22nd January 2019

Clothes are potentially the most pervasive product of design. They are a commodity, a basic necessity for warmth, modesty and practicality. They are a means to express individuality and values and are produced in huge volumes in a myriad of materials, colours, designs and finishes. Perhaps because of this intersection between function, affordability and appearance clothes have taken on a cultural importance in developed countries far beyond purely their function. Clothes are sold by multi-national brands which are constructed to appeal to different segments of the market. Marketing, advertisement and an incomprehensible rate of fashion turnover conspire to create as much consumption as possible. Clothes shopping has become easy, accessible, frequent, addictive and cyclically aspiration-achieving and insecurity-provoking.

Described in this was as carriers of value manipulated by indiscriminate capitalism, the clothing industry has resulted in staggering levels of global inequality between the two ends of its value chain. While hidden businesspeople accumulate profits from the combined markup and volume of their sales, those equally hidden workers involved in production earn enough to support a lifestyle that would be described as poverty in developed countries. Long days, poor and sometimes lethally dangerous working conditions, inadequate wages, insufficient holiday/ sick leave/ maternity leave and forced overtime create a tragically complete destruction of their quality of life. This poverty is passed through generations and results in a lack of social mobility not only for individuals but entire families and communities. This violation is ensured by unbalances in market power; between wealthy global purchasers of textiles who can race to the bottom, and by factories and workers which cannot distinguish their products. Workforce and environmental legislation is a barrier to inexpensive production and is implicitly prevented by the aforementioned market forces, who are hence demonstrably involved in shaping the international political landscape.

Consumers, complicit in this mode of production only by failing to reject it, en-masse, are too easily separated from the reality of consumption. This system is now so established that it is scarcely questioned, and UK households alone spent in excess of £68bn a year on clothing, a value which has been increasing confidently for the past two decades. While everyone is aware of the "made in..." tags in their clothes, and of "sweatshops", the fuzzy global supply chain, geographic separation and neat presentation at point-of-sale, combined with wilful ignorance, prevents consumers engaging with the full scale of consumption's impacts. Indeed, it would be bad for business if they did.

Just as significant are the environmental impacts. The IPCC 1.5C report describes plainly how, for example, sea-level rise, ocean acidification, species extinction, increased occurrence of extreme weather events and disparity in precipitation are all impending realities. More concerning is that to have a 50% probability of limiting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, atmospheric GHG concentrations must be maintained at a level we will surpass in between 10 and 18 years at the current emission rate. To limit our ecological damage to even this dire threshold will require a sustained, comprehensive and unprecedented paradigm shift in all areas of society.

If the disruption to an industry in service of this universal cause would be expected to be related to its resulting damage, be that historical or current, then the global textile industry should be expecting a fundamental change, so grossly damaging are its business-as-usual impacts.

Synthetic fabrics are most commonly made from polyester, an oil-derived polymer which is extracted from the earth's crust and then refined and processed in another highly globalised operation. Natural textiles are most frequently made from cotton. Cotton lint is farmed across 3% of global land and uses 25% of all pesticides, and is processed into fabric in the stages of spinning, weaving or knitting and dyeing which are highly energy, water and chemical intense. There is then a feat of international logistics to deliver clothing to the end consumer, who observes the most visible but least significant impacts in the product's lifetime through washing, ironing and drying. In summary, 60% of primary energy across a piece of clothing's lifetime is incurred during manufacturing.

So numerous are the environmental considerations associated with clothing production that it is easiest to consider a single indicator. Eco-cost is the expenditure required to prevent environmental damage resulting from an operation. The eco-cost accumulated by 1kg of cotton during a life-cycle analysis averages between £3.5 and £6, depending most significantly on yarn thickness which is inversely proportional to energy intensity. This intuitively describes the significance of the environmental exploitation which effectively subsidises textile manufacture. Consider finally the impact resulting in total from the 1.1 million tons new clothing purchased annually in the UK.

A 2016 study by WRAP illuminated the flows of clothing after its initial use phase, averaging 3.3 years. 14% is resold or re-used in the UK, 34% is sold overseas, 14% is recycled (most notably for rags), 31% is landfilled and 7% is incinerated. The UK is the world's third largest used-fabrics exporter, selling sorted high quality clothing to less developed nations, which then ironically undermines any attempt at creating a domestic textile market. Countries such as Kenya (which receives 6% of UK export) are considering banning the import of used clothing.

This therefore creates a brief but highly concerning view of how the globalised trade of clothing has resulted in its commoditisation and cultural devaluation in developed countries, and how immoral capitalist companies have participated in the spectacular and systematic exploitation of people and the environment. While this raises questions relating to the responsibility corporations have to the environment and their workforce, the way in which multi-national corporations can create and exploit international inequality, and the ways in which globalisation prevents supply-chain clarity and distances consumers from the manufacture of their products, in more practical terms it summarises a set of problems which require significant and immediate remedial action.