Where do our clothes come from? Have you ever deeply and truly asked yourself this question? How much sweat lies behind a t-shirt that we wear a few times and throw away to buy another one a few weeks later, a jeans, a jacket? With money that we do not really have, and the workers don’t get?! Our fashion industry is walking paths that is neither ethic nor loving nor respectful in any kind. Examples like Bangladesh have brought the workers-conditions into the light. But who is guilty? The owners, the shareholders, the industry that counts the dollars? The people who buy the clothes? The society who in some topics is just about to loose their sense of values, in fear of not having enough, politics?
It is ALL of us, and all of this! With each and every item we buy, we vote for the way it has been produced! We acknowledge that behind hidden curtains, people are mistreated, or even killed, in order to satisfy our lack of happiness in life.
And if we started to think and act differently? If we started to really question every item we buy, like many of us do it already with food, and others already with clothing? If we gave out a little bit more in order to get a little bit less but in better quality that lasts longer, that has a value? Our world shows us today more than ever, that it needs our collaboration, the collaboration of EACH and EVERY one of us, to change things the way they are today!
By knowing that SOLUTIONS exist out there, we can truly start to behave differently, inform ourselves more about the brands that do a conscious job, collaborate with brands and labels such as highest ratest ‘bluesign technologies system or Fair Wear’, by the way companies treat their workers, care for resources such as raw material, energy, water, their ways of producing! Brands who make less for more !
The True Cost is a MUST watch! And we know from dear friends who fight daily for bringing solutions and more consciousness into this industry, that the reality is even much worse than what the film shows!
“The True Cost is a Story about people who wear the clothes and people who make them. It shows the social and environmental impact of our textile industry on our world.”
It shows the importance we give to clothing as a reference for our own personal communication, and it shows that big players have shifted away from production to big business, no matter what!
Did you know that the fast fashion produces a new collections every week, 52 times a year? That 97 % of all the textile is produced in Asia?
The True Cost says “The fast fashion risk is carried by the ones who are paid so few! In 2013, 3 of the worst disasters of fashion have arrived. Why? Because everybody wants cheap product and good price! All of us should take the responsibility for what happened. We can’t go on ignoring everyone’s lives.”
The question The True Cost asks is « Why is this enormous industry unable to come up for these people? » Fair Trade seems to be a valuable response to this, but the topic is so much wider, we need to consider the hazardous chemicals mostly put into the products that threaten directly the 60 million garment workers out there, of which 85 % are women! We need to consider the soil! We need to go away from Monsanto products that amongst others pollute whole regions, and lead to birth defects, cancers, mental illnesses. 70-80 % of kids have physical handicaps! All savings from the workers go into healthcare! We can’t continue to close our eyes to it!
Did you know that only in India, Monsanto has lead to 300’000 suicides of farmers who just can’t pay their debts anymore? For Monsanto, it is easy: “If you don’t pay back our seed” that leads to dependency and which are 17’000 more expensive, “we take your land!”
We need to learn that it is not owning staff that makes us happy, consumption wont’ solve our problems! it is contribution, caring, seeing the one in front of us!
Did you know that the average western person throws away 15 kg of textile each year? And that only 10 % out of it gets sold? Much of the rest lands on textile mountains!
At the end of the film, a worker woman says under tears: “It is hard work. We must leave our children to our families and see them only once or twice a year. Clothes are produced with blood, many workers die. I want that nobody wears something that has been produced with blood. I want that the owners take more care for us.”
We need to look at it, we need to consume differently, we need to take into consideration the companies that do a respectful job, which are caring for the ones working for us! We need to cling to brands who do a serious job out there!
Solutions by Andrew Morgan:
– Let’s stop buying things that are not good for us! As customers, we are co-responsible for what happens in these countries.
– We give out money we don’t have to stuff we don’t need to people we don’t like.
– We have arrived on a turning point! We are entering a revolution of values! Let’s support the workers and defend their rights, the benefice be shared, it makes us so much more happy.
– Let’s celebrate the creative power of people.
– Let’s look as land as the very base of life.
– All consumer say it’s not acceptable today!
– Too much impact on millions of people worldwide and common resources!
– Will we continue to have a blind eye ?
– Let’s remember that everything we wear was touched by human hands!
– Maybe we can start here, with clothing!
