SWAP your Clothes and Stick it to the Fashion Industry

Did you know that the average British woman spends £1,000 a year on clothes but only wears 30% of them? That's already pretty surprising, but worse is why.

We're all looking for cheap clothes and bargains. The cheaper the clothes the better. But many of us haven't stopped to think about the consequences and ramifications of cheap clothing. Have you ever wondered why WalMart can sell you a shirt for $11.67? This post may illuminate you. Posing as textile retailers, researchers found a place in Bangladesh that was offering to make their shirt for $4.70, including the price spent on fabric, accessories, laundry, and labor. The most expensive item was the fabric at $1.35 per square yard. Only 22 cents would be directed towards labor costs (compared to the 20 cents needed for the industrial laundry!) The real price in Bangladesh was of course lower, because they were making a profit of about $1. It is unthinkable that WalMart's profit is almost 300% on this shirt, even though it is so cheap for us.

In a production cost breakdown diagram, Hemtex, a leading home textile chain in Scandinavia, shows how little of their costs go towards wages and labor in China: a meager 4%! They spend 75% on raw materials, 10% on taxes, and 11% on machines. (You can click on the diagram image on top of this post.)

What this means to the workers in underdeveloped countries is that they earn "as little as two-tenths of one percent" of the price tag on a shirt, not to mention the incredible damage that the massive textile industry is inflicting on the environment.

The logic here is that since we don't wear what we buy, we buy more, hoping we will wear that, but of course we won't, and we'll just buy more. This senseless mass production pollutes the environment through the wasted energy used to operate the entire textile process (wet processing, humidification, weaving, spinning, bleaching, dying, steaming...) In addition to that, each step leaves potential environmental hazards. "The manufacture of polyester and other synthetic fabrics is an energy-intensive process requiring large amounts of crude oil and releasing emissions including volatile organic compounds, particulate matter, and acid gases such as hydrogen chloride, all of which can cause or aggravate respiratory disease. Volatile monomers, solvents, and other by-products of polyester production are emitted in the wastewater from polyester manufacturing plants. The EPA, under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, considers many textile manufacturing facilities to be hazardous waste generators."

And to top it all off, according to the EPA Office of Solid Waste, "Americans throw away more than 68 pounds of clothing and textiles per person per year, and clothing and other textiles represent about 4% of the municipal solid waste."

That's why I like the SWAP Team so much. They help you get rid of those clothes that are still in good shape but that you just don't want to wear anymore. It's simple: You exchange those clothes for somebody else's not-used clothes, and what is not exchanged is donated. Their next SWAP event will take place in September. Check out this article on today's Gazette, their website, and their Facebook page for more information. A truly simple, effortless solution to a big problem!