PARIS (AFP) – The deadly consequences of fast fashion were spotlighted a decade ago after 1,138 people were killed when the nine-storey Rana Plaza garment factory collapsed in Bangladesh.
While the tragedy piled pressure on top brands churning out ever-rising mountains of clothes to ensure better standards, abuses in the textile industry continue:
FACTORY HELLHOLES
The collapse of Rana Plaza near the capital Dhaka was the worst in a series of disasters in textile factories in Bangladesh, the world’s second-largest garment exporter after China, and other Asian countries.
A year earlier, at least 111 workers were killed in a fire at a textile factory in Dhaka that produced for United States (US) retail giant Walmart, among others, and more than 250 workers died in a blaze in a factory in the Pakistani city of Karachi that produced jeans for German discount chain KiK.
The scale of the disaster at Rana Plaza, which produced clothes for Primark and Benetton, among others, proved a turning point.
Under intense scrutiny, top brands, retailers and trade unions agreed to work together to improve safety conditions in Bangladeshi factories. About 1,820 factories – accounting for more than 80 per cent of exports – have been inspected since. Most have been declared fully or almost fully safe.
While Bangladesh has had no major textile factory disasters since 2013, such tragedies have continued to occur elsewhere.
Several people have died in fires at illegal garment factories in the Indian capital New Delhi and in Morocco, 28 people died when heavy rain flooded an illegal basement factory in the port city of Tangiers in 2021.
ROCK-BOTTOM WAGES
The meagre salaries of textile workers in the Indian subcontinent are often flagged, but being paid a pittance to deliver fast fashion is an issue in Europe and US, too.
In Britain in 2020 for example, investigations by the non-governmental organisation Labour Behind the Label and several media outlets found textile workers in Leicester were sometimes earning as little as GBP2 an hour.
Low wages have sparked protests around the world, notably in Asia.
After years of violent, deadly demonstrations in Cambodia, garment workers finally secured a minimum monthly wage that is higher than most other countries in the region. In 2023, it was set at USD200.
TOP POLLUTER
The textile industry is also a major polluter, causing between two and eight per cent of global carbon emissions, according to the United Nations (UN) in 2022.
It is responsible for 25 per cent of the pollution of the world’s waters and a third of microplastic discharges into the oceans – a toxic substance for fish as well as humans.
