The True Cost (2015) Movie Script
On the clothes we wear,
the people who make these clothes,
and the impact it is having on our world.
It is a story about greed and fear,
power and poverty.
It is complex, because it extends throughout the world.
But it is also simple,
revealing how connected we are to the many hearts and hands
behind our clothes.
I went into this story without having any experience in fashion,
starting with only a few simple questions.
What I've discovered,
It has forever changed how I think about the clothes I wear,
and my hope is that you do the same thing happen.
Perhaps you can begin by saying your name
and he is talking about how it was that started this.
My name is Lucy Siegle.
I am a journalist and presenter based in the UK,
and I've been obsessed, consumed
the environmental and social impacts of the fashion industry
for about a decade.
I like everything from clothing.
I love poetry, I love the fabric,
I love the colors, textures,
I love how you feel.
It is the skin that we choose.
Well, I had the classic huge closet,
clothes everywhere,
bags continually coming into my house,
every day, every other day with another item
and I never had anything to wear.
I could never put together a coherent whole.
We communicate who we are
to some extent through clothing.
This is, again, throughout history.
We trends in court,
and Marie Antoinette with these huge hats.
It has always been our personal communication in many ways.
That's what interests me,
which it is essentially part of what we want to communicate
about ourselves.
We used to have a system, a system of fashion
where people went to the parades,
so did spring, summer, autumn, winter,
and it worked like clockwork for many years.
Well, forget it, throw it out the window.
That has absolutely nothing to do with today's fashion industry.
It has been reinvented.
The change moves ruthlessly
to a way of producing
actually only deals
the interests of big business.
Young, she did not give much importance
anything other than the price of buying clothes,
usually choosing in the style or a good deal.
Looking back, I knew for a long time
most of our clothes are made here in the United States.
As recently as the '60s, still we did 95% of our clothes.
Today, we only about 3%
and the other 97% is outsourced
in developing countries worldwide.
I have been in business for over nine years.
In terms of scale, we have about 25 000 people
only what is manufacturing garments.
We produce one of every six shirts sold in the US. UU.
If you go to a store,
and compare the price of an item in the last 20 years,
you will discover that there are actually deflation product
that is, the price has dropped over time.
Now, our costs have decreased? Absolutely.
Our costs have gone up.
The more we have outsourced production,
have become cheaper prices of clothes we buy,
I give way to an entirely new model, known as Fast Fashion,
the overnight, transforming how the clothes are bought and sold.
The latest H & M store on 5th Avenue in Manhattan
It is the largest in the history of the company,
and one of the many new stores planned in the country.
This is part of a revolution in trade,
Fast Fashion.
Instead of two seasons per year,
practically we have 52 seasons a year.
So we have something new every week.
And fast fashion has created this,
primarily to sell more products.
We love TopShop!
You can get this metallic fringed skirt for $ 39 at Joe Fresh
a new store in the city.
With a little more attractive to cost-conscious buyers prices.
American consumers fully captured fashion H & M,
and we already know that Americans
They are very price oriented.
If you combine these two together, with fashion and price,
then you have the recipe.
A Japanese clothing retailer is leaving
fast and furious mark here in the US. UU.
The price has dropped.
The way to do that product has changed completely.
And at some point one must ask:
"Where does it end?"
The global market is a place
we export the work to be performed
in any conditions we want,
products and then come back to me,
so cheap you can throw without thinking about it.
JOHN HILARY, DIRECTOR EJECUTIVO
DE WAR ON WAN Globalized production basically means
that all manufacturing of goods
It has been outsourced to low-cost economies,
particularly where wages are very low and remain low.
And what that means is that those at the top of the value chain,
They can choose where products are made,
and may change if, for example, a factory says:
"We can not do it so cheap."
The brand will say, "Well, no longer will go to you.
Let's move to another site that is cheaper. "
Dacca, Bangladesh
In the West they say: "everyday low prices".
So, every day, causing me difficulties
and he caused them to my employees, and it works.
Competing stores are competing there.
When stores come to us for ordering and negotiate,
They tell us: "Look, that particular store
this shirt is selling for $ 5,
so I have to sell it at $ 4.
You'll have to reduce your price. "
So we reduce it.
Then comes another store saying:
"Hey, they are selling it at $ 4.
The target price is $ 3, if you can do it for $ 3,
You get the business, otherwise you do not get it ".
As desperately we want the business,
and we have no other options, okay.
We are always trying to survive, actually.
In the end, something ends up giving.
Or the product price has to rise
or manufacturers have to close,
or cut costs to operate.
Cut costs and ignore safety measures
It was accepted as part of doing business in this new model,
until one morning in April,
when an event, on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh,
It took a hidden side of fashion headlines.
State media in Bangladesh
say an eight-story building collapsed near the capital Dhaka,
killing more than 70 people.
Rescue crews work around the clock,
looking through the rubble, trying to find
many survivors as possible.
They have hundreds dead,
hundreds still may be buried alive,
and officials in Bangladesh say
the factory owners ignored the order to evacuate.
400 dead, yet it is believed that hundreds are missing.
Garment workers in Bangladesh pay the price of cheap clothes.
A large crowd has gathered near the building,
many families searching for their loved ones,
and they say you can still hear people screaming
under the rubble, crying for help.
Many are simply losing hope.
From where he was working,
I approached the stairs.
When I got them
the building collapsed and my legs were trapped.
The side walls fell on my legs.
I realized that I could not get my legs, I gave up.
I came to mind hundreds of thoughts.
I could not even mourn.
Anyone who, like me,
I had written about the problems in the supply chain,
particularly for Fast Fashion,
and he tried to articulate
how he was moving risk
the most vulnerable and lowest paid.
You try to articulate it, but you could never imagine
that there would be so catastrophic illustration
what you were trying to say.
And Rana Square for me was like a horror story.
Two weeks after the disaster,
and the death toll amounts to the shocking figure of 931,
making it the worst disaster textile history.
I think one of the most deeply impressive things
Rana on disaster Square was the news
the workers had already pointed to the direction
cracks in the building.
They had already noted
that the building was structurally unsafe,
and yet they were forced to re-enter.
Many survivors wonder
how they could be forced to return to work
when management knew the cracks in the building,
and concerns of workers on the day of the collapse.
Many clothes in US stores is made in Bangladesh
by workers who earn about $ 2 a day.
Last month, a textile factory collapsed,
killing more than 1,000 people,
and a few months before, a fire in a factory left more than 100 dead.
And as bodies are recovered from the rubble,
another factory in Bangladesh this morning caught fire,
leaving eight dead.
Disaster stories in garment factories
They monopolized the news,
the fact is that now three of the four worst tragedies
in fashion history they had occurred in the past year.
While growing death toll amounted profits generated.
The following year disaster Rana Square,
It was the most profitable sector for all time.
The global fashion industry
It is now an annual industry nearly three trillion dollars.
Bangladesh is already the second largest
exporter of clothing after China.
How? Well, unlike some of its competitors,
Bangladeshi manufacturing is still very cheap,
and unions have limited power.
The country grabbed the lower end of the value chain.
1000 Those poor girls, were killed
because no one cared, no one will give a shit.
Just they wanted cheap price and good profit.
It should not be.
Everyone should take responsibility for these girls.
it's like that.
It could happen again.
Sorry, but it's not just the price pressure.
It is something ...
It is to ignore the lives of others.
It's not ... should not ... it's not right.
We are in the XXI century.
We live in a global world,
And just we ignore the lives of others?
How it is possible?
This huge and predatory industry
which it is generating many benefits
for a handful of people,
Why is unable
to support their million workers properly?
Why you are not able to ensure their safety?
We are talking about basic human rights.
Why is unable to ensure that
while it is generating these huge profits?
Is it because it does not work properly?
That is my question.
Lucy's question sounds like the most obvious.
But instead of answering, wherever I looked, I found people
constantly justify the cost
by economic benefits generated.
So this production of low wages, so-called "sweatshops"
is not only the least bad option for the workers,
It is part of a process that raises living standards
and leads to higher wages and better working conditions wages.
The immediate causes of development are physical capital, technology
and human capital and worker skills.
When they workshops to those countries,
the three elements bring these workers
and begin to put that process in motion.
Can sweatshops be really good?
Yes, those terrible, horrible workshops.
The very name "sweatshop"
conjures up horrific images of poor people and children,
suffering in Third World countries, enslaved in appalling conditions
making products for us, selfish Americans.
And thanks. Good!
Does it bother me that people are working in a factory,
making clothes for Americans,
or European?
Or they are ... What so spend their lives?
Is that what you're asking?
Yeah right.
No. I mean, they are doing work.
They could be doing much worse.
This is live television, and ask
defining the sweatshops.
We must be very clear
what we talked about at the beginning.
We're talking about places with poor working conditions
from the standpoint of normal Americans,
low wages for our level, places where children work,
that can violate the labor law of the country,
but there are key characteristics of the type,
of which I want to talk tonight, Kennedy,
And there are places where people choose to work,
certainly a number of other bad choices.
I mean, there is nothing inherently dangerous
in sewing clothes.
Then we started
with a relatively safe industry.
It's not like coal mining, mining or natural gas,
or a lot of things I could ... that are much more dangerous.
Work on these workshops seem horrible working conditions and salaries
for anyone in the West who have enough money
to have a TV and watch your video.
But we must remember that the alternatives available
for these workers are not our alternatives.
They are much worse than our alternatives,
and they are usually much worse
who work in its factory worker.
Low wages, unsafe conditions and disasters in factories
They are justified by the need to create jobs
for people without alternatives.
This story has become the narrative,
used to explain how the fashion industry now
Worldwide.
But there are those who believe
there must be a better way
to manufacture and sell clothing
generating economic growth,
but causing havoc.
So I do not know yet
how long has this embroidery.
Do you think you can ask about Santo ...?
How long has that whole panel?
I guess because it was then seen in the breakdown of press FAB,
but it will be great to know, right?
Safia Minney am. I am the founder and CEO of People Tree,
and People Tree is a fashion brand of fair trade,
It began over 20 years ago in Japan.
We worried that we had too navy.
How about now?
Because we put more black in PV14
and it worked very, very well
in collaboration with Orla design.
Do we have enough prints in black in the collection?
Well, we've lost that abstract print dust, east of here,
in black, but I think this pink, really ...
It is one of those prints
I worry a bit but all work well.
I think most fashion brands
They start with a concept of a collection or style.
Not often think:
"Who is going to make the product?
And I can make sure how manufacturers,
or suppliers are going to eat? "
So what we try to do in People Tree
it really started with the capabilities we have
in each group of manufacturers, and then design the collection,
while we look at the integrity of the collection
in aesthetics.
Originally I worked with independent designers
and I went to Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, India, Nepal, Philippines,
and gradually we put together an incredible network
of FTOs minded
for the development of women,
social development for workers and the environment
They are absolutely essential in everything we do.
TOKYO, JAPAN
One two three.
Happy World Fair Trade Day!
Today is the 15th anniversary
World Fair Trade.
We organize this type of event
in over 60 countries
as Fair Trade movement,
and 10 to 60 organizations
by country participate in it.
Today, as we do here,
are being held fashion shows and seminars
in more than 3,000 locations worldwide.
Good job! It was so ... really great!
Could you turn the body over to me a little more?
That is beautiful.
Fair trade is the public response
to correct social injustice
in a system of international trade that is largely dysfunctional,
where workers and farmers
They do not receive a living wage,
and where the environment is not considered at all
to make the products we buy every day.
Dacca, Bangladesh
My name is Shima.
I am 23 years old.
When I came to Dhaka, I was twelve.
Shima is one of the
40 million workers in textile factories in the world.
Nearly 4 million of those workers are here in Bangladesh,
working in almost five thousand factories,
making clothes for major Western brands.
