 The apparel and textile industry is one of the largest industries in the world, with an annual revenue of over $2.5 trillion US. At this critical time in our planet's history, people are buying more items of clothing per year than ever before, often without much concern for what it is doing to people in the planet. We know that these prices for t-shirts are simply too cheap to be the true cost. Think of the production of the cotton, which includes an incredible amount of water and pesticides, the shipping of the cotton to the mill, the creation of the knit fabric, the chemicals used to dye it, the cutting and sewing of the t-shirt, the wages of the workers, the distribution of the final product, the advertising and the overhead of the retail store, etc. And clothes keep getting cheaper. This is from the same giant mega retailer four years later. In fact, the business philosophy of big box retailers is simple. To increase their sales and profits by bringing the lowest possible prices to their customers. But at what cost? Big box chains require their suppliers to lower prices year after year, putting huge pressure on them to be leaner and faster, cutting costs by laying off workers, moving production overseas and using unethical labor practices. In the past 20 years, our global population has grown by 28%, but clothing production has far outpaced population growth, doubling in the same 20 years. This incredible growth of fast fashion has had massive environmental and social impacts. The overconsumption of fast fashion comes with a high price to pay in four main areas. Pollution, waste and disposal, workers' rights and workers' safety. Let's look at each of these individually, then look at some of the solutions that need to happen in the ready-made garment industry. One of the first problems to look at is the massive use of water. How many liters of water do you think it takes to produce a simple t-shirt? 10, 100, 1,000? If you consider the growing of the cotton, the production of the textiles, the bleaching or dyeing and mercerizing, it actually takes about 2,700 liters of water to make one t-shirt. What about a pair of jeans? It's an astonishing 7,600 liters of water. So this simple outfit then totals 10,300 liters of water. If you think of that in terms of drinking water at the recommended rate of about 2 liters of water a day, it would take a person more than 14 years to drink that much water. Multiply that by an average of 20 new garments per year times 7.9 billion people and the result is billions of cubic meters of water being used in the ready-made garment industry every year. And the problem is that this huge amount of water is not just returned to the hydrologic cycle to be safely used again. It is polluted with toxic chemicals at each stage of garment production. The production of cotton accounts for 16% of insecticides used worldwide. And these pesticides enter the soil, groundwater and nearby rivers. And of course other fibers besides cotton are produced in massive quantities as well. Also wreaking havoc as they are bleached, dyed and printed. Adding more toxic chemicals to nearby water sources. These chemicals are difficult and costly to remove from water. So textiles factories usually dump untreated wastewater into rivers and streams. This water is then used to irrigate crops. So of course toxic chemicals can be found in fruits and vegetables meant for human consumption. Unfortunately, the negative environmental impacts of our clothing do not stop once we purchase them. In the case of synthetic fibers such as polyester, nylon and acrylic, each time we wash them, hundreds of thousands of microfibers are released into the water system. This includes of course microfiber bedding, which has gained popularity because it is less expensive than cotton. An estimated half a million tons of microfibers leach into oceans each year. They can accumulate in the bodies of fish which we then eat. The impacts on our health are not yet known. Even when we stop wearing an article of clothing, its disposal can have harmful impacts on the environment. Approximately 92 million tons of textile items per year globally are dumped into landfills where their dyes, finishes and microplastics can continue to contaminate soil and groundwater. Of the 98 million tons of clothing produced each year, approximately 85% ends up in landfill or is incinerated, often within a year of purchase. Due to economies of scale, it is often cheaper for a manufacturer to produce more than is actually needed. If a company needs, for example, 800 items, it is sometimes cheaper to produce 1,000 of the item and discard the extra 20%. To maintain brand exclusivity, the remaining items are burned, buried or shredded. In 2018, Burberry was among the first producers to admit to this practice. It's not that they are worse than other companies. In fact, declaring this makes them one of the few brands that is transparent about it and they have since stopped the practice. Fast fashion has created a throwaway approach to clothing. The 80 billion items of clothing that do get sold each year are worn an average of only seven times