Opinion Column: “Think Global, Act Local”

April 21, 2014

[Opinion column written by Jonathan Starling]

The announcement that Gibbons Company will be carrying GAP products has been welcomed by many in the community that follow fashion trends.

However, it is important that we recall the saying ‘think global, act local’ when we look at this announcement. Far too often it is too easy to think only in terms of short-term fashion trends and ease of convenience and ignore the longer-term and human consequences of our purchases.

Almost exactly last year, in April 2013, two events occurred which helped focus attention on the consequences of Western fashion at a global level.

First, we saw the publication of ‘Polluting Paradise’ which highlighted the role of clothing firms in polluting the global environment, with GAP being singled out for in China, Mexico and Indonesia, where local water supplies and biodiverse habitats have been seriously compromised by firms under contract to GAP.

And later that some month we saw the tragic deaths, in a factory collapse, of over 1,000 garment workers in Bangladesh, which helped highlight the grievous sweatshop conditions that workers producing brands such as GAP are subject too. Just six weeks later a fire broke out in another Bangladeshi garment factory, leading to additional deaths.

In light of these two incidents the garment industry rushed to give lip-service to reform, of both environmental conditions and human/labour rights.

And yet, just late last year, a report by the Institute for Global & Human Rights, entitled ‘GAP and Old Navy in Bangladesh – Cheating the Poorest Workers in the World’, highlighted ongoing abuse and naked exploitation of garment workers producing GAP and Old Navy [a subsidiary of GAP] clothing.

Workers there are routinely forced to work in excess of 100 hours a week while having their already below subsistence wages [earning 20-24 US cents an hour] short-changed by their employers. Pregnant workers are routinely summarily discharged, denied their paid maternity leave and stripped of their legal benefits.

Miscarriages have resulted through the stress and abuse – including beatings – or workers, while attempts to organise labour unions to defend worker’s rights have been brutally suppressed with thuggish violence.

On the environmental front, GAP has claimed to be making progress through signing up to the ‘Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals [ZDHC] group’ – which has been widely criticised as an industry-led attempt of ‘green-washing’, that is, giving only the appearance of environmental consideration with no practical reforms in reality. The leading environmental NGO for example has described the ZDHC as merely delivering ‘more promises and pilots [pilot studies], rather than concrete actions to create toxic-free fashion’.

Greenpeace has also released a report, ‘Toxic Threads – The Big Fashion Stitch Up’ [November, 2012] which found that 78% of GAP branded clothing tested contained traces of nonylphenol ethoxylate, a hazardous chemical that breaks down to form a toxic and hormone-disrupting substance in rivers, lakes and seas. Not only does this indicate that large quantities of these, and other chemicals, have been used in the initial production of the clothing, but that consumers spread these hormone-disrupting chemicals every time they wash their clothes.

Every purchase we make has its consequences, be it in terms of the brutal exploitation of our fellow workers or the further pollution of our global environment. GAP is by no means the only brand with its hands bloody and dirty, but its arrival to our shores does serve to highlight the problems with such fashion. They show the consequences of the tyranny of the bottom line, which drives these brands to seek the lowest wages and cheapest environmental conditions for the sake of maximizing their profit margins, with no consideration for the long-term consequences of such actions.

It is difficult to avoid interaction with the global capitalist market; however we should all recognise the true long-term costs of these products and work in solidarity to pressure for fair-trade products which don’t exploit our fellow workers or pollute our common planet.

- Jonathan Starling

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Category: All, Business

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  1. 32n64w says:

    Does GAP directly own any of these firms or factories?

    Do the countries where the goods are produced not have an obligation to ensure minimum working conditions and environmental standards?