This is certainly a different kind of topic - "The Cost of U.S.Clothing Addiction"
- From: Florida <demeter547opine@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2007 05:55:16 -0800 (PST)
Dress for Excess: The Cost of Our Clothing Addiction
By Stan Cox, AlterNet
November 30, 2007
This holiday season, as in many past seasons, the No. 1 gift will be
clothing. That's according to a recent Consumer Reports poll.
Apparently, shoppers haven't heard about another of its surveys, which
found clothes to be the "most disappointing gift" of last Christmas.
Wanted or not, clothes are a more attractive deal than ever. The
apparel retail industry's current philosophy is best captured in a new
slogan that Wal-Mart Stores rolled out for this fall's shopping
season: "Save Money. Live Better."
But in the fields and factories that feed America's colossal clothing
market, living things -- including humans -- aren't doing one bit
better.
No closet big enough
The numbers are astonishing. Apparel is easily the second-biggest
consumer sector after food. We're spending $282 billion on new clothes
annually, up from $162 billion in 1992, based on U.S. Census figures.
Importantly, the steady upward march of clothing expenditures doesn't
fully reflect the increase in the actual quantities being made and
bought, because the same-size spending spree can bring in more garb
with every year that goes by.
The government says apparel prices in the United States dropped by
about 25 percent from 1992 to 2002, and we responded like the good
consumers we are, increasing our buying by 75 percent. The population
increased only 13 percent in that decade, so the average annual
shopping haul, which stood at about 50 new articles of clothing per
person per year in 1992, had grown to 75 or more items per person by
2002. It has only gone up since then.
And to clear out closet space for the new purchases, the average
American discards 68 pounds of clothing and other textiles each year,
according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
The lower prices can be attributed to lower domestic wages, greater
mechanization and the Wal-Mart-led corporate drive for cheaper
everything. But most crucial has been the deluge of cheap imports. No.
1 among the world's top 10 apparel importers, the United States brings
in more than the other nine nations combined.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture says per-person consumption of
textile fiber in the United States is double that of Spain, four times
that of China, and almost seven times India's. Currently, Americans
buy 40 T-shirts per household annually, 94 percent of them imported.
In 2003, four new pairs of shoes were imported for each American.
You'd think that swelling sales year after year would put the industry
in a festive mood. But cheap shirts and socks don't yield the
satisfying profits that elegant or businesslike threads provide.
Industry griping over the high-volume, low-price treadmill is only
getting louder in this year's slow Christmas season.
Despite that, Americans' wardrobes keep growing, overwhelming our home
storage space. Next to a small kitchen, inadequate closet space is
regarded today as the biggest impediment to selling an older house. In
newly built homes, a walk-in closet in every bedroom has become de
rigeur. Time magazine reported earlier this year, "Master closets now
average about 6 ft. by 8 ft., a size more typical of an extra bedroom
40 years ago."
Prices of the outfits that fill those closets rarely reflect the steep
environmental costs of textile and apparel manufacturing. Meanwhile,
the rapidly expanding organic-fiber clothing market continues losing
ground to growth of conventional sales.
The worldwide annual market for organic wearables increased by $338
million from 2001 to 2005. That growth not only failed to displace the
conventional market; the increase in American consumption of
conventional clothing alone, just between 2003 and 2005, outstripped
four years of global growth in organic wear -- 44 times over! And the
gap in material bulk is even wider than the dollar gap, because
organic clothes are more expensive.
Naked exploitation of nature
Although 10 million tons of unwanted duds per year puts a lot of
pressure on U.S. landfills, it's in the origin of the clothes -- fiber
production, manufacturing and dyeing -- that the most harm is done.
Production of synthetic fibers like nylon and polyester consumes
nonrenewable resources -- primarily petroleum -- while emitting
greenhouse gases like nitrous oxide and releasing toxic wastewater
containing organic solvents, heavy metals, dyes, and fiber treatments.