Over 85% of these workers are women.
And with a minimum wage of less than $ 3 a day,
They are among the lowest paid in the world textile workers.
When I came to Dhaka, I stayed with my aunt.
When I started working in a garment factory,
my salary was $ 10 a month.
How is it called?
Mi hija? Nadia Akhter
I take with me to the factory a few days
but it is terribly hot in the factory.
And there are chemicals inside the factory
which they are very harmful to children.
So I can not have you here with me in Dhaka
because I have no one to look after her.
Workers should not have any kind of distrust
of their owners.
If they do,
there will be a good working environment at the factory.
Must respect, the owner pays us according to the rules.
If you do not have this kind of confidence,
You will not get the result.
I have formed a union at work.
I have been the president of the union since its formation.
We present a list of demands and principals received it.
Then they received the list, had an altercation with the directors.
After the altercation, managers closed the door.
And along with them, 30-40 employees attacked us
and they beat us.
They used chairs, sticks, scales
and things like scissors to beat.
Especially they kicked and punched
and they beat his head against the walls.
They beat us especially
chest and abdomen.
It is estimated that one in six people alive
in the world today,
working on some of the world's fashion industry,
so it is more dependent on the world labor sector.
Most of this work is done by people like Shima, voiceless
in the wider supply chain.
But to better understand the impact
that fashion has in the world,
we must return to where it all begins.
My grandparents came here in the 20s,
and this is part of my heritage.
I wonder why organic cotton growing,
because I can not do otherwise.
My grandfather was an old German farmer
I thought that we should respect the earth,
We are stewards of the earth,
and respect the life on earth.
We're actually sitting in the High Plains of Texas
and there are 1.2 million hectares of cotton growing in this region.
It is literally the largest plot of cotton in the world.
Only in the last ten years, 80% is now GM cotton,
genetically modified.
Most is Roundup Ready,
meaning that farmers instead of spraying weeds,
occasionally in their field,
or hire laborers to go for the field by removing weeds,
They are now spraying entire fields.
The cotton fiber is
from which most of the clothes are made
used by the world today.
And while growing our appetite for fashion,
cotton plant itself is redesigned to keep pace.
There has been this big push
towards industrialization of agriculture,
the intensification of agriculture.
So instead of old crop types
they were very in tune with nature,
They were related to the cycles
the calendar year, and seasons.
What you see now is a stepping
where land is almost reconsidered
like a factory.
What has been created is the general practice
of "we are trying million hectares alike."
We put a dose of chemical especially
and that's when these great ecological effects are obtained
and nobody has any idea what is really happening.
Nature tends to heal in small areas.
But when there is this large and comprehensive approach,
We do not really know what's going on.
For us, it does not reduce the amount of pesticides,
and chemicals that are cotton,
that's one of the advantages that reduces that.
Not in our area, where we are fumigating
millions of acres and dollars Roundup,
by all South Plains.
What kind of impact does that have on our soil,
with residues left to microbacterial level?
What kind of impact does that
about people in our communities?
Where is the cost of that?
Monsanto is proud to be a leader
of agricultural innovation sector
so these agricultural developments can do to help
double the performance for future needs in the world.
We are dedicated to the future of agriculture,
and delivering innovations to farmers
to help them produce more and conserve more,
while they are improving the lives of people around the world.
Together, we can face the challenges
Next Generation
and beyond.
After the wars,
where all these old factories
that made war chemicals, explosives, were scattered about,
Activist Vandana Shiva Environment
Western countries thought it would be a good idea
commercialize the Third World,
after all, it makes explosives industry
It makes nitrogen fertilizers.
And they began to introduce nitrogen fertilizers,
from the 50s onwards, after we became independent.
But nitrogen fertilizer
They do not work well with indigenous crops.
There is a problem of lodging.
So the whole system then organized
to redesign the plant
to accept more chemicals.
Bt cotton is cotton which has been added a gene,
of a bacteria to produce a toxin.
But Bt cotton,
which it is supposed to control a pest,
It has been offered because it is a way of making companies own the seed.
By patenting these genetically modified plants
Monsanto became the largest chemical and seed group in history.
I wanted to talk to someone who had worked with the company,
and I found out that a former director general of India
he was willing to talk.
One of my friends who worked in research,
He is working on these modified crops,
He came to my hotel for a drink.
We sat for a drink, and after a few drinks, he said:
"Hey, Jag, will change the type of business
you're doing in India. "
I said, "What do you mean?"
"They will get into the seed business.
And they will do the business of seeds of all crops,
so that we have a monopoly on the seeds,
and every farmer has to always come to us to buy seeds. "
That set off alarm bells in my mind.
If a poor farmer has to go to buy Monsanto seeds each time,
and a so expensive seeds,
at that time I had no idea whatsoever Bt.
Genetically modified seed, I had not thought of that.
Even a monopoly on seeds is very bad.
So farmers into debt to get the seed
because of the high cost, 17 000 percent more.
It is further into debt, because it violates the promise
to control pests, so they have to buy more pesticides.
The tragedy with chemicals, whether fertilizers or pesticides,
It is that they are what is called ecological narcotics:
the more you use, the more you need to use them.
For a time, picking unique product increases
and then begins to fall
because it has contaminated the ground.
PUNYAB, INDIA
Most Indian cotton is grown in the Punjab,
it has quickly become the largest user of pesticides in India.
Dr. Pritpal Singh has studied the effects
chemicals on human health
and reports show a large increase in the number of birth defects,
cancers and mental illnesses here in the region.
You can go to each village
you will see hundreds of patients suffering from cancer.
70 to 80 children in each village
you will find that suffering
severe mental retardation and physical disabilities.
Companies of fertilizers, pesticides,
totally reject
the aftermath of pesticides and fertilizers,
and these are the classic symptoms of toxicity.
In a village, there are 60 children with mental retardation as this guy.
So it's a very dangerous phenomenon in the Punjab.
And poor people, peasants, workers, and small farmers
They have reached their full potential so they can not afford treatment.
In short, they have accepted the death of their children.
And they are waiting for the deaths of their children,
Mother is waiting for the death of this boy.
Companies that make GM seeds and chemicals
They are the same companies.
They are also the same companies that make drugs
they are now patenting.
So you have cancer, there are more benefits.
For them is to win, win, win ...
For nature and people, it's lose, lose, lose ...
It is the day in which agents of these companies
They approach the farmer and tell him:
"He owes me so much. He has not paid me.
Now their land is my land. "
That day the farmer going to his farm,
pesticide bottle of drink,
and end his life.
All the widows I speak, saying:
"And the neighbors came and said
that my husband lying on the field were found ".
In the last 16 years,
there have been more than 250 000
Farmer suicides in India.
That's about a farmer every 30 minutes.
It is the largest wave of suicides that is registered in history.
As the huge impact is evident
which it is fashion in our world,
there is growing research
suggesting that also has an increasing effect on us,
people who buy these clothes.
What we now know, 20 years later
and hundreds of studies later,
It is that the more people focus
in these materialistic values,
the more you say that money and image,
and its status and possessions are important to them,
the less happy they are,
are more depressed, more anxious they are.
We know that all these types of psychological problems
They tend to increase when increasing materialistic values.
Now, that is in total disagreement with the thousands of messages
we receive daily from ads
suggesting that materialism and the pursuit of possessions
and owning things is what will make us happy.
It is important to understand that advertising is a kind,
or category of propaganda.
You think of it as something totalitarian propaganda, very shady,
speakers, crowds chanting and all that,
and we think of Hitler.
We always think of it as something foreign
but it is as American as apple pie.
Well, advertising works because
smart advertisers at least
They are trying to link the consumption of its product
a message that suggests
that their needs will be met
eating this thing.
He wants you to believe
it will look wonderful with that position.
But then he puts it, and feels like:
"No, it looks a little fat with it, is not so well with that,
I regret having bought it, but there's another you can buy. "
Put it NOW
BUY NOW
Think of all the car ads you see that show:
"Well, finally I got it, I'm a competent person
because I drive this BMW or the Audi ".
Or think of all this shampoo that has seen,
where the person now has beautiful hair
and it is loved and appreciated by the people around her.
The basic message is the same:
how to solve the problems of his life,
all have problems in our lives,
how to solve the problems of your life is through consumption.
Hi guys!
Today I bring you lots of clothes!
I went shopping a couple of days ago and literally went crazy
and I bought a lot of things.
My mailbox spam, you know, has literally exploded,
because you want a lot of clothes.
So here it is.
Agree. First, I have some things I bought at H & M.
Then I went to Forever 21 ...
No doubt about it, it was fate, I had to buy it,
if I could levitate to me, I would have levitated.
I bought this skirt,
bright yellow, and cost $ 8.50.
He is denim with buttons ...
and I just loved it. Loved, loved, loved it!
It is a gray knitted sweater, full of pink hearts.
I loved it. I love the stained clothes.
The garments are dyed tops.
Has a little yin yang in the front.
I love these so much.
And it is this very beautiful light blue sweater.
Not even know if I'll use it, now that I have,
because they do not know if I like both.
I have to stop.
MILAN, ITALY
Try to understand better
why people do not realize that they are becoming increasingly poor.
And I wonder, "Well, but
What has changed from when I was young? "
And fashion is something that has changed dramatically.
You could buy one, two shirts,
four T-shirts, for example, a year.
Now, also my children, they used to buy,
for each party, buy a shirt.
And so I realized that fast fashion is something totally new.
If you have noticed the price has fallen in recent years.
And following the disappearance of the middle class.
So all you people really need
It is very expensive,
like a home, as studies such as life insurance.
Moreover, there is a source of comfort
part of his life.
They can buy a T-shirt,
two shirts for holidays, or finally by day,
although I am very poor and I'm lost.
I lost everything I really needed.
Today we buy more than 80 billion
of wearing new clothes every year.
That's 400% more than the amount they bought just two decades ago.
The way we buy clothes has changed so much, so fast
few people actually stopped to
understand the origin of this new model, or consequences
such unprecedented increase in consumption.
There is an article in Printers' Ink
which is currently the leader in magazine advertising,
a famous writer, called Earnest Elmo Calkins,
he was a great master of the art of copywriting.
It was an article titled "Consumption".
In that article, he says there are two kinds of products.
The class to use,
as washing machines, cars and so on,
the things you buy and use for a long time.
And then there are the things you consume,
as chewing gum, cigarette, and other perishables.
He said that consumerism is getting people
try the things you use,
as things you eat.
With its innovative offer Buy 1, Take 3 Free,
un traje de Jos. A. Bank
It is actually cheaper than paper towels.
And now come these dispensers easy to use.
Four suits for the price of a modest dinner,
I feel good to throw them away when finished.
Just look landfills
and you can see in landfills
that the amount of clothing and textiles that are thrown away,
It has been increasing steadily in the last ten years,
like a dirty shade of the fast fashion industry.
As we move more and more
degradation species,
to destroy the last pristine wilderness we have left,
We seem bent on producing more and more disposable things.
It makes no sense.
Fashion should never and can never be considered
as a disposable product.
After a big change in any sector,
it takes time to feel and smell
dirt coming out of something that is polluting.
So I think there is now a change
because you can not deny
industry Fast Fashion
It has a massive impact on developing countries.
The average American takes 37 kilos
you textile waste each year.
Adding up to more than 11 million tons of textile waste
the EE. UU. only.
Most of these wastes are not biodegradable.
Meaning it stays in landfills 200 years or more,
air while emitting harmful gases.
The large amount of cheap clothes,
although people feel, perhaps somehow,
compensating to donate to charities.
The journey of a shirt donated to charities
It is difficult to accept in itself.
PORT AU PRINCE, HAITI
Pepe is a disease in Haiti.