before being discarded. The average Canadian throws out 36 kilograms of clothing a year, the equivalent of one and a half full suitcases each year. When an item is thrown away, it is not only the item itself going to waste, but also the natural resources required to create it. This means 2,600 liters of water for every T-shirt or 7,600 liters of water for every pair of jeans that are sent to the landfill. It's definitely better to donate textile items, but again the problem is scale. We simply purchase and discard too much. The third part of the problem of the global fashion industry is labor regulations and workers' rights. The industry is notorious for paying below the already low minimum wages of the poorest countries in the world. In these images from EcoWatch, we can see that the garment worker makes about 1% of the retail price. The low pay is barely enough for three meals a day, so workers often sleep in cramped spaces in the factory. If they try to organize, workers are fired and often blacklisted. Bangladesh pays the lowest salaries in the world, about $76 a month. This is not even based on a 40 hour work week. When there is a large order due, workers often work six or even seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 2 or 3 a.m. Bangladesh's garment industry is now the second largest in the world, second only to China. There are thousands of factories employing millions of adults and also millions of children, an estimated 5 million 10 to 14 year olds. Since 2013, factories have become more regulated and conditions have improved. But what often happens is that a fashion brand gives their business to a regulated factory, then the work is subcontracted to an unregulated factory. This makes transparency and accountability impossible. This is one of the unregulated factories where not only are wage standards not necessarily followed, but neither are safety and fire regulations. Quite often workers don't even know if the factory is registered or not, if they have an illegal protection or not, or even the name of the owners or the factory itself. In 2006 in Bangladesh, Rana Plaza was built on a filled in pond without proper approvals as a four floor building with mixed retail and office space. It was not designed for industrial use, meaning that its structure was not strong enough to support industrial machinery. Four more floors were then added, again without proper approvals, and five garment manufacturers were operating in the plaza. In 2013, a ninth floor was nearing completion to accommodate another large manufacturer. Many well-known fast fashion brands were being produced in this building. In April 2013, news clips showed workers who said that they had seen and reported large cracks in the building and had tried to refuse to work, but were told that inspectors had declared the building safe and that workers would be fired if they did not return to work immediately. On April 24th, 2013, the Rana Plaza collapsed, killing 1,134 people and injuring hundreds of others. There have been multiple deadly fires and other industrial accidents in Bangladesh before and since Rana Plaza, but we don't hear about these less newsworthy tragedies. It was the scale of Rana Plaza that made it a tipping point that moved the issue into the mainstream. Since the Rana Plaza disaster, many new regulations have been put into place, and things are slowly improving. And many activist groups emerged that are doing great work to support workers and the environment, including Clean Clothes Campaign, a global alliance dedicated to improving working conditions and empower workers in the global garment and sportswear industries. Fashion Revolution has grown to become the world's largest fashion activism movement, mobilizing citizens, brands, and policymakers through research, education, and advocacy. There are also many exciting new technologies that promise to make the production of textiles safer and cleaner. Calls have been made to transform the fashion industry into a circular model with non-toxic biodegradable clothing that is designed for minimal harm to the environment with sharing, reusing, and recycling as important elements to be planned in the design stage. But these changes take time, which we don't have a lot of. So what can you do in the meantime? Here are six suggestions. Dramatically reduce the amount of new fast fashion you purchase. Set a reasonable limit for yourself, say five pieces of new clothing per year. Buy from local shops and ethical fashion brands whenever possible. Buy as much secondhand clothing as you want. Have fun thrifting. Wear your finds as many times as you like and then re-donate them. Share and swap clothing with friends. Maintain your clothing well through gentle laundering. Learn to sew on a button and fix a torn seam instead of discarding your old clothes. Learn to sew. Rescue some donated fabric and create your own unique wardrobe. Small immediate changes like these can help us buy the time we need to make bigger changes. Together we can bring the beauty back into fashion. Links to key articles are in the description below. Thanks so much for watching.