Nylon is also very difficult to recycle. Producing fiber from recycled
polyester is easier and produces only 15 percent as much air pollution
as using raw materials, but the product is of lower quality than
virgin polyester.
Fibers made from renewable raw materials are typically no more earth-
friendly than polyester. For instance, rayon is made from wood pulp
coming from mature forests through a process that pumps out large
quantities of air and water pollutants. (A newer wood-based fiber
called lyocell has a lighter impact on the environment but is nowhere
close to displacing rayon.)
As they are commonly handled, wool-producing sheep can cause soil
erosion, water pollution and biodiversity loss. And wool processing
often uses large volumes of chemicals to clean fibers, prevent fabric
shrinkage and improve washability. Leather manufacturing, especially
the tanning step, is notorious for its use of toxic chemicals,
including heavy metals and nasty, organic compounds.
Then there's King Cotton. The United States produces 8.5 billion
pounds of cotton fiber each year, but that fills less than a third of
the nation's always expanding demand for textiles. Fully 25 percent of
the world's cotton crop, in the form of lint, thread, fabric or
finished products, ends up in the United States or Canada.
Cotton is grown on less than 2 percent of U.S. farmland but accounts
for one of every four pounds of pesticides sprayed. Currently in the
global south, estimates suggest that half of total pesticide use is on
cotton.
Genetically engineered cotton that produces a caterpillar-killing
toxin is being promoted as a way to reduce pesticide use. But that
will be a temporary fix, as the cotton bollworm and other insects are
sure eventually to develop resistance to the toxin. In India, for
example, the engineered crops could lose their protection within three
or four years if their acreage continues to grow.
Almost 22 billion pounds of weed killer are applied annually to U.S.
cotton -- more chemical per acre than is sprayed on soybeans and three
times as much as an acre of wheat gets. To curb the soil erosion
that's all too common on cotton land, "no-till" methods have been
introduced on a large scale. But they require even heavier spraying of
herbicides.
Even after a field has succeeded in producing a good crop, it isn't
finished being sprayed: To ease harvest, defoliants are used to strip
leaves from the plants.
Cotton fiber usually undergoes extensive processing even before it is
spun into thread, including treatment with caustic sodium hydroxide to
remove waxes. Most cotton thread or fabric is bleached to allow dying
to the desired color. Anti-wrinkle technology can involve dangerous or
even carcinogenic compounds like formaldehyde.
And all such treatments are big water users. Bleaching the cloth for a
single shirt generates as much as 15 gallons of polluted wastewater.
Before being shipped off to a big factory or backroom sweatshop, most
cotton thread or cloth is dyed. With the world textile industry using
10,000 different dyes and pigments, it's little wonder that
environmental agencies have some difficulty keeping up with dye
pollution.
Dyeing does more environmental damage than any other manufacturing
step, and it's hard to hide. Villagers living near dyeing plants in
southern India have reported that drinking water flowing from their
taps can be red one day, green the next.
Booming demand for brightly colored cotton shirts and dresses has led
to increased use of so-called "fiber reactive dyes" that bind to the
cotton fiber, keeping it color-fast. Many such reactive dyes are toxic
and can pass right through water-treatment facilities untouched. Some,
such as azo dyes, are not easily broken down in the environment.
Dye effluents can contain any of a long list of hazardous metals:
copper, cobalt, chromium, nickel, zinc, lead, antimony, silver,
cadmium or mercury. Little is known about the fate or effects of
chemical compounds called "auxiliaries" that are used to improve
performance of the dyes.
Our top three suppliers -- China, Mexico and India -- together account
for 42 percent of our clothing imports. Today, clothes and other
textile products are easily the No. 1 category of imports into the
United States from India and No. 2 from China, after computers. And
the shift of clothing production to Asia and Latin America has shifted
the chemical burden as well.
A cluster of ten textile/dyeing plants in southern India were reported
this year to be dumping 7 million liters of effluent per day onto
their own land, supposedly for irrigation. Having seeped into the
ground, the dye pollutants and salts have rendered local groundwater
unusable for actual irrigation by nearby farmers. And drinking water
has to be brought into surrounding villages from outside areas that
are unaffected by the dye plants.