Not only in Haiti, I think in any
third world country you visit.
It is a problem, it's a huge problem.
Pepe is a lot of clothes,
mostly from the United States,
People will buy a box of clothes ...
They do not even know what they are buying.
It's clothes that people donate to charities,
and these can not sell in their thrift store or whatever,
the packed and shipped to these third countries
and most end here.
It turns out that only 10 percent
We donate clothes
gets sold in thrift stores.
And as we let our clothes faster and faster,
now increasingly discarded in developing countries,
as Haiti.
As the second-hand clothes
into Haiti has increased,
the local textile industry has disappeared.
What once was a sector proudest making garments,
Haiti now produces mainly cheap shirts
to be exported to the United States.
Because earlier when you were working
used to see people coming to learn to sew.
The person could come to learn, and asked me to teach them to sew.
Then he taught them.
And they learned to sew,
You knew they would find a job with that ability.
However, today, the person can learn to sew
but you can not find work or make a living doing that.
I tell people to stop buying things,
that's not right, costs about $ 10,
vas a ir a un baile,
are you going out today. Just you go to a store
and you buy a dress for $ 10.
Because it costs only $ 10, and I can throw it away.
And tomorrow you will do the same,
and again.
While growing awareness of the impact of fashion in the world,
there are key industry leaders who begin to question
the impacts of a model based on production inconsiderate
and endless consumption.
In Patagonia, we hate the word "consumers".
We have to find a better word, we prefer "customers"
and we prefer clients who recognize
the impact of their consumption.
They recognize that, as consumers, are part of the problem.
We hope to encourage our customers to join
to us for questioning consumption.
Because without a reduction in consumption,
we believe that we will not find a collective solution
to the problems we face collectively, year after year,
They are leading to continued deterioration in the health of our planet.
The fashion industry has to think.
You have to stand and watch has been running
in a conventional manner, and to question, challenge him.
For me it is, as a designer,
the most exciting thing I do now.
More exciting to say: "I like this color this season"
or "This is the silhouette, or the hemline."
For me, a much greater challenge and excitement
is actually looking at my industry and say, "You know what?
I will try to do it in a way
it is not as harmful to the planet. "
The companies, through advertising, have made society believe
that happiness is based on things,
that true happiness can only be achieved
with annual, seasonal, weekly gain, daily
in the amount of things that you take your life.
We encourage our customers
to rethink those assumptions,
to understand where they come from.
And to understand it, to know it all together
we can change how.
The customer has to know who is responsible.
Without them, we have no jobs.
And that's really important.
So you do not have to accept it.
If you do not like, you do not have to accept it.
Rajshahi, Bangladesh
I love embroidery, Shantu.
The embroidery is very beautiful.
Do you think we should not put the embroidery on both sides?
I think we should put the embroidery here too.
I think it looks a bit simple if only forward.
So let's put it on the sides as well.
It will not add much cost.
It is not as dense, right?
How about?
Swallows is a fashion company fair trade
but it is also a development partnership.
So it is helping more than 3,000 people in this town.
I come here every four months.
We call them "journeys of production."
And we work with manufacturers,
trying to figure out what the barriers are
to make a great product and make it to market.
And we encourage fair trade capabilities.
So what are the obstacles facing
to provide more social benefits
or improve environmental protection in these areas.
For me, it's partnering.
It's about finding creative solutions,
next to them, with the team here,
and really listen to what their problems
and find together the way they actually work.
I want to invite the best employee of Swallows,
I want to invite a woman representative of Swallows,
to come to London in autumn or next spring.
And I'd like to think
Who would be the best representative.
But I want you to know who your customers are,
and I want you to really understand the market
and come back and tell all your friends.
Or, if you do single thread, simple stitch,
then maybe you need to do denser?
- Good. - More focused?
If it continues for a while,
we will climb the showroom now, PV15.
Can you come and show us the next thing to do?
Yes.
People Tree hoped would not be necessary,
and I hoped we had a trading system to take care
the rights of people and the environment.
But the more I'm involved in the development,
and collaboration with partners,
more dirt and filth I discovered
about business practices
undermine everything we believe in,
and all I know that most people believe and value.
I do not know, People Tree really grew in an organic way.
It grew from a large group of people
who believe passionately that there is a different way of ...
To work, to live, to eat,
to interact with people in a humane way.
I not necessarily think that would be a thousand shops
selling today People Tree,
and I see that there is much more we need to do.
I think not just about creating jobs
for 7000 people working at People Tree.
It also seeks to be a catalyst for change in the sector,
showing, proving that the model works.
When we begin to be organic,
I think we were only two or three at the time,
Marketing Cooperative formed the Texas Organic Cotton,
and the agreement was that they grew and sold it.
So I started going to Jacob Javits
and with all this cotton plants and everything,
we said, "Yes, we have organic cotton"
and people looked at us like we're totally crazy.
Consumers often become aware of ...
Organic milk, or have an allergy.
And, curiously, cotton,
and what they put on the body
although the skin is the body's largest organ,
it is not even important
they do not understand the connection of saying,
"I like this organic apple,
so I'm not getting directly
pesticides or chemicals, or whatever the case. "
But they do not understand the direct connection with clothing.
And so you have to start looking at the broader community level.
This is our air, our world.
This is our planet, our people.
And so that awareness of ...
You may not feel they have a direct impact
buying this organic shirt.
But the impact
It is in the bigger picture, in the world at large,
and especially where the community has grown cotton.
As hard frost arrives,
as organic farmers, we hope that icy
because that literally skims, removes leaves the plant,
so that when harvested, mature capsules are open,
and cotton leaves here,
and you can see what comes in sections.
This machine is called cotton harvester.
And it is called cotton harvester
because literally it comes and starts,
use something like fingers, and literally starts
all capsules of this plant.
So if you look here, you can see
Combine and went out there and has collected all the plants.
I think one of the problems we have in the current model
It is that what matters is profit.
And do not take into account: "This cost, at what price?"
The price of polluting the water,
the price of labor,
the bars on the window,
that people die when a fire in the factory,
the price of farmers who have no access
education and health services.
And so we really have not calculated what the real price.
Kanpur is located along the Ganges River,
which is the most sacred river.
And it is also very important for 800 million Hindus
and also it serves as a way of life for northern India.
Leather factories Kanpur
They are polluting and killing this river.
With the growing demand for inexpensive materials such as leather,
Kanpur is now the capital of leather exports from India.
Every day, more than 50 million liters of toxic wastewater
leaving local tanneries.
Chemical complexes used to treat leather, such as chromium-6,
flow into local agriculture and even drinking water.
In places like Kanpur, hidden in the eyes of the world,
big Western brands get cheaper materials
while avoiding any responsibility for the rising cost to human health
and the environment.
The people in that area is affected by pollution from the tanneries.
The local environment is polluted, the soil is contaminated.
The only source of drinking water,
groundwater is contaminated with chromium.
Agricultural products,
even vegetables and salad products,
They produced there.
The health of people affected.
People have different types of skin problems:
skin rashes, blisters, pustules,
numbness of the limbs.
People have stomach ailments, they may also have cancer.
My daughter suffers from jaundice.
Every year, people in nearly every house in this region
suffers from this disease.
Even my wife had jaundice.
As I said, many people every year have the same problem.
We used all our savings to treat diseases,
because the chromium in the water
attacks the liver,
creates digestive problems, and many people can get jaundice
or liver cancer if we do not take precautions.
You may have the best materials
the market for high-end fashion in Milan or Paris or London.
But there has been so much work behind it,
and they have been used many chemicals,
effluents were discharged into many rivers.
But we're just looking at that moment in time
the finished product.
We have to go back and think about it.
The fashion today is the second most polluting industry
on earth, second only to the oil industry.
The alarming thing is that fashion not only used
a wealth of natural resources,
and make amazing environmental effects,
these natural resources and the impact often are not even measured.
As they have been so abundant these resources,
it is assumed that they will be around forever.
So I think the industry has not justified
because it is only from the 50s
we've really had this industrial expansion
at such a rate that we start to see exponential growth
and exponential use of natural resources.
Our lives depend on the economy first nature.
Nature has an economy.
That economy is enormous. It is not counted.
Then there is the economy of the people, the workers, laborers,
Farmers growing.
That became invisible through this construct,
first the Depression, then during the war years,
the number called GDP, gross domestic product,
that only measures which are traded,
and it has become a commodity.
Many resources
we use to make our clothes have not been justified
in the production cost of such clothing.
Then you have the water used to produce clothing,
land used to grow the fiber,
chemicals used for dyeing.
Those things are all inputs.
And as inputs, they have a cost,
and also give products
in some cases, good products, the clothing itself, jobs,
but in other cases, bad products, such as harmful chemicals,
or emissions of greenhouse gases,
and those things also have a cost.
Sleeping on pillow.
Do you feel bad leaving Nadia?
Of course I feel bad, but I can not do anything.
Working here, I am forced to leave the village.
In the past two months, he did not sit with their books.
Just watch TV and cartoons.
And music videos.
But if he stays in the village, you can not do that.
He goes to school in the morning, again at noon
and 3 pm will tutoring.
That's not possible here.
What do you do with Nadia now?
Sometimes I leave with the neighbor,
Sometimes his father used to take care of it.
And I took my works sometimes.
I took her to the factory yesterday.
The same low wages that make places like Bangladesh
so attractive for brands to do business,
have left millions of workers working long hours,
unable to afford to keep their children with them,
even in the poorest slums.
To give their children an education,
and the chance for a better life in future factories,
many textile workers here, as Shima, leave their children
to raise them family or friends in villages far from the city,
and only see once or twice a year.
This is my dad,
over a year since I saw him.
Sometimes I talk to him by phone,
but over a year since I saw him.
This is my mom,
a year ago he has not seen.
I talk to her on the phone too, but do not see often.
The struggle of the workers of Bangladesh has no limits.
Each day we woke up early in the morning,
we go to the factory, and we work very hard all day.
And we do all the hard work clothes.
And that's what people use.
People have no idea how hard it is for us to do the laundry.
Only buy and use it.
I think these clothes are produced with our blood.
Many textile workers die in separate accidents.
About a year ago, there was a cave in Rana Plaza.
Many workers died there.
It is very painful for us.
I do not want anyone seen anything,
to occur with our blood.
We want better working conditions, so that all are aware.
I do not want another owner as Rana Square
run that risk and force workers
to work in such conditions.
Lest they die more workers as well.
For there is no more mothers who lost their children as well.
I do not want this, I want that the owners are a little more aware
and take care of us.
You know? Really hit profits
their need to work, to use as slaves.
And I'm not saying that ... We have to give them work,
but they must be treated with the same respect
with which we treat our children, our friends.
They are not different from us.
Livia Firth has called for major changes
in the fashion industry.
She made headlines for starting something
called "The Challenge of Green Carpet"
urging famous and great designers
to participate in more fashion conscious ways.
Sustainability runs a consultancy called Eco Age,
and he has been invited to speak at a conference
about the future of fashion.
If there fast fashion,
no need to have a summit in Copenhagen
to try to solve the disaster of the destruction of the environment,
destruction of social justice, which has been caused
in the last 15 or 20 years of its existence.
Fast Fashion wants to produce fast,
so the textile worker has to produce faster and cheaper.
So the textile worker is the only point of the supply chain
where margins are compressed.
And we have these huge companies
They are going to the factory in Bangladesh,
They make an order for 1.5 million jeans
30 cents each, 50 cents each ...
How can it be ethical?
I do not know.
But also, from the point of view of the consumer,
Is it really democratic buy a shirt for $ 5
or pay $ 20 for their jeans?
Or are we kidding?
Because they are making us believe that we are rich or wealthy
because we can buy many things.
