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eco-sustainable/fair trade clothing

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The extra letter:

--- Quote from: a pack of wolves on 30 Apr 2008, 20:15 ---Those No Sweat chucks are nice but they're not too hard-wearing, I've been through a bunch of pairs.

--- End quote ---

Weird, I got two pairs of No Sweat chuck ripoffs (2 for the price of one) from the Oxfam shop. I'm still on the first pair and after wearing them every day for almost a year now and they'd look new if they weren't kinda grubby from being worn constantly.

Patrick:
My sweat-Chucks have lasted almost a year of running, climbing, hiking, jumping, constant walking, washing, and various other forms of hard wear.

Sweat - 1
Hippies - 0

fatty:
I have a few brief comments to make, just out of interest. And maybe to play devil's advocate.

Ethical practice in clothing manufacture is a really big thing. The industry is in a terrible situation and the extent of the problems are deep-seated and age-old. Sweatshop manufacture is something that is very ill-defined. That is, what do you call a sweatshop, how do you deal with them, does boycotting work and who decides these things?
Having known people who have worked in factories, worked piecemeal and such, I think that in a lot of cases, factories in asia are not as we see them. And though the conditions are harsh and the pay is poor, it is pay none-the-less and often a rather standard rate. Sure, you can boycott the designer clothing brand, but it won't change these people's jobs and livelihoods.
An ueducated worker in a not-so-developed part of asia is going to be working in a factory, a shop, a farm - whatever sustains them. If their factory is closed down, the will have to go find work in another one. This reflects millions of lives of people who make your nike shoes and converse chucks.

A child in a sweatshop, or a person who has be transported from their family to work in a place unknown which locks them up [lookup up Saipan, for example] is a really terrible thing to hear about. I think most would consider that completely unethical. What is to be done with this is not something I can't answer, so I won't comment.

I'm not diminishing the problems of sweatshops or ethics, or drawing a line between them. Nor am I passing judgement on boycotting brands or personal ethical decisions. After all, I can't say I act ethically myself in this respect. It's just food for thought; because I don't like to see things over-simplified for convenience's sake.

--

Secondly:
Ecological sustainablity is an issue which is too often seen 'tacked-on' to products. Whether they claim to use organic materials or harm no animals or whatever, I think we should be more wary as to what is eco-friendly and what is not.
The biggest impacts on your ecological footprint will probably be the food you eat [especially meat], the travelling you do, and the kind of home you live in and products you consume.
Say you used wore all cotton and hemp clothing: The cotton and hemp needed to be grown, which is an expensive process and uses fertilisers, land and other such things. It is probably transported pretty far, this is going to take fuel. But it will bio-degrade after you use it, and it's a renewable source.
If you wore synthetic materials: That material would include synthesised stuff such as plastics [nylon] - which mostly come from petroleum. However, the petro-chemical industry only consumes like 1% of all petroleum beng pumped. So when peak oil comes along, petro-chemicals might get squeezed, but they will probably still survive.
The price for which you get those clothings, cotton or nylon, may depend on how they were produced; who knows how many people you are supporting every time you go shopping.

[I'm really tired. Apologies if this makes no sense. But now that I've written it, it would be a waste to not post it]

Lunchbox:
Man I don't care about that hippie stuff. I just want to look a little bit unique.

Barmymoo:

--- Quote from: fatty on 01 May 2008, 07:43 ---If their factory is closed down, the will have to go find work in another one.

--- End quote ---

This is an excellent point. It's not a nice idea that the clothes we wear are made by people who work in horrible conditions for not much money, but surely it's a worse idea that they would not be working at all.

I'm not sure what the alternative to boycotting is. Perhaps petitioning governments to do something about terrible conditions in factories? Personally, and I don't know very much about it so I could be totally off track here, I think that it's more important to get medicines and education into third world countries, rather than taking trade out of it. Poverty is only a serious problem when the necessities of life aren't available cheaply and conveniently.

I haven't really thought about this issue or researched it in great depth, but it's something to think about. I'd say that trying to do something about exploitation is a very good thing in theory, but if everyone suddenly stops buying from non-ethical companies it will, in the short term, make the situation worse.

That obviously isn't a good argument for not buying ethical, because it's next to impossible that everyone would suddenly choose to only buy fair trade. But it's something to think about, no?

Alternatively, let's all make clothes out of leaves like they did in the Bible times!

And a good place to buy stuffs is here if you're in the UK.

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