Tests reported in 2004 showed that textile and dyeing factories in
Sanganer, a city of 2 million people in northern India, have released
so much polluted effluent that water from the major stream flowing
through the city is actually capable of causing genetic mutations.
Meanwhile, according to a recent report, "In China, the environmental
impact of textile production is especially great. Due to inferior
technology, '... water consumption per unit of production is about 50
percent higher than in developed countries'. In addition, '... dye
residual in wastewater is higher'... and the textile industry is one
of the major contributors of industrial sewage."
Then there are the microenvironments that apparel and textile workers
endure. A review of studies done worldwide up to 2003 showed that,
compared with unexposed populations, textile and dye workers tend to
have more nasal, throat, bladder and gastrointestinal cancers. Some
cancers are more commonly associated with synthetic fabrics, others
with cotton.
Hsiou-Lien Chen and Leslie Davis Burns of the Design and Human
Environment Department at Oregon State University published a paper
last year comparing the environmental impacts of the major classes of
textile fiber. They considered all phases: the resources going into
fabric; its production; dyeing, printing and finishing; use and
maintenance; and disposal. Their conclusion:
Natural fibers are often associated with environmental responsibility,
but ... fiber content alone may not be an accurate indicator of the
full environmental cost of producing textile products ... Because of
the multifaceted nature of the impact, terms like environmentally
responsible or green are difficult to apply, and current usage of such
terms is sometimes misleading about the real environmental qualities
of textile products. Our analysis indicates that in one way or other,
virtually all textile products have a negative impact on the
environment.
Put another way, making a shirt -- any kind of shirt -- can never be
as ecologically benign as not making a shirt.
The entrepreneur has no clothes
The growing consumption of organic cotton is not a panacea. It's fine
as far as it goes, but benefits are limited to curtailment of chemical
use. Bale-per-acre yields tend to be lower, so feeding our cotton
appetite organically would require plowing up even more acres. And
cotton has a lot of other impacts that most organic production doesn't
address. More than half of the irrigated agricultural land in the
world is sown to cotton, and that depletes water resources and can
lead to ruin of soils through salinization. Land cultivation for
cotton production, which is often more intense on organic farms, is
already responsible for huge losses of soil through erosion. Each acre
of cotton represents a lost acre of natural ecosystem, whether it's
Texas grassland or Central American forest. Damming of rivers for
irrigation projects destroys even more ecosystems.
It's no wonder some have suggested, only half jokingly, that it's
probably more ecologically friendly to take petroleum and turn it
directly into polyester than to burn it as fuel to cultivate,
fertilize, water and harvest cotton, destroying so much soil, water
and biodiversity in the process.
And with no limits on total consumption, producing bigger supplies of
organic clothing won't repair the damage. Even the greenest clothing
companies depend for their survival on customers with overflowing
closets to buy even more new stuff.
Whatever the intentions of domestic entrepreneurial companies like
Gaiam, Inc. -- where, says a corporate statement, "we believe that all
of the Earth's living matter, air, oceans and land form an
interconnected system that can be seen as a single entity" -- or
American Apparel, Inc., with its reputation for avoiding sweatshop
labor, the practical result of their efforts is to add to the bulk of
new material jammed into the nation's collective closet, not replace
it.
Thrift stores are a less wasteful way to dress, but they account for a
tiny share of total sales. Goodwill Industries saw $1.8 billion in
sales in 2006 -- a fraction of 1 percent of the market for new
threads. The Salvation Army handles several hundred million garments
each year, but that's only a couple of percent of new-product sales.
Most donated clothes end up being baled and shipped to impoverished
countries, and that isn't necessarily doing anyone a favor. There is
evidence that imports of hand-me-downs from the West undermines the
ability of African nations, for example, to clothe their own
populations independently of foreign charity or apparel brokers.
