grew by only 14.4 percent.
Whether you know it or not, your consumer choices, including your clothing buying habits, are fueling this system, the system that enriches very few people while impoverishing our planet and many of the humans on it. . The more we buy, the more they create, and the cycle goes on and on. Only by shifting our focus from a buy-and-throw mentality to one of conservation, recycling, and sustainable consumerism can we disengage from this current destructive path.
Recycling and reusing should always be the first option, but when shopping for textiles becomes an absolute necessity, choosing organic clothing and organic bedding will help rebalance this currently unsustainable industry.