Sweatshop-free Clothing

Clothing is a basic need and necesseity for everyone. Unfortunately, there's a dark side that the clothing industry hides from it's customers, and it's something that you'll hardly see the media cover or hear most people even talk about for that matter. This is the issue of sweatshops and the exploitation of poverty-stricken workers in under-developed countries. A lot of the time, these factory sweatshops provide extremely sub-par work environments, and adhere to unethical practices such as employing young children and providing extremely low pay. In a lot of cases, workers at these sweatshops can expect to make a couple of dollars per day, or sometimes even less, for ten or twelve hours of work each day while being horribly mistreated. This is why the majority of the clothing companies have moved their factories outside of the U.S. because they know that they can exploit the people of these other countries by hardly paying them while adding huge percentages of increased profit to their own pockets as a result. A lot of the retail stores are set up so nicely and fancy looking and provide very inviting atmospheres for people to come in and spend their money, but I believe that if most people realized the ugly origins of these clothes and the companies that produce them, they would not want to be supporting such brands. Unfortunately, most brands participate in using sweatshops and exploited workers. Whether it's cheap clothes at a retail store or high end brands at an outlet mall, chances are there's a lot of corruption behind the company and the practices they partake in. It would seem logical to believe that the more expensive brands would have better and safer working environments with properly paid workers, because those companies could easily afford that set-up, after all, but that's never the case. Here are a few resources to learn more about sweatshops from:

http://www.dosomething.org/tipsandtools/11-facts-about-sweatshops

http://www.ourfuture.org/progressive-opinion/2009104319/stunning-facts-sweatshop-conditions

http://www.waronwant.org/overseas-work/sweatshops-and-plantations/china-sweatshops

And just in case you thought celebrity brands were any different... http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2011/12/kardashian-products-made-sweatshops-child-labor-investigation-underway

Fortunately, there are good brands out there that don't get involved with such practices. These brands usually go the extra mile to make sure that they're as polarly opposite as their sweatshop counterparts as possible. A lot of the time they use organic cotton (cotton that hasn't been exposed to harmful chemicals during preperations), and donate a percentage of their profits to environmental orginazations. Here is a list of some of the companies I've found that choose to use ethical practices and are sweatshop free:

http://www.patagonia.com/us/home

http://www.rawganique.com/

http://www.gaiam.com/category/apparel.do

http://maggiesorganics.com/

http://www.americanapparel.net/

And a ton of other ones listed here... http://www.greenpages.org/listing/guide/clothing

As well as all of the cruelty-free links I posted in my previous post.

If enough people stop spending money on sweatshop-using companies, and instead, choose to support ethical companies like these, we could put an end to the practice of sweatshops because the corrupt companies would eventually go out of business, or at the very least, be forced to make all of the necessary ethical changes after losing their customers to ethics-based companies.

A Quick Post on Leather (And Other Animal-Product Fashion)

This will just be a quick continuation of my last post. Whereas my previous post dealt with the problems of killing animals for food, this post will deal with the problems of killing animals for leather, fur, etc. In my last post, we learned about the horrors of the factory-farming slughterhouse industy and all of the torture, brutal conditions, and killing that take place at those factories. That's something that needs to be remembered for this post. The animals that are killed for their skins to make clothes/accessories out of are treated just as bad and have to go through all of those same experiences.

Luckily, there are tons of alternatives out there for everything that's made from animals that you can buy instead, so that you won't be supporting the companies that represent the cruelty and killing of animals. Here are just a few of the many examples:

http://www.peta.org/living/fashion/cruelty-free-clothing-guide.aspx
PETA lists a bunch of companies and products that are free of animal skins.

http://www.alternativeoutfitters.com/index.aspx
This is a really great leather-alternative company.

Those links alone provide animal free-alternatives for everything you can think of that are usually made from leather/animal skins. And more good news is that if you don't like any of their options, you can go to any search engine or amazon and type in vegan belts, vegan wallets, vegan shoes, vegan purses, or vegan anything and there's tons of other options that come up. Also, when searching, you can use other keywords such as "cruetly-free", "animal-free", "fake leather", etc.

If enough people out there choose this type of consumerism, we can end the concept of killing animals for fashion and apparel. The companies that kill animals to use real leather will either run out of business, or be forced to switch to animal-free products. Because, after all, it's we that have the power to control the markets.