The only way to make a dent in the ecological impact of textile
products is to slash consumption where it's now the highest. But such
a trend would doubtless eat into the profits of Gaiam as well as Wal-
Mart, and the supply of desirable castoffs going to thrift stores
would quickly dry up.
License to shop
Government economists attempting to estimate inflation by tracking the
prices of identical products over time have the most trouble with the
clothing portion of their standard "basket" of goods and services,
because the turnover of products in apparel is the highest of any
category.
But the way the current economy is structured, such constant churning
is necessary. If every American suddenly started buying and keeping a
wardrobe just big enough to be regarded as a necessity, not a luxury
(let's say one full suitcase per person -- you pick the size of the
suitcase), the retail economy would be sent reeling.
Industry has its own ideas about how to stop that from happening.
Cotton Inc., the most prominent group representing that fiber -- and
the industrialists, retailers and big cotton farmers that depend on it
-- energetically promotes clothing consumption through its Lifestyle
Monitor magazine. Last year, in a typical article on its website,
entitled "Let's go shopping," the magazine revealed an expert's
analysis of shopping behavior (and its condescending attitude toward
women):
# In the piece, a "fashion and lifestyle public relations" expert
explains, "With higher disposable income comes more flexibility in
purchasing, and we all definitely enjoy flexibility and options!"
# But, according to Cotton Inc.'s manager of market research, it
doesn't take a bigger paycheck to stimulate shopping behavior: "There
are certainly women who love shopping more when they are in a tighter
financial situation, since it forces them to be savvier consumers."
# And, she adds, "Whether women admit it or not, celebrities and the
media do have an influence on how many women feel about certain
fashions ... When people are given the information and the tools about
how to look and feel better through their wardrobe, they definitely
enjoy shopping more!"
# Whether it's "a weight loss or weight gain reflecting these positive
feelings towards shopping," it's time to buy, says Cotton, Inc.: "If
your body has changed, you really do need to go out and buy new
clothing. It's a license to shop. and it removes any guilt you might
have about spending money."
And it's all made possible by the dirt-cheap merchandise. Boston
College professor Juliet Schor, author of several books on
consumerism, has written:
It is now possible to buy clothing, long a high-priced and
valuable commodity, by the pound, for prices comparable to cheap
agricultural products such as rice and beans. This is a historically
unprecedented situation. Low apparel prices have contributed to what
we might term "excessive accumulation" of garments by American
consumers and a move toward "disposable apparel." Excessive
accumulation is characterized by high rates of discard, low rates of
utilization of existing inventories of garments, rapid fashion cycles
and a failure to wear garments through their useful life cycles.
Excessive accumulation has been exacerbated by rapid economic growth
in the 1990s and the continuing decline of apparel prices.
Cheap clothes are widely viewed as giving a boost to working Americans
because, in the words of Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott, "Our customers simply
don't have the money to buy basic necessities between paychecks." But
Schor points out that "maintaining a regime of ecologically,
unsustainable, but low prices in order to sustain purchasing power for
the poor solves a problem for a subset of the population but
reproduces another one for the entire planet."
With clothing, good marketing can easily undermine education and
exhortation. One university study found that people who have good
knowledge of apparel's environmental costs are not any more likely to
practice "environmentally responsible consumption" than those who are
unaware of the problem. Even clothes boasting a "Made in USA" label
don't seem able to overcome their price disadvantage. Recent surveys
projected that advertisements highlighting the domestic origin of
nonimported clothing would not have much influence on shoppers.
So the bought-and-forgotten clothes keep piling up, and nobody
(outside the closet-remodeling industry) seems happy: not the holiday
shoppers, not the gift recipients, not the image consultants, not the
corporate bean counters, not the textile and apparel workers, not the
cotton farmers of Asia and Africa, and least of all Mother Nature.
All in all, the "Save Money, Live Better" strategy is starting to look
a little threadbare.
Stan Cox is a plant breeder and writer in Salina, Kan.
(c) 2007 Independent Media Institute
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/69256/
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