But we actually are getting poorer.
And the only person who is getting richer
It is the brand owner of Fast Fashion.
So that angers me a little.
You spoke of a commitment
promise to try to basic subsistence wages.
What does that mean?
How fair subsistence wages defined in Bangladesh?
You know? What does that mean?
"Having a pilot project in three factories"
and by 2018, 15% of their factories are going to have that?
That is not enough. it is not.
For us it is very clear that what is a living wage,
It is something that workers should say,
and that is incorporated into our way of working.
How much is it?
And we are not who should say how much,
but we do assessments all the time.
How much is it?
And to ensure that covers the basic needs of workers.
I can show it later.
H & M has dominated the fast fashion model,
becoming the second largest clothing company in history.
With annual revenues of over $ 18 billion dollars,
Now they are one of the largest producers of clothes
in Bangladesh and Cambodia.
Unfortunately, like other large retailers who asked,
They refused to grant an interview for this film.
PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA
In Cambodia, the garment workers are tired.
They recently took the streets
to demand a minimum wage increase in the country.
To continue the protests were met with violent repression,
as police opened fire with live ammunition.
A woman died and several people were injured
in clashes between workers of textile mills
and riot police in Cambodia.
For two days, Cambodia was a battleground.
The city of Phnom Penh.
They brought to the police, paratroopers
as if there were a war in the streets of Phnom Penh.
Why? Because workers in the textile industry
still required
a minimum wage of at least $ 160.
The government violently repressed us, and as a result
five workers, 23 died were arrested,
and more than 40 wounded.
And actually we are not asking for much money.
We just want a proper wage to a decent life with dignity.
But the government does not care how poor we are
or how much suffering we endured.
They do not care workers at all.
So we continue to demand $ 160
a monthly minimum wage.
Today is the funeral of a factory worker.
He was beaten to death.
She had suffered greatly before dying this morning.
And he had not done anything wrong.
He, among his colleagues,
I wanted to have better living conditions.
Continue their fight
for all Cambodian workers
have decent living conditions.
Thank you sir.
The Cambodian government, like other developing countries,
desperately you need the business they bring multinational retailers.
By the constant threat of these brands
on the relocation of production to other low-cost countries,
the government keeps down wages,
systematically avoiding compliance with local labor laws.
But how are you officially marks do not employ workers,
or they own any factories where they produce,
they can make huge profits,
while remaining free of responsibility
the effects of precarious employment, Disaster factories,
and continued violent treatment of workers.
The whole system begins to seem
as a perfectly designed nightmare
for workers trapped inside.
They can not deceive, and exploit our human resources,
exploit our workers.
Workers continue rising.
I ask the international brands
to turn this fight in dollars,
in pounds, euros.
It translates into human capital.
It translates in social responsibility
of these large companies,
It translates into economic justice.
When everything is concentrated on making profits
for large companies,
we see that human rights,
the environment, labor rights are completely lost.
We see that workers are increasingly exploited
because it brings down the price lower all increasing,
simply to satisfy this urge to accumulate capital.
And that is deeply problematic,
because it leads to massive impoverishment
hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
If you write to any of these companies,
they send its Code of Conduct.
And it's beautiful, and says: "Yes, we take responsibility
conditions under which our product is made,
the product you buy.
In all the factories where we produce,
we require them to abide by minimum wage laws,
all laws of the country,
respect women and not hire children,
no forced labor,
no excessive overtime, "all those things.
But when we introduced a bill in Congress a few years ago,
or we work with people to do it,
we call it "Law of decent working conditions and fair competition",
the companies responded with one voice,
"No! It would be an impediment to free trade.
There can be no rules. We can not pamper you! "
They want to keep with voluntary codes of conduct.
They have fought, and won,
by laws protecting their belongings and their interests,
but what about the workers?
There are only voluntary codes of conduct.
And what we see in case after case after case,
is that these voluntary codes of conduct
We must recognize, particularly in the fashion sector,
that human capital is part of this miracle formula.
Without human capital, not cheap labor,
female hand cheap labor,
I would not be generating the profits it generates.
That has to be recognized, must be addressed,
and those people need to be rewarded and not exploited.
Where's your piece of the pie?
That is what we must constantly ask.
Are these immoral buyers? Or just not ... Or are they immoral?
The system for working and the system that allows
companies do it is amoral.
The persons concerned are merely products of that system
and they have to take it to its logical conclusion.
What we have to do is change how these businesses operate.
Operating in a system that only measures benefits,
companies have little incentive to do
nothing else to do that this quarter is better than the last.
Regardless of the damage to the road.
As companies in the global fashion industry,
leading brands, and seed and chemical companies,
today grow to a size and unprecedented global power.
This term profit at all costs, is beginning to be opposed
openly to the values we share.
Richard Wolff es un economista,
that after graduating from Harvard, Stanford and Yale,
he was convinced that the real problem
it is within the system itself.
So the United States became a peculiar country.
You could criticize the educational system
to improve schools.
You could criticize the transport system
to work best.
You could crit ...
But you could not fault the economic system.
That had free pass.
You could not criticize ...
And if not critical thing for 50 years,
it rots, it decomposes.
One of the ways that a healthy society works
It is subjected to criticism of its component systems,
to discuss it and hopefully fix it,
or improve it or make it better.
You could not question capitalism.
Capitalism is the reason
whereby the fashion industry is as today.
It is the reason why so little is paid to workers in Bangladesh.
Because if you're operating in a capitalist system,
the most important thing to do is to create benefits
and you need to create more profits than its competitors.
And this is what drives companies
to keep wages low and getting lower.
But companies do not go ... The fashion retailers
They do not go to places like Bangladesh for no other reason except
they can get cheaper labor can work.
No collective rights in Bangladesh,
no trade union rights,
There is a very, very low minimum wage,
no maternity benefits, no pensions,
It is why the fashion industry is in Bangladesh
because you can get the most benefits from these people
they are making clothes for them.
Before you can solve a problem, you have to admit you have it
and before going to fix an economic system
it is working in this way, and producing such stresses
and inequalities and problems in our community,
we have to face the real extent of the problem we have,
with the overall system.
And at least
we have to open a national debate on the subject,
and at most, I think we have to think long and hard
on alternative systems that might work better.
For the environment, the big threat is that capital
You should continue to expand infinitely to survive.
You can not have any limit to its expansion and growth.
The natural world clearly has limits.
There are definite limits on how it can support the world
in terms of production, in terms of trade,
in terms of transport and distribution.
And it is clear that we have already exceeded
Many of these limits, that is why we are seeing so much tension
in the natural world right now.
Most people do not want to live in a system like this.
I think it's a system that makes most people very unhappy,
and I do not think people want to live on a planet that is dying slowly
or be exploiting their neighbors.
I think we need a huge systemic change.
If the system does not change,
It is being left intact
decisions of these companies,
meaning that a small group of executives and shareholders
They will be working on the same system,
subject to the same pattern of rewards and punishments,
that sooner or later it makes impose again,
there or elsewhere,
the same conditions against which they are fighting.
So leave it to improve their conditions,
do against the computer or otherwise do not speak seriously.
Our economic system is consumer capitalism,
and so the government needs to have consumption
at very high levels,
like companies, of course,
and so at some level, most people accept.
I've lost count of the people I spoke to said:
"Well, if we become less materialistic economy would collapse."
Well, they're right in a sense, because our economy
is based on materialism, it is based on such securities.
That's what it needs to survive.
That's part of the fuel it needs.
The problem is that it has a high price.
Black Friday is here we go, please?
Go, go, go buy, buy, buy
Black Friday Hysteria
continues in shopping centers.
In some parts of the country tonight,
It is as if someone announced
we are in danger of running out of things,
and those who need something have to go out and buy now
because it will disappear forever.
Walmart, she made more than 10 million transactions
in the first four hours of hysteria.
A record 15 000 people at Macy's in New York, buyers resist.
Black Friday is the longest day of the year sales.
Certainly in the case of Macy's. We'll have more sales this day
than any other day of the year.
This Christmas shopping spree shows that the country rose!
We are once again ... Yes!
Yes!
We are once again spending money we do not have
things that do not need to give people we do not like.
IN. IT.! IN. IT.! IN. IT.! IN. IT.!
OMG!
They love her
and possibly take care of it better than me.
However, one thing makes me sad.
No matter how much someone wants it,
no one can love a child's parents.
I feel heartbroken.
I do not want my daughter to have to work in a garment factory like me.
I feel bad, but I think I'll be happy one days
when she has a good future.
It will be a good human being and people will say,
although Shima worked in a garment factory
and he stayed in Dhaka, away from her daughter,
He gave him a good education to her daughter
and raised her as a good human being.
If you get a good job in government, or marries a good man,
then people will say and I will be very proud of that.
Yes, I fought,
but I did my best not to let her go through this.
As well screams.
I grew up on a farm, I married a guy who grew up on a farm,
and those who live on the farm, we live there,
It has to be safe for us too.
And the new chemicals
and intensity of use, continued to rise.
And then in 2005,
Terry began to have loss of fine motor skills,
and this and that, and she discovered
I had glioblastoma multiforme, a brain tumor in stage 4
and in the fullness of his 47 years.
He died at age 50.
We got six months, we had two and a half years,
and the neurosurgeon who operated on him, Lubbock,
It has immense cancer clinics and a medical center.
We did not have to go elsewhere for that brain tumor operate.
We could stay here
because it makes many operations.
He said that this type of tumor found in men, 45 to 65,
working in agriculture, or oilfields.
And although I have no hard evidence, no blood test to tell
The use of cotton chemicals, agricultural chemicals,
led directly to the death of my husband,
there are too many connections with the death of his father.
He grew up on a farm with intensive use of chemicals,
We live amid 1.2 million hectares of cotton,
using many chemicals.
And those moments,
organic was no longer important to me,
it was imperative.
It is imperative that we change agriculture.
It is imperative, if we talk about the long-term sustainability
and welfare of our lives on this planet,
and the lives of our children on the planet,
we have to change.
It is the beginning of a turning point,
not only for a responsible fashion to make way,
but a new form of capitalism,
for a new form of economy.
I'm sure we'll see a significant change
over the next ten years.
If you arrive on time or not it is another matter.
Martin Luther King Jr.,
in a speech at a church in Brooklyn, he said
what America needed was a revolution of values.
She had to stop treating people as things.
She had to stop treating people in a way
it was just about profits.
And however treat people in a real and human way.
OMG! We can make things better!
If we want to disseminate, and I would say yes,
industry spread throughout the world, not concentrate in one place.
Allow benefits are shared globally,
then let's do it in an orderly fashion, reasonable, carefully.
We must recognize that capital is only money.
Money is a means,
and people should be accountable for how it is used.
We have to celebrate the creative power of human beings.
And we talk about the creative work,
We should stop talking about labor.
We have to look at the earth not as a commodity,
with which it is speculated and markets,
but as the very basis of our life, as Mother Earth.
It becomes all consumer activists,
all consumers make ethical questions,
all consumers do very simple questions about
where it comes from his clothes,
all consumers say:
"Sorry, it is not acceptable for someone to die while working".
We can not turn around and say. "Yeah, go do whatever you want."
It is too important, the sector is too important.
Have too much impact and effect on millions of people around the world,
and common resources.
We continue seeking happiness
consumption of thing?
Are we going to be satisfied with a system that makes us feel rich,
while leaving our desperately poor world?
Will we continue to turn a blind eye
to the lives of those who are behind our clothes?
Or will there be a turning point, a new chapter in our history,
when together we begin to make a real change,
to remember that all the clothes we wear was made by human hands?
Amidst all the challenges we face today,
despite all the problems that seem to excel
and beyond our control,
maybe we could start here,
clothing.
