Category Archives: Responsibility

Resources // NPR’s Planet Money Makes a ‘Simple’ T-shirt

Planet Money showing just how little the industry has changed.

What would you like the people who buy this t-shirt to know about you?

Doris Restrepo, Garment Worker, Medellín, Colombia:

What is behind the T-shirt: It’s a world.

NPR’s Planet Money has released a five chapter series on the production of a conventional t-shirt. This series is an excellent educational resource and is perfect for ‘flipping’ into a short course on our international fashion system. The videos and accompanying articles would also make a fantastic addition to any of SA’s educational resources, particularly the SAGE module where we traced the international production of a hypothetical t-shirt from the farm to the landfill and beyond into it’s second-hand life.

Introducing: Planet Money Makes A T-Shirt from NPR on Vimeo.

Inspired by Pietra Rivoli‘s The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade, Planet Money actually hired the Georgetown Professor as an advisor for this series. Needless to say, I highly recommend the The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy as further reading to help gain even deeper insight into the value chain of a ‘simple’ t-shirt.

This series is an absolute must for anyone interested in the fashion supply chain as a whole and the political, economic, and social issues that surround the production of clothing.

Planet Money Makes a T-Shirt: The world behind a simple shirt, in five chapters

WATCH // Handprint, a short film to change wearer perceptions on fashion systems

Handprint – Behind the Scenes is a beautiful short film directed by Mary Nighy, commissioned by Livia Firth, Founder and Creative Director of the Green Carpet Challenge.

A learning tool, the film is a great way to generate in class/studio discussions surrounding the individuals working within each stage of garment supply/value chains.

“Many people’s hands touch our clothes before we wear them. If we could see or speak to those people, we might think about them and our clothes quite differently. Handprint […] imagines what it would be like if we could connect to the people who make our clothes, and encourages us to remember them.” (Mary Nighy)

Click here for details

Preventing Workplace Violence: Fair Wear Foundation reports preliminary project results

You might recall this post from 2011 announcing a grant had been awarded to the Fair Wear Foundation for work in India and Bangladesh, in partnership with SAVE and Cividep, in India, and the AMRF Society and Awaj Foundation, in Bangladesh.

Today, November 25^th, is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. To mark the occasion, the FWF has released preliminary results from the project, Preventing Workplace Violence.

From the report:

One of the most telling statistics found in the project’s baseline research regards perceptions of yelling: only 20% of managers thought there was a lot of yelling in factories; 60% of workers thought it was common. Workers also reported that the vast majority of problems are with their immediate supervisors, who can change their behaviour when senior managers are on the factory floor. There is also a perception among many managers that while women may be yelled at, or occasionally hit, the environment is still preferable to other options available to poor uneducated women – like prostitution. (pg. 10)

An interesting read; check it out here.

READ // Mend + Transform + Renew (re)imagination of Pre and Post Consumer Waste, by Katherine Soucie

SA friend and colleague Katherine Soucie has recently published her research, Mend + Transform + Renew (re)imagination of Pre and Post Consumer Waste. This important body of work is broken-up into five strands: (S)ITUATE, (E)XPAND, (A)CTIVATE, (M)END, and (S)PINOFF.

Students may be particularly interested in the Glossary. Check it out, and please share within/throughout your respective networks. The work is available online, but is also available in both soft and hard cover for school libraries or personal collections, etc.

Katherine is a Visiting Lecturer in Textiles at the Welch School of Art at Georgia State University.

READ // Manufacturing governance: global norms and policy diffusion – the case of the Chinese apparel industry, by Nadira Lamrad

I am so thrilled to share with you that Nadira’s article “Manufacturing governance: global norms and policy diffusion – the case of the Chinese apparel industry” has been published in the Journal of Asian Public Policy, Volume 6, Issue 2, 2013.

Special Issue: Market Building in Asia: Standards Setting, Policy Diffusion, and the Globalization of Market Norms

You will likely have to access the article via your university library, and access it you must! Below you’ll find the article abstract and keywords. Please share this important research with your networks.

If you have any questions about the article, or about Nadira’s research in general, please do not hesitate to get in touch with her.

