I took sebastian to the shops tonight to spend some of his birthday money and was lured into some shops promising cheap clothes. I um-ed and ahh-ed and left a very soft stripes jersey batwing top on the rack. I got home and was reminded by a friend on Facebook about the clothes factory collapse in Bangladesh last year with over a thousand women and children being killed. And another post about sustainable fashion from a fabric store I subscribe to. In yet another shop I was toying with the purchase of some shimmery eyeshadow only to see it's chief ingredient is mica which is almost solely mined by children in India who are being exploited in terrible terrible conditions. Is a cheap tshirt or some shimmery powder worth that? I don't think we take to much time to think about where our clothes or makeup comes from and I doubt we would be very satisfied if we knew the truth.
I know it's incredibly hard to ever buy something that hasn't exploited someone along the line but I'm going to try to not make it me. I have so many tshirts I have so many shoes. I have plenty of makeup. I need none of these things.
Someone else will buy the stripes batwing top. Those women have already been treated badly. But for those in the future I'm going to do my part.
Join me. Don't get sucked into cheap disposable fashion.
And remind me if I do.
Thus endth the rant.
-written from here
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I gave some money to Amnesty and as a result they asked be to do a survey to see how many slaves I used. This was based on products bought such as electronic clothes shoes et cetera. my score was 25 slaves which horrified me. To the contrary these people depend on a job and stopping buying means that in the end they end up suffering. We have to decide how target rivers and big W can be encouraged pay reasonable prices.
ReplyDeleteThe problem you're talking about is all throughout Asia as we push more and more manufacturing into these areas we not only save ourselves a lot of money and make yourself a lot of money but we also send all our pollution and environmental problems to that country which is why I can't breeze when I'm in Beijing. Western society does have a lot to answer for and especially me with my 62 shirts and $40 rivers jacket. At the other end of the scale I look at luxury goods such as bags and think that paying $3-$5000 per bag is obscene I will post your photo of the house I had dinner in to show you how well off some Chinese people are while the other end of the ladies are looked after me lived in the company dormitory with 6 people in a bedroom house at for privacy from a 30-year-old person