Saw a frightening documentary last night about the fashion industry.
The film is called "The True Cost" - I saw it on Netflix.
According to this film the fashion industry is the second most polluting industry on the planet(after oil). The world consumes about 80 billion items of clothing every year. Clothes are now so cheap we dispose of them all the time. Americans generate about 37 kilos of textile waste per person/year. We donate thousands of tons of clothes to charity shops. They can only sell about 10%. The rest are dumped in markets in places like Haiti, putting local tailors and seemstresses out of business.
But that is only a part of the problem.
90% of cotton is genetically modified, using massive amounts of water, chemicals, insecticides and pesticides. These are having catastrophic environmental effects in those area with large cotton plantations, Bangladesh, US . . causing concentrations of cancers, birth defects, physical and brain damages.
And if that wasn't bad enough farmers in India are getting themselves into debt with Monsanto for seeds that aren't producing enough cotton.
and in depair they are committing suicide . . .
Think about this the next time you look at a nice bright cheap shirt in your local mega-store . . .