ATTEND // Eco Fashion Week, Oct. 6-10: Vancouver

For the first time in 7 seasons, SA won’t be in Vancouver to support our friends at Eco Fashion Week. As a result, we’re really counting on our Vancouver readers to represent and support the event conference sessions! This season will see Mountain Equipment Co-op, Bluesign Technologies, OEKO-TEX® and Ford Motor Company speak on various topics relating to responsible fashion (session times to be confirmed).

If you missed our talk at EFWV 06, you can still watch it – all of the sessions were livestreamed.

I’ve uploaded the PowerPoint to our SlideShare account, and included the transcript below, along with a link to the sessions (click on the image)

Sorry we’ll be missing the event this time around, but we’ll be there in spirit!

April 21st Vancouver Eco Fashion Week from socialalterations

Presentation Slide Notes:

Slide 1 // Myriam Laroche, and the Vancouver ECO Fashion Week team, thank you for inviting me to speak today. Guests in attendance, thank you for your attention. And to the online audience joining us via livestream, welcome.

Social Alterations is an online education lab that myself and Nadira Lamrad developed almost four years ago.

Slide 2 // We are a free industry recourse, offering study guides, lesson plans, and learning modules, with independent research, case studies and reports for responsible fashion education.

Side 3 // We work to create comprehensive programming in creative ways. Our SAGE module, for example, uses Google Earth to take learners on a virtual tour of an example lifecycle of a hypothetical conventional cotton t-shirt, by embedding the interactive curricula directly into the program.

Slide 4 // We’re exposed to so many negative events and imagery…

Slide 5 // Social Alterations is not innocent here… we’ve covered many stories showing such imagery, such as factory fires in South East Asia, or forced child labour in cotton production, for example.

Slide 6 // Do not let the issues overwhelm you to the point that you are paralyzed and unable to take action.

Slide 7 // It becomes easy to lose sight of what’s important and the positive steps being taken. This year, we want to highlight positive action that we can take to move beyond that paralyzing negativity.

Slide 8 // There are a lot of exciting campaigning groups that you can join to showcase individual actions. There are countless petitions for you to sign against a whole host of issues: child labour, animal cruelty, clean water, the list goes on. Or you can take personal actions that demonstrate your values to your own network and community.

Slide 9 // Last year, Nadira and I took Labour Behind the Label’s 6 Items Challenge.

Slide 10 // We had to wear the same 6 items of clothing for 4 weeks to raise awareness on the importance of decent work for garment workers. People still approach us to talk about this challenge. It helped us bring the conversation home.

Slide 11 // These individual actions count within the movement, they play an important role, but we need to expand the circle and create that critical mass. Unfortunately, responsible fashion is still a niche industry within the business.

There is a lot of interesting work being done within this niche market. Like the work that Wes Baker and colleagues are doing at debrand, and the Canadian Textile Recovery Effort. The work that ecofashion week is doing, along with other groups, like member based Fashion Takes Action, that are working to make responsible fashion consumption become the norm in Canada. And of course the work that all of you are doing every day. But to achieve systemic change, we need to organize.

Slide 12 // Let’s start now. We’ve got a pop-up photo booth here today, where we are challenging you to share what you stand for and articulate your values clearly. We’ll compile the images and share them online so that you can see the diversity of values that fit under the sustainability umbrella, and learn what matters most to you, Canadian sustainable fashion leaders….But then what?

Slide 13 // More and more we are seeing global industry players come together to formalize sustainability networks. These networks can be global, like the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, for example. Or localized, like the Hong Kong based Sustainable Fashion Business Consortium (SFBC).

As I have mentioned, we already have groups working tirelessly on various pieces of the sustainability puzzle – waste recovery, responsible consumption practices, responsible education – we need to formalize a network where we come together to create and manage our own best practices to achieve the systemic change we looking for..

We need viable alternatives to the system we have in place right now. And we can’t wait for the government to take up these issues. We have to be active as a community to make sure that responsible fashion has a seat at the table, when our government finally addresses sustainable systems in Canada.

In the end, the whole point of coming together for events like this, industry conferences or academic lectures….is to learn and share ideas on how to create that systemic change, but it’s not going to happen if we don’t carry the conversation outside of these meetings to start building a roadmap for that systemic change, to transform the industry from the inside out. Let’s be clear that by industry I mean the entire fashion industry.

