IN the last 16 years, 250,000 farmers in Punjab, India have killed themselves by drinking pesticide.

According to the 2015 documentary, The True Cost by Andrew Morgan, the suicides occurred when farmers realised that they could not repay their debts to certain companies after purchasing genetically-modified cotton seeds that required more pesticides from the same company in order to grow.

True Cost also exposed how, in Kanpur (a city popular amongst Western brands as being the nexus of the cheap leather industry) factories were polluting the Ganga River daily with over 50 million litres of waste water and toxic substances.

After watching True Cost, I realised that in a majority of cases, the production of clothes, while seemingly harmless, perpetrates a number of human rights abuses and environmental destruction

Dehumanising system

Fast fashion is defined as clothes made cheaply at a great cost to the environment and people’s livelihood. This is an unsustainable system. Cloth fibre producers, textile and clothes manufacturers, fast fashion companies, and consumers are all supporting this.

Clothing manufacturers are pressured by fast fashion companies and investors to lower the cost price. This pressure trickles down, to exploiting garment workers by making them overwork to meet demands while reducing their wages. Manufacturers often brush aside safety of the factories and wellbeing of the garment workers, which sometimes lead to fatal results, such as the 2013 Rana Plaza tragedy in Dhaka, Bangladesh. 

In a consumerist society, fashion companies feed consumers with endless options and choices. As Alexandra Shulman, a British Vogue editor, put it: “Fashion is smoke and mirrors. We create images, we create a world of stuff, yes, ultimately to make people want to have it.” In other words, consumers are enticed to buy more and more, because companies are increasingly marketing clothes as cheap and fashionable.  

Fast fashion perpetuates a “wear-and-throw” mentality that, over time, produces a harmful culture of overconsumption. As Andrew Brooks, author of Clothing Poverty, said: “As more and more clothes are consumed, greater volumes of textile rubbish are produced. Wasteful old clothing does not just go away; it goes somewhere.”

Often, unwanted clothes end up accumulating in landfills, leading to increased production of methane gas and environmental pollution. In Malaysia, about 4% of the total waste is textile waste, equivalent to about 1,000 metric tonnes of textile waste per day.

The truth is, our clothes go through a complex journey in the global supply chain. They are touched by many hands – to produce the fibre, spin thread to cloth, dye the cloth, sew the various parts, and supply them to the fashion companies. The shirt you are wearing comes at a cost. 

Of clothing disposal behaviours and sustainable fashion awareness 

In 2016, researchers in USM, Penang carried out a study to explore the attitudes of young consumers towards sustainable fashion, and examined their clothing disposal behaviour from two angles—environmental economics and philanthropic awareness. 

When questioned, almost 80% of participants stated that they preferred to donate their clothes to charity houses, while 79% mentioned giving their clothes away to others. In other words, their clothing disposal behaviours were predominantly motivated by philanthropic awareness. 

However, the study’s results also showed that participants were less motivated to dispose of their clothes for environmental economic purposes and lacked knowledge on how and where to dispose of their unwanted clothes in a sustainable manner. 

It is a telling sign that sustainable fashion is still not widely practised in our society. Knowing this, relevant authorities, such as the Solid Waste Management and Public Cleansing Corporation (SWCorp), a body under the Ministry of Housing and Local Government that manages solid and textile wastes, should take greater efforts to galvanise awareness among local citizens.  

A good place to start would be to enforce existing sustainability-related laws and practices. For example, under the Solid Waste and Public Cleansing Management Act 2007 (Act 672), households in Kuala Lumpur, Pahang, Johor, Malacca, Negri Sembilan, Perlis and Kedah are required to separate their recyclable solid waste. SWCorp should enforce this act to make sure consumers do not mix textile waste with other waste materials and instead send it for recycling.  

SWCorp should also conduct more public awareness campaigns aimed at exposing the environmental damage caused by fast fashion and the consequences of incorrect textiles disposal. 

Besides the government, private companies can, and should, play a role in promoting textile waste reduction and sustainability awareness. For example, Sime Darby recently collaborated with Kloth Cares, a fabric recycling organiser, to place recycling bins within their office areas, in efforts to encourage employees to dispose of their unwanted fabrics. Other examples of local companies that have taken the lead in textile recycling initiatives are Kloth Malaysia and Life Line Clothing Malaysia, that actively conduct outreach and collaboration efforts with other companies, NGOs and charities. 

Individually, we as consumers should reject the fast fashion trend. Before purchasing any item of clothing, we should consider if we are investing in something that was made ethically, or a piece of disposable fashion produced by overworked and underpaid factory workers. Equally, we should explore options such as purchasing secondhand clothes, renting clothes, or swapping clothes with friends and family.

Greater awareness and intervention is key to reversing the damage caused by irresponsible parties in the fashion industry. Just as consumers and F&B companies are taking concrete steps to eliminate usage of plastic straws, we can do the same with clothes. 

Instead of being blind consumers, let us start questioning: “Who made our clothes?” – August 7, 2018.

* Penny is an intern at Penang Institute KL. She is currently studying at Universiti Sains Malaysia majoring in Anthropology and Sociology and minoring in Fine Arts. Her passion lies in visual anthropology, telling stories that bring justice and hope. Her current area of interest is sustainable fashion, anthropology of space and place, and South East Asia societies.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.