Know and act truecostmovie.com
the people who make these clothes,
and the impact it is having on our world.
It is a story about greed and fear,
power and poverty.
It is complex, because it extends throughout the world.
But it is also simple,
revealing how connected we are to the many hearts and hands
behind our clothes.
I went into this story without having any experience in fashion,
starting with only a few simple questions.
What I've discovered,
It has forever changed how I think about the clothes I wear,
and my hope is that you do the same thing happen.
Perhaps you can begin by saying your name
and he is talking about how it was that started this.
My name is Lucy Siegle.
I am a journalist and presenter based in the UK,
and I've been obsessed, consumed
the environmental and social impacts of the fashion industry
for about a decade.
I like everything from clothing.
I love poetry, I love the fabric,
I love the colors, textures,
I love how you feel.
It is the skin that we choose.
Well, I had the classic huge closet,
clothes everywhere,
bags continually coming into my house,
every day, every other day with another item
and I never had anything to wear.
I could never put together a coherent whole.
We communicate who we are
to some extent through clothing.
This is, again, throughout history.
We trends in court,
and Marie Antoinette with these huge hats.
It has always been our personal communication in many ways.
That's what interests me,
which it is essentially part of what we want to communicate
about ourselves.
We used to have a system, a system of fashion
where people went to the parades,
so did spring, summer, autumn, winter,
and it worked like clockwork for many years.
Well, forget it, throw it out the window.
That has absolutely nothing to do with today's fashion industry.
It has been reinvented.
The change moves ruthlessly
to a way of producing
actually only deals
the interests of big business.
Young, she did not give much importance
anything other than the price of buying clothes,
usually choosing in the style or a good deal.
Looking back, I knew for a long time
most of our clothes are made here in the United States.
As recently as the '60s, still we did 95% of our clothes.
Today, we only about 3%
and the other 97% is outsourced
in developing countries worldwide.
I have been in business for over nine years.
In terms of scale, we have about 25 000 people
only what is manufacturing garments.
We produce one of every six shirts sold in the US. UU.
If you go to a store,
and compare the price of an item in the last 20 years,
you will discover that there are actually deflation product
that is, the price has dropped over time.
Now, our costs have decreased? Absolutely.
Our costs have gone up.
The more we have outsourced production,
have become cheaper prices of clothes we buy,
I give way to an entirely new model, known as Fast Fashion,
the overnight, transforming how the clothes are bought and sold.
The latest H & M store on 5th Avenue in Manhattan
It is the largest in the history of the company,
and one of the many new stores planned in the country.
This is part of a revolution in trade,
Fast Fashion.
Instead of two seasons per year,
practically we have 52 seasons a year.
So we have something new every week.
And fast fashion has created this,
primarily to sell more products.
We love TopShop!
You can get this metallic fringed skirt for $ 39 at Joe Fresh
a new store in the city.
With a little more attractive to cost-conscious buyers prices.
American consumers fully captured fashion H & M,
and we already know that Americans
They are very price oriented.
If you combine these two together, with fashion and price,
then you have the recipe.
A Japanese clothing retailer is leaving
fast and furious mark here in the US. UU.
The price has dropped.
The way to do that product has changed completely.
And at some point one must ask:
"Where does it end?"
The global market is a place
we export the work to be performed
in any conditions we want,
products and then come back to me,
so cheap you can throw without thinking about it.
JOHN HILARY, DIRECTOR EJECUTIVO
DE WAR ON WAN Globalized production basically means
that all manufacturing of goods
It has been outsourced to low-cost economies,
particularly where wages are very low and remain low.
And what that means is that those at the top of the value chain,
They can choose where products are made,
and may change if, for example, a factory says:
"We can not do it so cheap."
The brand will say, "Well, no longer will go to you.
Let's move to another site that is cheaper. "
Dacca, Bangladesh
In the West they say: "everyday low prices".
So, every day, causing me difficulties
and he caused them to my employees, and it works.
Competing stores are competing there.
When stores come to us for ordering and negotiate,
They tell us: "Look, that particular store
this shirt is selling for $ 5,
so I have to sell it at $ 4.
You'll have to reduce your price. "
So we reduce it.
Then comes another store saying:
"Hey, they are selling it at $ 4.
The target price is $ 3, if you can do it for $ 3,
You get the business, otherwise you do not get it ".
As desperately we want the business,
and we have no other options, okay.
We are always trying to survive, actually.
In the end, something ends up giving.
Or the product price has to rise
or manufacturers have to close,
or cut costs to operate.
Cut costs and ignore safety measures
It was accepted as part of doing business in this new model,
until one morning in April,
when an event, on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh,
It took a hidden side of fashion headlines.
State media in Bangladesh
say an eight-story building collapsed near the capital Dhaka,
killing more than 70 people.
Rescue crews work around the clock,
looking through the rubble, trying to find
many survivors as possible.
They have hundreds dead,
hundreds still may be buried alive,
and officials in Bangladesh say
the factory owners ignored the order to evacuate.
400 dead, yet it is believed that hundreds are missing.
Garment workers in Bangladesh pay the price of cheap clothes.
A large crowd has gathered near the building,
many families searching for their loved ones,
and they say you can still hear people screaming
under the rubble, crying for help.
Many are simply losing hope.
From where he was working,
I approached the stairs.
When I got them
the building collapsed and my legs were trapped.
The side walls fell on my legs.
I realized that I could not get my legs, I gave up.
I came to mind hundreds of thoughts.
I could not even mourn.
Anyone who, like me,
I had written about the problems in the supply chain,
particularly for Fast Fashion,
and he tried to articulate
how he was moving risk
the most vulnerable and lowest paid.
You try to articulate it, but you could never imagine
that there would be so catastrophic illustration
what you were trying to say.
And Rana Square for me was like a horror story.
Two weeks after the disaster,
and the death toll amounts to the shocking figure of 931,
making it the worst disaster textile history.
I think one of the most deeply impressive things
Rana on disaster Square was the news
the workers had already pointed to the direction
cracks in the building.
They had already noted
that the building was structurally unsafe,
and yet they were forced to re-enter.
Many survivors wonder
how they could be forced to return to work
when management knew the cracks in the building,
and concerns of workers on the day of the collapse.
Many clothes in US stores is made in Bangladesh
by workers who earn about $ 2 a day.
Last month, a textile factory collapsed,
killing more than 1,000 people,
and a few months before, a fire in a factory left more than 100 dead.
And as bodies are recovered from the rubble,
another factory in Bangladesh this morning caught fire,
leaving eight dead.
Disaster stories in garment factories
They monopolized the news,
the fact is that now three of the four worst tragedies
in fashion history they had occurred in the past year.
While growing death toll amounted profits generated.
The following year disaster Rana Square,
It was the most profitable sector for all time.
The global fashion industry
It is now an annual industry nearly three trillion dollars.
Bangladesh is already the second largest
exporter of clothing after China.
How? Well, unlike some of its competitors,
Bangladeshi manufacturing is still very cheap,
and unions have limited power.
The country grabbed the lower end of the value chain.
1000 Those poor girls, were killed
because no one cared, no one will give a shit.
Just they wanted cheap price and good profit.
It should not be.
Everyone should take responsibility for these girls.
it's like that.
It could happen again.
Sorry, but it's not just the price pressure.
It is something ...
It is to ignore the lives of others.
It's not ... should not ... it's not right.
We are in the XXI century.
We live in a global world,
And just we ignore the lives of others?
How it is possible?
This huge and predatory industry
which it is generating many benefits
for a handful of people,
Why is unable
to support their million workers properly?
Why you are not able to ensure their safety?
We are talking about basic human rights.
Why is unable to ensure that
while it is generating these huge profits?
Is it because it does not work properly?
That is my question.
Lucy's question sounds like the most obvious.
But instead of answering, wherever I looked, I found people
constantly justify the cost
by economic benefits generated.
So this production of low wages, so-called "sweatshops"
is not only the least bad option for the workers,
It is part of a process that raises living standards
and leads to higher wages and better working conditions wages.
The immediate causes of development are physical capital, technology
and human capital and worker skills.
When they workshops to those countries,
the three elements bring these workers
and begin to put that process in motion.
Can sweatshops be really good?
Yes, those terrible, horrible workshops.
The very name "sweatshop"
conjures up horrific images of poor people and children,
suffering in Third World countries, enslaved in appalling conditions
making products for us, selfish Americans.
And thanks. Good!
Does it bother me that people are working in a factory,
making clothes for Americans,
or European?
Or they are ... What so spend their lives?
Is that what you're asking?
Yeah right.
No. I mean, they are doing work.
They could be doing much worse.
This is live television, and ask
defining the sweatshops.
We must be very clear
what we talked about at the beginning.
We're talking about places with poor working conditions
from the standpoint of normal Americans,
low wages for our level, places where children work,
that can violate the labor law of the country,
but there are key characteristics of the type,
of which I want to talk tonight, Kennedy,
And there are places where people choose to work,
certainly a number of other bad choices.
I mean, there is nothing inherently dangerous
in sewing clothes.
Then we started
with a relatively safe industry.
It's not like coal mining, mining or natural gas,
or a lot of things I could ... that are much more dangerous.
Work on these workshops seem horrible working conditions and salaries
for anyone in the West who have enough money
to have a TV and watch your video.
But we must remember that the alternatives available
for these workers are not our alternatives.
They are much worse than our alternatives,
and they are usually much worse
who work in its factory worker.
Low wages, unsafe conditions and disasters in factories
They are justified by the need to create jobs
for people without alternatives.
This story has become the narrative,
used to explain how the fashion industry now
Worldwide.
But there are those who believe
there must be a better way
to manufacture and sell clothing
generating economic growth,
but causing havoc.
So I do not know yet
how long has this embroidery.
Do you think you can ask about Santo ...?
How long has that whole panel?
I guess because it was then seen in the breakdown of press FAB,
but it will be great to know, right?
Safia Minney am. I am the founder and CEO of People Tree,
and People Tree is a fashion brand of fair trade,
It began over 20 years ago in Japan.
We worried that we had too navy.
How about now?
Because we put more black in PV14
and it worked very, very well
in collaboration with Orla design.
Do we have enough prints in black in the collection?
Well, we've lost that abstract print dust, east of here,
in black, but I think this pink, really ...
It is one of those prints
I worry a bit but all work well.
I think most fashion brands
They start with a concept of a collection or style.
Not often think:
"Who is going to make the product?
And I can make sure how manufacturers,
or suppliers are going to eat? "
So what we try to do in People Tree
it really started with the capabilities we have
in each group of manufacturers, and then design the collection,
while we look at the integrity of the collection
in aesthetics.
Originally I worked with independent designers
and I went to Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, India, Nepal, Philippines,
and gradually we put together an incredible network
of FTOs minded
for the development of women,
social development for workers and the environment
They are absolutely essential in everything we do.
TOKYO, JAPAN
One two three.
Happy World Fair Trade Day!
Today is the 15th anniversary
World Fair Trade.
We organize this type of event
in over 60 countries
as Fair Trade movement,
and 10 to 60 organizations
by country participate in it.
Today, as we do here,
are being held fashion shows and seminars
in more than 3,000 locations worldwide.
Good job! It was so ... really great!
Could you turn the body over to me a little more?
That is beautiful.
Fair trade is the public response
to correct social injustice
in a system of international trade that is largely dysfunctional,
where workers and farmers
They do not receive a living wage,
and where the environment is not considered at all
to make the products we buy every day.
Dacca, Bangladesh
My name is Shima.
I am 23 years old.
When I came to Dhaka, I was twelve.
Shima is one of the
40 million workers in textile factories in the world.
Nearly 4 million of those workers are here in Bangladesh,
working in almost five thousand factories,
making clothes for major Western brands.