These are important values in Canada – Human Rights, labor rights, sustainable communities, environmental stewardship, cultural diversity – all issues that fit under the sustainability umbrella. It’s time that Canada leads the way.

Slide 14 // There is power in numbers, so let’s make it happen.

While you’re at the popup photobooth, talk to us if you’re interested in being involved in the first meeting to discuss what a “Canadian Responsible Fashion Consortium” would look like. We promise to facilitate that first meeting and we can move forward from there.

Resources // Fashion Signals, and the Hoodie

In the wake of this week’s verdict out of Florida on the case of Trayvon Martin, I have (as I am sure many of you have as well) been thinking a lot about fashion and apparel signals, both intentional and unintentional. Learned signals can transform perceptions, but they vary with context.

On the subject of fashion signals, I have in the past turned to work such as Wolfgang Pesendorfer’s “Response to ‘Fashion Cycles in Economics’” and Judith Donath’s “Note on Fashion” or “Signals, Truth & Design”.

With respect to the case of Trayvon Martin, Threadbared have published a piece titled “The Hoodie as a Sign, Screen, Expectation, and Force,” which includes an excerpt from in-progress research. I’ve embedded a video below where Mimi Thi Nguyen, Threadbared Co-Founder and Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, speaks briefly at the 7:42 mark on her research, but of course the whole video is interesting and recommended.

Further, a 2010 research collaboration between Otto von Busch, the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, London College of Fashion and Konstnarsnamnden produced “Neighbourhoodies: courageous community, colours, blazing bling and deﬁant delight.” More information on this project is available here.

Really looking forward to Mimi Thi Nguyen’s reasearch on this.

Image Source: CC License, Neighbourhoodies

Call for Papers // Ixel Moda, July 15, Colombia

If you can, jump on this call for papers – proposals are due tomorrow, July 15^th, for Ixel Moda’s fashion congress to be held in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia – August 21-23, 2013.

Proposals will be accepted in English, Spanish and Portuguese for 20 minute presentations, as well as for participation in three 90-minute, interdisciplinary roundtable discussions:

Themes for the roundtables:

What are the challenges to the future of fashion studies? (the format of design schools, collaborations among professors, etc.)
What, how, and with what criteria should we conduct research? (methodologies, grants and funding, professional training, public scholarship, etc.)
What and how should we teach fashion studies? (teaching and learning styles, career tracks, curricular development, methodologies in curricular design, etc.)

(Source: Ixel Moda, Call for Papers)

Thank you to Dr. Regina Root, Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies and Core Faculty of Environmental Science and Policy and Sharpe Community Scholars at The College of William and Mary, for sending the information.

Click on the English or Spanish call for papers below to download full details.

Sandblasting! Part Deux

Killer Jeans. A campaign by Labour Behind the Label and the Clean Clothes Campaign.

The sandblasting saga continues as a completely unnecessary denim distressing technique persists. This despite the fact that around 40 brands banned the use of sandblasting in their supply chains as part of the successful campaign spearheaded by the Clean Clothes Campaign and Labour Behind the Label.

What’s the big deal with sandblasting?

If sandblasting is done under sub par conditions, it almost inevitably results in a lung disease called silicosis. This is not a new disease. It has been well documented and is completely preventable with good ventilation and safety equipment. The disease develops when people inhale crystalline silica, a basic component of sand, which then causes lung inflammation and scarring potentially leading to death. In an article published in Occupational Medicine, Akgun et.al. (2006) investigated the prevalence of silicosis in Turkey’s denim blasting industry and concluded that

“The case series we present here is alarming in that it demonstrates that silicosis, a long-recognized but preventable occupational disease can still occur in previously unrecognized occupations. The occupation of sandblasting denim jeans is relatively new and has developed as a result of changes in fashion in developed countries and the demand for worn-looking jeans. Tragically, this condition has occurred in very young men with an average of only 3 years in this particular occupation. Lack of awareness of the condition and the dangers of silica and inadequate protective measures have already had fatal results. Silicosis is a well-known disease and its clinical forms have been well characterized. The classical form of silicosis usually follows one or more decades of exposure. However, in contrast to the chronic or classical form of silicosis, the accelerated and acute forms result from intense exposure to high levels of respirable dust that contain a significant proportion of silica, and these develop after much shorter duration.”

