Commentary by Ranjan Kaplish
Through a special arrangement, what follows is an excerpt of an article from Indiaretailing.com, presented here for discussion.
Retail is flourishing, but is it carrying forward the ethicality of the business of fashion retailing, not just to give the world better clothes to wear - but also make earth the best place to live? There is a lot of tireless work for AIDS and breast cancer charities, but when it comes to the real business of fashion, everything about it is fundamentally counter to current ethical concerns. It is an industry based on fueling consumption for things that are defined by their built-in obsolescence; on making people want things they don't need and buy more than they can really afford; and on seducing us into believing that owning a material object can change our lives.
Before you even get on to the conditions in an Indian textile industry and the problem of knowing which big brands really use the ethical labor they or their contractors claim, there are the environmental nightmares associated with the textile industry. Take cotton - actually, don't. Because the world's favorite 'natural' fiber is not, in fact, 'pure and simple' as we have grown up to believe. Lovely as it is to wear and sleep in, cotton is one of the most pest-prone of crops - meaning, that to produce it cheaply in industrial quantities, enormous amounts of chemicals have to be thrown at it. And when you add in the various soil sterilizers, fumigants, herbicides and defoliants also used to grow this 'natural' fiber, we are talking about some of the most deadly chemicals in the world. According to World Health Organization (WHO), about 20,000 people die each year in developing countries as a result of sprays used on non-organic cotton.
Just like the boom in organic food, awareness of uncontaminated textiles is taking off at a grassroots level, with parents seeking organic cotton baby clothes, towels and bedding for their newborns. If we could absorb chemical residues through our gnarly adult hides, the thinking goes, how much more at risk is the superfine skin of tiny babies and their delicate systems? If you hunt around on the internet, you will find some basic sportswear and underwear lines that are acceptable, but that's about it. It will be hard, at this stage, to find much to buy beyond t-shirts. Wherever you do buy clothes, ask the shop assistants if they have an organic range. They will probably look at you blankly at first, but if enough people do it, word will filter up to buyers and management. Best of all, explore the possibilities of hemp clothing, which is the real answer to the whole problem. But that, as they say, is another story.
Discussion Question: Do you see ethical concerns driving demand for organic cotton and eco-friendly fashion similar to what has happened with organic foods? Are retailers at the forefront of this now going to have a competitive advantage if conscious fashion goes mainstream?