Over 85% of these workers are women.
And with a minimum wage of less than $ 3 a day,
They are among the lowest paid in the world textile workers.
When I came to Dhaka, I stayed with my aunt.
When I started working in a garment factory,
my salary was $ 10 a month.
How is it called?
Mi hija? Nadia Akhter
I take with me to the factory a few days
but it is terribly hot in the factory.
And there are chemicals inside the factory
which they are very harmful to children.
So I can not have you here with me in Dhaka
because I have no one to look after her.
Workers should not have any kind of distrust
of their owners.
If they do,
there will be a good working environment at the factory.
Must respect, the owner pays us according to the rules.
If you do not have this kind of confidence,
You will not get the result.
I have formed a union at work.
I have been the president of the union since its formation.
We present a list of demands and principals received it.
Then they received the list, had an altercation with the directors.
After the altercation, managers closed the door.
And along with them, 30-40 employees attacked us
and they beat us.
They used chairs, sticks, scales
and things like scissors to beat.
Especially they kicked and punched
and they beat his head against the walls.
They beat us especially
chest and abdomen.
It is estimated that one in six people alive
in the world today,
working on some of the world's fashion industry,
so it is more dependent on the world labor sector.
Most of this work is done by people like Shima, voiceless
in the wider supply chain.
But to better understand the impact
that fashion has in the world,
we must return to where it all begins.
My grandparents came here in the 20s,
and this is part of my heritage.
I wonder why organic cotton growing,
because I can not do otherwise.
My grandfather was an old German farmer
I thought that we should respect the earth,
We are stewards of the earth,
and respect the life on earth.
We're actually sitting in the High Plains of Texas
and there are 1.2 million hectares of cotton growing in this region.
It is literally the largest plot of cotton in the world.
Only in the last ten years, 80% is now GM cotton,
genetically modified.
Most is Roundup Ready,
meaning that farmers instead of spraying weeds,
occasionally in their field,
or hire laborers to go for the field by removing weeds,
They are now spraying entire fields.
The cotton fiber is
from which most of the clothes are made
used by the world today.
And while growing our appetite for fashion,
cotton plant itself is redesigned to keep pace.
There has been this big push
towards industrialization of agriculture,
the intensification of agriculture.
So instead of old crop types
they were very in tune with nature,
They were related to the cycles
the calendar year, and seasons.
What you see now is a stepping
where land is almost reconsidered
like a factory.
What has been created is the general practice
of "we are trying million hectares alike."
We put a dose of chemical especially
and that's when these great ecological effects are obtained
and nobody has any idea what is really happening.
Nature tends to heal in small areas.
But when there is this large and comprehensive approach,
We do not really know what's going on.
For us, it does not reduce the amount of pesticides,
and chemicals that are cotton,
that's one of the advantages that reduces that.
Not in our area, where we are fumigating
millions of acres and dollars Roundup,
by all South Plains.
What kind of impact does that have on our soil,
with residues left to microbacterial level?
What kind of impact does that
about people in our communities?
Where is the cost of that?
Monsanto is proud to be a leader
of agricultural innovation sector
so these agricultural developments can do to help
double the performance for future needs in the world.
We are dedicated to the future of agriculture,
and delivering innovations to farmers
to help them produce more and conserve more,
while they are improving the lives of people around the world.
Together, we can face the challenges
Next Generation
and beyond.
After the wars,
where all these old factories
that made war chemicals, explosives, were scattered about,
Activist Vandana Shiva Environment
Western countries thought it would be a good idea
commercialize the Third World,
after all, it makes explosives industry
It makes nitrogen fertilizers.
And they began to introduce nitrogen fertilizers,
from the 50s onwards, after we became independent.
But nitrogen fertilizer
They do not work well with indigenous crops.
There is a problem of lodging.
So the whole system then organized
to redesign the plant
to accept more chemicals.
Bt cotton is cotton which has been added a gene,
of a bacteria to produce a toxin.
But Bt cotton,
which it is supposed to control a pest,
It has been offered because it is a way of making companies own the seed.
By patenting these genetically modified plants
Monsanto became the largest chemical and seed group in history.
I wanted to talk to someone who had worked with the company,
and I found out that a former director general of India
he was willing to talk.
One of my friends who worked in research,
He is working on these modified crops,
He came to my hotel for a drink.
We sat for a drink, and after a few drinks, he said:
"Hey, Jag, will change the type of business
you're doing in India. "
I said, "What do you mean?"
"They will get into the seed business.
And they will do the business of seeds of all crops,
so that we have a monopoly on the seeds,
and every farmer has to always come to us to buy seeds. "
That set off alarm bells in my mind.
If a poor farmer has to go to buy Monsanto seeds each time,
and a so expensive seeds,
at that time I had no idea whatsoever Bt.
Genetically modified seed, I had not thought of that.
Even a monopoly on seeds is very bad.
So farmers into debt to get the seed
because of the high cost, 17 000 percent more.
It is further into debt, because it violates the promise
to control pests, so they have to buy more pesticides.
The tragedy with chemicals, whether fertilizers or pesticides,
It is that they are what is called ecological narcotics:
the more you use, the more you need to use them.
For a time, picking unique product increases
and then begins to fall
because it has contaminated the ground.
PUNYAB, INDIA
Most Indian cotton is grown in the Punjab,
it has quickly become the largest user of pesticides in India.
Dr. Pritpal Singh has studied the effects
chemicals on human health
and reports show a large increase in the number of birth defects,
cancers and mental illnesses here in the region.
You can go to each village
you will see hundreds of patients suffering from cancer.
70 to 80 children in each village
you will find that suffering
severe mental retardation and physical disabilities.
Companies of fertilizers, pesticides,
totally reject
the aftermath of pesticides and fertilizers,
and these are the classic symptoms of toxicity.
In a village, there are 60 children with mental retardation as this guy.
So it's a very dangerous phenomenon in the Punjab.
And poor people, peasants, workers, and small farmers
They have reached their full potential so they can not afford treatment.
In short, they have accepted the death of their children.
And they are waiting for the deaths of their children,
Mother is waiting for the death of this boy.
Companies that make GM seeds and chemicals
They are the same companies.
They are also the same companies that make drugs
they are now patenting.
So you have cancer, there are more benefits.
For them is to win, win, win ...
For nature and people, it's lose, lose, lose ...
It is the day in which agents of these companies
They approach the farmer and tell him:
"He owes me so much. He has not paid me.
Now their land is my land. "
That day the farmer going to his farm,
pesticide bottle of drink,
and end his life.
All the widows I speak, saying:
"And the neighbors came and said
that my husband lying on the field were found ".
In the last 16 years,
there have been more than 250 000
Farmer suicides in India.
That's about a farmer every 30 minutes.
It is the largest wave of suicides that is registered in history.
As the huge impact is evident
which it is fashion in our world,
there is growing research
suggesting that also has an increasing effect on us,
people who buy these clothes.
What we now know, 20 years later
and hundreds of studies later,
It is that the more people focus
in these materialistic values,
the more you say that money and image,
and its status and possessions are important to them,
the less happy they are,
are more depressed, more anxious they are.
We know that all these types of psychological problems
They tend to increase when increasing materialistic values.
Now, that is in total disagreement with the thousands of messages
we receive daily from ads
suggesting that materialism and the pursuit of possessions
and owning things is what will make us happy.
It is important to understand that advertising is a kind,
or category of propaganda.
You think of it as something totalitarian propaganda, very shady,
speakers, crowds chanting and all that,
and we think of Hitler.
We always think of it as something foreign
but it is as American as apple pie.
Well, advertising works because
smart advertisers at least
They are trying to link the consumption of its product
a message that suggests
that their needs will be met
eating this thing.
He wants you to believe
it will look wonderful with that position.
But then he puts it, and feels like:
"No, it looks a little fat with it, is not so well with that,
I regret having bought it, but there's another you can buy. "
Put it NOW
BUY NOW
Think of all the car ads you see that show:
"Well, finally I got it, I'm a competent person
because I drive this BMW or the Audi ".
Or think of all this shampoo that has seen,
where the person now has beautiful hair
and it is loved and appreciated by the people around her.
The basic message is the same:
how to solve the problems of his life,
all have problems in our lives,
how to solve the problems of your life is through consumption.
Hi guys!
Today I bring you lots of clothes!
I went shopping a couple of days ago and literally went crazy
and I bought a lot of things.
My mailbox spam, you know, has literally exploded,
because you want a lot of clothes.
So here it is.
Agree. First, I have some things I bought at H & M.
Then I went to Forever 21 ...
No doubt about it, it was fate, I had to buy it,
if I could levitate to me, I would have levitated.
I bought this skirt,
bright yellow, and cost $ 8.50.
He is denim with buttons ...
and I just loved it. Loved, loved, loved it!
It is a gray knitted sweater, full of pink hearts.
I loved it. I love the stained clothes.
The garments are dyed tops.
Has a little yin yang in the front.
I love these so much.
And it is this very beautiful light blue sweater.
Not even know if I'll use it, now that I have,
because they do not know if I like both.
I have to stop.
MILAN, ITALY
Try to understand better
why people do not realize that they are becoming increasingly poor.
And I wonder, "Well, but
What has changed from when I was young? "
And fashion is something that has changed dramatically.
You could buy one, two shirts,
four T-shirts, for example, a year.
Now, also my children, they used to buy,
for each party, buy a shirt.
And so I realized that fast fashion is something totally new.
If you have noticed the price has fallen in recent years.
And following the disappearance of the middle class.
So all you people really need
It is very expensive,
like a home, as studies such as life insurance.
Moreover, there is a source of comfort
part of his life.
They can buy a T-shirt,
two shirts for holidays, or finally by day,
although I am very poor and I'm lost.
I lost everything I really needed.
Today we buy more than 80 billion
of wearing new clothes every year.
That's 400% more than the amount they bought just two decades ago.
The way we buy clothes has changed so much, so fast
few people actually stopped to
understand the origin of this new model, or consequences
such unprecedented increase in consumption.
There is an article in Printers' Ink
which is currently the leader in magazine advertising,
a famous writer, called Earnest Elmo Calkins,
he was a great master of the art of copywriting.
It was an article titled "Consumption".
In that article, he says there are two kinds of products.
The class to use,
as washing machines, cars and so on,
the things you buy and use for a long time.
And then there are the things you consume,
as chewing gum, cigarette, and other perishables.
He said that consumerism is getting people
try the things you use,
as things you eat.
With its innovative offer Buy 1, Take 3 Free,
un traje de Jos. A. Bank
It is actually cheaper than paper towels.
And now come these dispensers easy to use.
Four suits for the price of a modest dinner,
I feel good to throw them away when finished.
Just look landfills
and you can see in landfills
that the amount of clothing and textiles that are thrown away,
It has been increasing steadily in the last ten years,
like a dirty shade of the fast fashion industry.
As we move more and more
degradation species,
to destroy the last pristine wilderness we have left,
We seem bent on producing more and more disposable things.
It makes no sense.
Fashion should never and can never be considered
as a disposable product.
After a big change in any sector,
it takes time to feel and smell
dirt coming out of something that is polluting.
So I think there is now a change
because you can not deny
industry Fast Fashion
It has a massive impact on developing countries.
The average American takes 37 kilos
you textile waste each year.
Adding up to more than 11 million tons of textile waste
the EE. UU. only.
Most of these wastes are not biodegradable.
Meaning it stays in landfills 200 years or more,
air while emitting harmful gases.
The large amount of cheap clothes,
although people feel, perhaps somehow,
compensating to donate to charities.
The journey of a shirt donated to charities
It is difficult to accept in itself.
PORT AU PRINCE, HAITI
Pepe is a disease in Haiti.