I highly encourage you to read this short journal article to grasp the seriousness and the severity of this disease particularly when it comes to textile production.

So what else is new?

Last night, Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM), the Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC), War on Want and the IHLO (ITUC/GUF Hong Kong Liaison Office) released an incriminating report entitled Breathless for Blue Jeans: Health Hazards in China’s Denim Factories, which uncovers the continued use of sandblasting in China’s denim manufacturing industry. The investigation by SACOM was limited to six denim factories in Guangdong province (just across the border from Hong Kong) which some may think is not a representative sample. However, it is important to keep in mind that China’s textile manufacturing industry is concentrated in two areas, one of which is the Pearl River Delta which primarily covers Guangdong province, a hub for denim – around 50% of global production (CCC et.al. 2013. p. 10). Xintang county alone is responsible for “over 260 million pairs of jeans a year, equivalent to 60% of China’s total jeans production, and 40% of the jeans sold in the US each year (Greenpeace 2010).” The factories investigated include two major garment producers with thousands of workers; one of which supplies around 4% of denim sold in the US (CCC et.al. 2013, p. 10). The other 4 factories include a smaller production facility and three subcontractors.

The report points out some alarming trends. Although the prevalence of sandblasting has declined between 2009 and 2012, thanks in part to increased consumer awareness and united action on the brand side, promises to eliminate sandblasting have been matched by evasive maneuvers on the manufacturing side:

“One factory reportedly continued its sandblasting on the sly, surreptitiously dismantling the sandblasting machinery and hiding it in advance of inspections…Factories also concealed their sandblasting units behind locked doors and had increased security for these units, limiting access solely to the sandblasters (p. 11).”

In interviews, SACOM found that workers were ordered to dismantle and hide sandblasting equipment in advance of factory inspections and audits, which was then reassembled once auditors exit the premises (p. 13). Furthermore, at one factory, younger workers began to reject sandblasting positions. The management responded by offering a higher wage for the position (p. 12). Therefore, although some workers are aware of the health risks associated with sandblasting they still take the job to secure a higher salary (p. 13). SACOM also outlines the emergence of new techniques designed to replicate the effects of sandblasting such as chemical spraying, bleaching and manual polishing and sanding. These techniques are themselves risky especially when performed without adequate safety equipment (pp. 14-18).

A worker manually polishing jeans in a Chinese factory. Justin Jin/SACOM. (CCC et.al. 2013)

SACOM’s findings highlight the importance of unannounced audits with off-site worker interviews in rooting out evasive activities in the supply chain. The report also reminds us that it is essential to remain vigilant when it comes to occupational health and safety especially when new techniques are adopted. Finally, there is a real need to instill a culture of safety beyond the first tier of production and into the lower tiers of the supply chain. This is a major problem in production. For example, look at the photo on page 17 of the report. See the worker smoking his cigarette while spraying the jeans with potassium permanganate? Often times, even when workers are trained to use safety equipment, they still ignore these requirements because the equipment either hampers their production speed, or gets in the way, or is uncomfortable, or they’re not used to it etc… Training is not enough. There has to be a concerted effort by all stakeholders involved to change the way people think about workplace safety and the costs associated with it. It is truly sad that evasion and the expectation that it will happen is an industry norm, leading to supply chain relationships built on suspicion and policing. It’s time for systemic change that aims to transform norms and values related to workplace safety. The view that workers are dispensable production inputs is antiquated, to say the least.

References:

Akgun, M., Mirici, A., Ucar, E. Y., Kantarci, M., Araz, O., & Gorguner, M. (2006). Silicosis in Turkish denim sandblasters. Occupational Medicine, 56(8), 554-558.

Clean Clothes Campaign, SACOM, IHLO, & War on Want. (2013). Breathless for Blue Jeans: Health hazards in China’s denim factories.

Greenpeace. (2010). The Dirty Secret Behind Jeans and Bras.

READ // Beyond the Boycott, Gay W. Seidman

The #Buy Stage in our SAGE module tackles this issue. Above (left) is a screenshot from the module. We encourage any individual, buyer or company serious about engaging in any boycott to research and measure associated risks involved on the ground for workers.

Beyond the Boycott, by Gay W. Seidman, is just one suggested reading that captures and frames the complexity of this issue.