The Garments Industry and its impact on Modern Slavery and the Environment

On the 24th April 2013, the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh, which housed five garment factories, collapsed claiming the lives of 1,132 people and injuring more than 2,500 making the incident one of the worst industrial accidents on record. These disasters awoke the world to the poor labour and systematic human rights violations faced by workers every day in the ready-made garment industry. For some of the lowest wages in the world, millions of people work in unsafe conditions with a high incidence of work-related accidents, as well as occupational diseases. Almost all of these factories do not meet standards required by building and construction legislation; as a result, deaths from fire incidents and partial building collapses are common.

Humane working rights are still far from reality for the vast majority of workers and their families in the industry in the absence of labour inspections and appropriate enforcement mechanisms. The fashion industry is prevalent in the promotion of Modern Slavery, garments being the second highest product at risk of being made by modern slaves.

Modern Slavery is described as “situations where one person has taken away another person’s freedom- their freedom to control their body, their freedom to choose, to refuse certain work or to stop working- so that they can be exploited” according to a definition given by the Walk Free Foundation. There is no legal definition of Modern Slavery, though it involves crimes such as forced labour (either not free to stop working or to leave their place of work), human trafficking and the exploitation of children. It also incorporates Debt Bondage – where victim’s services are pledged to pay off excessive debt but the victim’s services are not applied to liquidate the debt and/or the length and nature of the services are not limited and defined. Walk Free’s Global Slavery Index 2018 estimates 40.3 million people live in modern slavery globally with 24.9 million victims work in forced labour and one in four victims are children.

Although countries with the greatest involvement in Modern Slavery are located in Asia and Africa, high-GDP countries are ignoring their culpability for the human rights violations according to the Global Slavery Index 2018. For example, it is estimated that the UK imports roughly £18 billion worth of products that are at risk of supporting modern slavery; many of these products are from UK brands that are manufactured abroad.

Syrian-born artist Sara Shamma’s exhibition ‘Modern Slavery’ shown in King’s College London in 2019 articulates the experiences of trafficked women around the world, including women and children abducted by the Islamic State and her own experiences as a domestic slave. She became uneasy to the many images of modern slaves showed their faces censored and hands bound in rope or wire which distanced the viewer from them. Slaves became abstract and no longer human which, as a survivor herself, was offensive. She carried out in-depth interviews with ex-slaves to capture how they rebuilt their lives after escaping and created a series of images exploring the lack of family support and challenges of moving on.

A large portion of the exhibition is a collection of oil sketches of the devouring male gaze, unnamed men who are suggestive of human traffickers. Their faces are formed in a loose sketch which dehumanises them whilst their eyes are vivid and piercing; their direct eye contact unnerves the viewer. One of the most complex pieces ‘Double Motherhood’ shows three generations of women embracing one another. The eldest woman appears to be malevolent and insinuates that the matriarch is responsible for enslaving her vulnerable family; exploitation of family members is a common occurrence.

Not only does the garment industry promote human exploitation, it is also a major contributor to global pollution generating 1.2 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases each year. However, the impact of textiles and the garment industry on the environment go beyond factory emissions. The production and distribution of crops, fibres and garments all amass to water, air and soil pollution. Dyes containing toxic chemicals (mercury, lead, and arsenic) are dumped in waterways which poses as a danger to aquatic life and people living close to the waterways; contamination eventually reaches the sea and spreads around the globe.

Wood-based fibres like rayon and viscose are products of major deforestation. Every year, thousands of hectares of endangered and ancient forests are cut down and replaced by plantations of trees used to these fabrics, is threatening the ecosystem and indigenous communities.

Polyester fabrics shed plastic microfibres when washed in a domestic washing machines which make their way into drinking water and the food chains of aquatic life and subsequently into our food chain. Synthetic fibres like polyester are non-biodegradable so will sit in landfill for up to 200 years; sometimes landfill waste is burnt releasing emissions into the atmosphere.

Chemicals are used during fibre production, dyeing, bleaching and wet processing garments with some of these substances being harmful to the consumer. The heavy use of chemicals in cotton farming is causing diseases and premature death among cotton farmers, along with massive freshwater and ocean water pollution and soil degradation.

MassArt graduate Erin Robertson uses fashion to communicate global change. After learning about the ‘Pacific Trash Vortex’, an accumulation of marine debris in the Pacific Ocean roughly the size of Texas, Robertson was distressed to find that besides polluting the sea and beaches it was also responsible for killing wildlife beneath the water as well as many birds. Her final thesis ‘Plashion’ for MassArt addressed plastic pollution in oceans by creating garments from manipulated plastic bags that were then embellished and embroidered into. One of the garments featured laser-cut plastic that formed coral-like projections in many shades of blue that faded to white to emulate the decay of corals caused by human-made pollution.

However instead of presenting the collection on a runway, models wearing the garments took to the streets armed with ‘selfless sticks’ (a play on ‘selfie stick’) to pick up litter. People on the street passing by met the models to talk about the project aim - to ask people to turn outside the problems of their immediate personal universe to look beyond at the problems facing our planet and reduce their consumption of single-use plastics.

Robertson later expanded on this concept in her collection ‘Sexual Helix’ which focused on the sea creatures living beneath the ocean and ensured all of the plastic she used in embellishments were tracible to sustainable sources and were recyclable at the end of their lifetime. Creating garments slowly and sustainably is important to Robertson as the fast fashion industry is heavily responsible for polluting the oceans with dyes and chemicals.

Fashion will never be a completely sustainable industry. However, the harmful production habits would not be nearly as harmful if high-GPD countries controlled the scale of the consumption habits and where more informed about the companies they are buying from.

Fast fashion is an approach of fashion design, creation and marketing that emphasizes high volumes of low-cost clothing moving rapidly from the drawing boards to large retail stores. Since the prices on these items are so low, they encourage consumers to buy en masse without thinking too much about their purchases which results in retailers majorly overproducing. Consumers are buying clothes they do not want or need just because they’re inexpensive; causing major clothing waste going to landfill. By retailers moving the manufacturing overseas to impoverished counties with weak or non-existent labour and environmental regulations, and using low-quality textiles and dyes, fast fashion companies are able to mass produce cheap clothing to satisfy short-lived consumer fashion trends.

In recent years, there has been a burgeoning dialogue about the cost of Fast Fashion in politics, marches and protests. Initiatives in favour of sustainable fashion, such as the Ethical Trading Initiative and the Sustainable Clothing Action Plan have gained traction. Most importantly, consumers are starting to think more seriously about the purchases they make establishing a growing movement towards ‘Slow Fashion.’

To lower our own individual global impact consumers can buy clothes from more transparent brands who have resources showing their ethical production, buy garments made in countries with much stricter environmental regulations and choose organic fibres that do not require chemical treatments and have a low water consumption. Companies have made accessing the origin and production of their garments difficult to their consumers in order to conceal unethical work practises. However, online resources such as ‘Good On You’ are documenting and rating the global impact and ethics of individual brands for consumers, so that they can make more informed decisions from what brands they purchase from.