Not only in Haiti, I think in any
third world country you visit.
It is a problem, it's a huge problem.
Pepe is a lot of clothes,
mostly from the United States,
People will buy a box of clothes ...
They do not even know what they are buying.
It's clothes that people donate to charities,
and these can not sell in their thrift store or whatever,
the packed and shipped to these third countries
and most end here.
It turns out that only 10 percent
We donate clothes
gets sold in thrift stores.
And as we let our clothes faster and faster,
now increasingly discarded in developing countries,
as Haiti.
As the second-hand clothes
into Haiti has increased,
the local textile industry has disappeared.
What once was a sector proudest making garments,
Haiti now produces mainly cheap shirts
to be exported to the United States.
Because earlier when you were working
used to see people coming to learn to sew.
The person could come to learn, and asked me to teach them to sew.
Then he taught them.
And they learned to sew,
You knew they would find a job with that ability.
However, today, the person can learn to sew
but you can not find work or make a living doing that.
I tell people to stop buying things,
that's not right, costs about $ 10,
vas a ir a un baile,
are you going out today. Just you go to a store
and you buy a dress for $ 10.
Because it costs only $ 10, and I can throw it away.
And tomorrow you will do the same,
and again.
While growing awareness of the impact of fashion in the world,
there are key industry leaders who begin to question
the impacts of a model based on production inconsiderate
and endless consumption.
In Patagonia, we hate the word "consumers".
We have to find a better word, we prefer "customers"
and we prefer clients who recognize
the impact of their consumption.
They recognize that, as consumers, are part of the problem.
We hope to encourage our customers to join
to us for questioning consumption.
Because without a reduction in consumption,
we believe that we will not find a collective solution
to the problems we face collectively, year after year,
They are leading to continued deterioration in the health of our planet.
The fashion industry has to think.
You have to stand and watch has been running
in a conventional manner, and to question, challenge him.
For me it is, as a designer,
the most exciting thing I do now.
More exciting to say: "I like this color this season"
or "This is the silhouette, or the hemline."
For me, a much greater challenge and excitement
is actually looking at my industry and say, "You know what?
I will try to do it in a way
it is not as harmful to the planet. "
The companies, through advertising, have made society believe
that happiness is based on things,
that true happiness can only be achieved
with annual, seasonal, weekly gain, daily
in the amount of things that you take your life.
We encourage our customers
to rethink those assumptions,
to understand where they come from.
And to understand it, to know it all together
we can change how.
The customer has to know who is responsible.
Without them, we have no jobs.
And that's really important.
So you do not have to accept it.
If you do not like, you do not have to accept it.
Rajshahi, Bangladesh
I love embroidery, Shantu.
The embroidery is very beautiful.
Do you think we should not put the embroidery on both sides?
I think we should put the embroidery here too.
I think it looks a bit simple if only forward.
So let's put it on the sides as well.
It will not add much cost.
It is not as dense, right?
How about?
Swallows is a fashion company fair trade
but it is also a development partnership.
So it is helping more than 3,000 people in this town.
I come here every four months.
We call them "journeys of production."
And we work with manufacturers,
trying to figure out what the barriers are
to make a great product and make it to market.
And we encourage fair trade capabilities.
So what are the obstacles facing
to provide more social benefits
or improve environmental protection in these areas.
For me, it's partnering.
It's about finding creative solutions,
next to them, with the team here,
and really listen to what their problems
and find together the way they actually work.
I want to invite the best employee of Swallows,
I want to invite a woman representative of Swallows,
to come to London in autumn or next spring.
And I'd like to think
Who would be the best representative.
But I want you to know who your customers are,
and I want you to really understand the market
and come back and tell all your friends.
Or, if you do single thread, simple stitch,
then maybe you need to do denser?
- Good. - More focused?
If it continues for a while,
we will climb the showroom now, PV15.
Can you come and show us the next thing to do?
Yes.
People Tree hoped would not be necessary,
and I hoped we had a trading system to take care
the rights of people and the environment.
But the more I'm involved in the development,
and collaboration with partners,
more dirt and filth I discovered
about business practices
undermine everything we believe in,
and all I know that most people believe and value.
I do not know, People Tree really grew in an organic way.
It grew from a large group of people
who believe passionately that there is a different way of ...
To work, to live, to eat,
to interact with people in a humane way.
I not necessarily think that would be a thousand shops
selling today People Tree,
and I see that there is much more we need to do.
I think not just about creating jobs
for 7000 people working at People Tree.
It also seeks to be a catalyst for change in the sector,
showing, proving that the model works.
When we begin to be organic,
I think we were only two or three at the time,
Marketing Cooperative formed the Texas Organic Cotton,
and the agreement was that they grew and sold it.
So I started going to Jacob Javits
and with all this cotton plants and everything,
we said, "Yes, we have organic cotton"
and people looked at us like we're totally crazy.
Consumers often become aware of ...
Organic milk, or have an allergy.
And, curiously, cotton,
and what they put on the body
although the skin is the body's largest organ,
it is not even important
they do not understand the connection of saying,
"I like this organic apple,
so I'm not getting directly
pesticides or chemicals, or whatever the case. "
But they do not understand the direct connection with clothing.
And so you have to start looking at the broader community level.
This is our air, our world.
This is our planet, our people.
And so that awareness of ...
You may not feel they have a direct impact
buying this organic shirt.
But the impact
It is in the bigger picture, in the world at large,
and especially where the community has grown cotton.
As hard frost arrives,
as organic farmers, we hope that icy
because that literally skims, removes leaves the plant,
so that when harvested, mature capsules are open,
and cotton leaves here,
and you can see what comes in sections.
This machine is called cotton harvester.
And it is called cotton harvester
because literally it comes and starts,
use something like fingers, and literally starts
all capsules of this plant.
So if you look here, you can see
Combine and went out there and has collected all the plants.
I think one of the problems we have in the current model
It is that what matters is profit.
And do not take into account: "This cost, at what price?"
The price of polluting the water,
the price of labor,
the bars on the window,
that people die when a fire in the factory,
the price of farmers who have no access
education and health services.
And so we really have not calculated what the real price.
Kanpur is located along the Ganges River,
which is the most sacred river.
And it is also very important for 800 million Hindus
and also it serves as a way of life for northern India.
Leather factories Kanpur
They are polluting and killing this river.
With the growing demand for inexpensive materials such as leather,
Kanpur is now the capital of leather exports from India.
Every day, more than 50 million liters of toxic wastewater
leaving local tanneries.
Chemical complexes used to treat leather, such as chromium-6,
flow into local agriculture and even drinking water.
In places like Kanpur, hidden in the eyes of the world,
big Western brands get cheaper materials
while avoiding any responsibility for the rising cost to human health
and the environment.
The people in that area is affected by pollution from the tanneries.
The local environment is polluted, the soil is contaminated.
The only source of drinking water,
groundwater is contaminated with chromium.
Agricultural products,
even vegetables and salad products,
They produced there.
The health of people affected.
People have different types of skin problems:
skin rashes, blisters, pustules,
numbness of the limbs.
People have stomach ailments, they may also have cancer.
My daughter suffers from jaundice.
Every year, people in nearly every house in this region
suffers from this disease.
Even my wife had jaundice.
As I said, many people every year have the same problem.
We used all our savings to treat diseases,
because the chromium in the water
attacks the liver,
creates digestive problems, and many people can get jaundice
or liver cancer if we do not take precautions.
You may have the best materials
the market for high-end fashion in Milan or Paris or London.
But there has been so much work behind it,
and they have been used many chemicals,
effluents were discharged into many rivers.
But we're just looking at that moment in time
the finished product.
We have to go back and think about it.
The fashion today is the second most polluting industry
on earth, second only to the oil industry.
The alarming thing is that fashion not only used
a wealth of natural resources,
and make amazing environmental effects,
these natural resources and the impact often are not even measured.
As they have been so abundant these resources,
it is assumed that they will be around forever.
So I think the industry has not justified
because it is only from the 50s
we've really had this industrial expansion
at such a rate that we start to see exponential growth
and exponential use of natural resources.
Our lives depend on the economy first nature.
Nature has an economy.
That economy is enormous. It is not counted.
Then there is the economy of the people, the workers, laborers,
Farmers growing.
That became invisible through this construct,
first the Depression, then during the war years,
the number called GDP, gross domestic product,
that only measures which are traded,
and it has become a commodity.
Many resources
we use to make our clothes have not been justified
in the production cost of such clothing.
Then you have the water used to produce clothing,
land used to grow the fiber,
chemicals used for dyeing.
Those things are all inputs.
And as inputs, they have a cost,
and also give products
in some cases, good products, the clothing itself, jobs,
but in other cases, bad products, such as harmful chemicals,
or emissions of greenhouse gases,
and those things also have a cost.
Sleeping on pillow.
Do you feel bad leaving Nadia?
Of course I feel bad, but I can not do anything.
Working here, I am forced to leave the village.
In the past two months, he did not sit with their books.
Just watch TV and cartoons.
And music videos.
But if he stays in the village, you can not do that.
He goes to school in the morning, again at noon
and 3 pm will tutoring.
That's not possible here.
What do you do with Nadia now?
Sometimes I leave with the neighbor,
Sometimes his father used to take care of it.
And I took my works sometimes.
I took her to the factory yesterday.
The same low wages that make places like Bangladesh
so attractive for brands to do business,
have left millions of workers working long hours,
unable to afford to keep their children with them,
even in the poorest slums.
To give their children an education,
and the chance for a better life in future factories,
many textile workers here, as Shima, leave their children
to raise them family or friends in villages far from the city,
and only see once or twice a year.
This is my dad,
over a year since I saw him.
Sometimes I talk to him by phone,
but over a year since I saw him.
This is my mom,
a year ago he has not seen.
I talk to her on the phone too, but do not see often.
The struggle of the workers of Bangladesh has no limits.
Each day we woke up early in the morning,
we go to the factory, and we work very hard all day.
And we do all the hard work clothes.
And that's what people use.
People have no idea how hard it is for us to do the laundry.
Only buy and use it.
I think these clothes are produced with our blood.
Many textile workers die in separate accidents.
About a year ago, there was a cave in Rana Plaza.
Many workers died there.
It is very painful for us.
I do not want anyone seen anything,
to occur with our blood.
We want better working conditions, so that all are aware.
I do not want another owner as Rana Square
run that risk and force workers
to work in such conditions.
Lest they die more workers as well.
For there is no more mothers who lost their children as well.
I do not want this, I want that the owners are a little more aware
and take care of us.
You know? Really hit profits
their need to work, to use as slaves.
And I'm not saying that ... We have to give them work,
but they must be treated with the same respect
with which we treat our children, our friends.
They are not different from us.
Livia Firth has called for major changes
in the fashion industry.
She made headlines for starting something
called "The Challenge of Green Carpet"
urging famous and great designers
to participate in more fashion conscious ways.
Sustainability runs a consultancy called Eco Age,
and he has been invited to speak at a conference
about the future of fashion.
If there fast fashion,
no need to have a summit in Copenhagen
to try to solve the disaster of the destruction of the environment,
destruction of social justice, which has been caused
in the last 15 or 20 years of its existence.
Fast Fashion wants to produce fast,
so the textile worker has to produce faster and cheaper.
So the textile worker is the only point of the supply chain
where margins are compressed.
And we have these huge companies
They are going to the factory in Bangladesh,
They make an order for 1.5 million jeans
30 cents each, 50 cents each ...
How can it be ethical?
I do not know.
But also, from the point of view of the consumer,
Is it really democratic buy a shirt for $ 5
or pay $ 20 for their jeans?
Or are we kidding?
Because they are making us believe that we are rich or wealthy
because we can buy many things.
But we actually are getting poorer.
And the only person who is getting richer
It is the brand owner of Fast Fashion.
So that angers me a little.
You spoke of a commitment
promise to try to basic subsistence wages.
What does that mean?
How fair subsistence wages defined in Bangladesh?
You know? What does that mean?
"Having a pilot project in three factories"
and by 2018, 15% of their factories are going to have that?
That is not enough. it is not.
For us it is very clear that what is a living wage,
It is something that workers should say,
and that is incorporated into our way of working.
How much is it?
And we are not who should say how much,
but we do assessments all the time.
How much is it?
And to ensure that covers the basic needs of workers.
I can show it later.
H & M has dominated the fast fashion model,
becoming the second largest clothing company in history.
With annual revenues of over $ 18 billion dollars,
Now they are one of the largest producers of clothes
in Bangladesh and Cambodia.
Unfortunately, like other large retailers who asked,
They refused to grant an interview for this film.
PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA
In Cambodia, the garment workers are tired.
They recently took the streets
to demand a minimum wage increase in the country.
To continue the protests were met with violent repression,
as police opened fire with live ammunition.
A woman died and several people were injured
in clashes between workers of textile mills
and riot police in Cambodia.
For two days, Cambodia was a battleground.
The city of Phnom Penh.
They brought to the police, paratroopers
as if there were a war in the streets of Phnom Penh.
Why? Because workers in the textile industry
still required
a minimum wage of at least $ 160.
The government violently repressed us, and as a result
five workers, 23 died were arrested,
and more than 40 wounded.
And actually we are not asking for much money.
We just want a proper wage to a decent life with dignity.
But the government does not care how poor we are
or how much suffering we endured.
They do not care workers at all.
So we continue to demand $ 160
a monthly minimum wage.
Today is the funeral of a factory worker.
He was beaten to death.
She had suffered greatly before dying this morning.
And he had not done anything wrong.
He, among his colleagues,
I wanted to have better living conditions.
Continue their fight
for all Cambodian workers
have decent living conditions.
Thank you sir.
The Cambodian government, like other developing countries,
desperately you need the business they bring multinational retailers.
By the constant threat of these brands
on the relocation of production to other low-cost countries,
the government keeps down wages,
systematically avoiding compliance with local labor laws.
But how are you officially marks do not employ workers,
or they own any factories where they produce,
they can make huge profits,
while remaining free of responsibility
the effects of precarious employment, Disaster factories,
and continued violent treatment of workers.
The whole system begins to seem
as a perfectly designed nightmare
for workers trapped inside.
They can not deceive, and exploit our human resources,
exploit our workers.
Workers continue rising.
I ask the international brands
to turn this fight in dollars,
in pounds, euros.
It translates into human capital.
It translates in social responsibility
of these large companies,
It translates into economic justice.
When everything is concentrated on making profits
for large companies,
we see that human rights,
the environment, labor rights are completely lost.
We see that workers are increasingly exploited
because it brings down the price lower all increasing,
simply to satisfy this urge to accumulate capital.
And that is deeply problematic,
because it leads to massive impoverishment
hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
If you write to any of these companies,
they send its Code of Conduct.
And it's beautiful, and says: "Yes, we take responsibility
conditions under which our product is made,
the product you buy.
In all the factories where we produce,
we require them to abide by minimum wage laws,
all laws of the country,
respect women and not hire children,
no forced labor,
no excessive overtime, "all those things.
But when we introduced a bill in Congress a few years ago,
or we work with people to do it,
we call it "Law of decent working conditions and fair competition",
the companies responded with one voice,
"No! It would be an impediment to free trade.
There can be no rules. We can not pamper you! "
They want to keep with voluntary codes of conduct.
They have fought, and won,
by laws protecting their belongings and their interests,
but what about the workers?
There are only voluntary codes of conduct.
And what we see in case after case after case,
is that these voluntary codes of conduct
We must recognize, particularly in the fashion sector,
that human capital is part of this miracle formula.
Without human capital, not cheap labor,
female hand cheap labor,
I would not be generating the profits it generates.
That has to be recognized, must be addressed,
and those people need to be rewarded and not exploited.
Where's your piece of the pie?
That is what we must constantly ask.
Are these immoral buyers? Or just not ... Or are they immoral?
The system for working and the system that allows
companies do it is amoral.
The persons concerned are merely products of that system
and they have to take it to its logical conclusion.
What we have to do is change how these businesses operate.
Operating in a system that only measures benefits,
companies have little incentive to do
nothing else to do that this quarter is better than the last.
Regardless of the damage to the road.
As companies in the global fashion industry,
leading brands, and seed and chemical companies,
today grow to a size and unprecedented global power.
This term profit at all costs, is beginning to be opposed
openly to the values we share.
Richard Wolff es un economista,
that after graduating from Harvard, Stanford and Yale,
he was convinced that the real problem
it is within the system itself.
So the United States became a peculiar country.
You could criticize the educational system
to improve schools.
You could criticize the transport system
to work best.
You could crit ...
But you could not fault the economic system.
That had free pass.
You could not criticize ...
And if not critical thing for 50 years,
it rots, it decomposes.
One of the ways that a healthy society works
It is subjected to criticism of its component systems,
to discuss it and hopefully fix it,
or improve it or make it better.
You could not question capitalism.
Capitalism is the reason
whereby the fashion industry is as today.
It is the reason why so little is paid to workers in Bangladesh.
Because if you're operating in a capitalist system,
the most important thing to do is to create benefits
and you need to create more profits than its competitors.
And this is what drives companies
to keep wages low and getting lower.
But companies do not go ... The fashion retailers
They do not go to places like Bangladesh for no other reason except
they can get cheaper labor can work.
No collective rights in Bangladesh,
no trade union rights,
There is a very, very low minimum wage,
no maternity benefits, no pensions,
It is why the fashion industry is in Bangladesh
because you can get the most benefits from these people
they are making clothes for them.
Before you can solve a problem, you have to admit you have it
and before going to fix an economic system
it is working in this way, and producing such stresses
and inequalities and problems in our community,
we have to face the real extent of the problem we have,
with the overall system.
And at least
we have to open a national debate on the subject,
and at most, I think we have to think long and hard
on alternative systems that might work better.
For the environment, the big threat is that capital
You should continue to expand infinitely to survive.
You can not have any limit to its expansion and growth.
The natural world clearly has limits.
There are definite limits on how it can support the world
in terms of production, in terms of trade,
in terms of transport and distribution.
And it is clear that we have already exceeded
Many of these limits, that is why we are seeing so much tension
in the natural world right now.
Most people do not want to live in a system like this.
I think it's a system that makes most people very unhappy,
and I do not think people want to live on a planet that is dying slowly
or be exploiting their neighbors.
I think we need a huge systemic change.
If the system does not change,
It is being left intact
decisions of these companies,
meaning that a small group of executives and shareholders
They will be working on the same system,
subject to the same pattern of rewards and punishments,
that sooner or later it makes impose again,
there or elsewhere,
the same conditions against which they are fighting.
So leave it to improve their conditions,
do against the computer or otherwise do not speak seriously.
Our economic system is consumer capitalism,
and so the government needs to have consumption
at very high levels,
like companies, of course,
and so at some level, most people accept.
I've lost count of the people I spoke to said:
"Well, if we become less materialistic economy would collapse."
Well, they're right in a sense, because our economy
is based on materialism, it is based on such securities.
That's what it needs to survive.
That's part of the fuel it needs.
The problem is that it has a high price.
Black Friday is here we go, please?
Go, go, go buy, buy, buy
Black Friday Hysteria
continues in shopping centers.
In some parts of the country tonight,
It is as if someone announced
we are in danger of running out of things,
and those who need something have to go out and buy now
because it will disappear forever.
Walmart, she made more than 10 million transactions
in the first four hours of hysteria.
A record 15 000 people at Macy's in New York, buyers resist.
Black Friday is the longest day of the year sales.
Certainly in the case of Macy's. We'll have more sales this day
than any other day of the year.
This Christmas shopping spree shows that the country rose!
We are once again ... Yes!
Yes!
We are once again spending money we do not have
things that do not need to give people we do not like.
IN. IT.! IN. IT.! IN. IT.! IN. IT.!
OMG!
They love her
and possibly take care of it better than me.
However, one thing makes me sad.
No matter how much someone wants it,
no one can love a child's parents.
I feel heartbroken.
I do not want my daughter to have to work in a garment factory like me.
I feel bad, but I think I'll be happy one days
when she has a good future.
It will be a good human being and people will say,
although Shima worked in a garment factory
and he stayed in Dhaka, away from her daughter,
He gave him a good education to her daughter
and raised her as a good human being.
If you get a good job in government, or marries a good man,
then people will say and I will be very proud of that.
Yes, I fought,
but I did my best not to let her go through this.
As well screams.
I grew up on a farm, I married a guy who grew up on a farm,
and those who live on the farm, we live there,
It has to be safe for us too.
And the new chemicals
and intensity of use, continued to rise.
And then in 2005,
Terry began to have loss of fine motor skills,
and this and that, and she discovered
I had glioblastoma multiforme, a brain tumor in stage 4
and in the fullness of his 47 years.
He died at age 50.
We got six months, we had two and a half years,
and the neurosurgeon who operated on him, Lubbock,
It has immense cancer clinics and a medical center.
We did not have to go elsewhere for that brain tumor operate.
We could stay here
because it makes many operations.
He said that this type of tumor found in men, 45 to 65,
working in agriculture, or oilfields.
And although I have no hard evidence, no blood test to tell
The use of cotton chemicals, agricultural chemicals,
led directly to the death of my husband,
there are too many connections with the death of his father.
He grew up on a farm with intensive use of chemicals,
We live amid 1.2 million hectares of cotton,
using many chemicals.
And those moments,
organic was no longer important to me,
it was imperative.
It is imperative that we change agriculture.
It is imperative, if we talk about the long-term sustainability
and welfare of our lives on this planet,
and the lives of our children on the planet,
we have to change.
It is the beginning of a turning point,
not only for a responsible fashion to make way,
but a new form of capitalism,
for a new form of economy.
I'm sure we'll see a significant change
over the next ten years.
If you arrive on time or not it is another matter.
Martin Luther King Jr.,
in a speech at a church in Brooklyn, he said
what America needed was a revolution of values.
She had to stop treating people as things.
She had to stop treating people in a way
it was just about profits.
And however treat people in a real and human way.
OMG! We can make things better!
If we want to disseminate, and I would say yes,
industry spread throughout the world, not concentrate in one place.
Allow benefits are shared globally,
then let's do it in an orderly fashion, reasonable, carefully.
We must recognize that capital is only money.
Money is a means,
and people should be accountable for how it is used.
We have to celebrate the creative power of human beings.
And we talk about the creative work,
We should stop talking about labor.
We have to look at the earth not as a commodity,
with which it is speculated and markets,
but as the very basis of our life, as Mother Earth.
It becomes all consumer activists,
all consumers make ethical questions,
all consumers do very simple questions about
where it comes from his clothes,
all consumers say:
"Sorry, it is not acceptable for someone to die while working".
We can not turn around and say. "Yeah, go do whatever you want."
It is too important, the sector is too important.
Have too much impact and effect on millions of people around the world,
and common resources.
We continue seeking happiness
consumption of thing?
Are we going to be satisfied with a system that makes us feel rich,
while leaving our desperately poor world?
Will we continue to turn a blind eye
to the lives of those who are behind our clothes?
Or will there be a turning point, a new chapter in our history,
when together we begin to make a real change,
to remember that all the clothes we wear was made by human hands?
Amidst all the challenges we face today,
despite all the problems that seem to excel
and beyond our control,
maybe we could start here,
clothing.
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