Temu, Shein: China’s landfills expose the dark side of fast fashion
Temu, Shein: China’s landfills expose the dark side of fast fashion
Independent fashion watchdog Remake assessed big clothes companies on their environmental, human rights and equitability practices.
cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/676153
Textile waste is an urgent global problem, with only 12 per cent recycled worldwide, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Even less - only 1 per cent - of castoff clothes are recycled into new garments; the majority is used for low value items like insulation or mattress stuffing.
Nowhere is the problem more pressing than in China, the world’s largest textile producer and consumer, where more than 26 million tons of clothes are thrown away every year year, according to government statistics. Most of it ends up in landfills.
And factories like this one are barely making a dent in a country whose clothing industry is dominated by fast fashion - cheap clothes made from unrecyclable synthetics, not cotton. Produced from petrochemicals that contribute to climate change, air and water pollution, synthetics account for 70 per cent of domestic clothing sales in China.
China's footprint is worldwide: E-commerce juggernaut brands Shein and Temu make the country one of the world’s largest producers of cheap fashion, selling in more than 150 countries.
I hate these companies so much. Last year, we fostered an 11-year-old girl who was essentially raised by YouTube. She was obsessed with fast fashion, wanted to have the hair of the Asian influencers she watched (she's black with t 13 [I think] textured hair), and wanted all sorts of shit from Temu, Shein and AliExpress. It was so bad, she got annoyed at my ad blockers, as she had a fear of missing out of the "latest sales."
These companies, and the advertising itself, have made her obsessed with instant endorphin fixes, and the moment she gets a credit card, she will completely ruin her financial future with it.
Are children in foster care allowed to spend their own money freely? Do they get an allowance (for you, or the government)?
We gave her an allowance at our own discretion, though I forbade Shein and Temu due to their tracking software.
Most of her addiction to shopping started before she was put in the foster system. Since no one wanted to raise her, she was often just handed a tablet and told to keep quiet.
To get to the core of your question, in just about every day to day occurrence, we were her parents and had the final say. The way to look at it is: we were essentially in a three parent partnership with the foster care program being the third parent that could veto us at any time, though they would only do so in the case of safety.
"There is no alternative."
- Margaret Thatcher, renowned dumbass
Best one can do, apart from not buying from these websites in the first place, is buying used. My SO buys her clothes online from second-hand dealers where many fast fashion items find their way to where they can get another chance at being worn proper. Doesn't make the materials used more sustainable, but at least they're not thrown away immediately
As a corollary: Don't buy into specific vintage fads like "branded 80's sportswear" -- there's a very limited quantity of these and there are fakes going around, that have none of the sustainability cred either.
Translated article - very insightful:
Vintag Scam
The coveted piece is produced in piecework: Pattern pieces made from signal red fabric lie ready on one of the work tables; behind them, a man rattles a sewing machine. The staccato of the needle creates a golden logo on the material. He is one of many. The men sit in long rows, bent over their sewing machines. You can watch them at work on Tiktok: The factory is located in Sialkot, in the east of Pakistan, where fabric is measured, cut and sewn into hoodies, sweaters and jackets like an assembly line - including the showpiece: a signal red jacket with sponsor logos, like those worn by US Nascar racing drivers in the early 2000s. In January 2022, a man from Germany is traveling to Pakistan: Daniel Bayen is just 21, a successful young entrepreneur from Krefeld who is making millions from the current vintage and second-hand hype. Worn fashion is a trend - and a rapidly growing market: young, fashion-conscious people in particular sometimes pay as much for trendy finds from the 80s, 90s and early 2000s as they would for new brand-name clothing. Bayern's company Strike benefited from this. In just two years, he has opened stores in 16 locations, with online media describing him and his co-founders as the "shooting stars" of the vintage scene.
Fake vintage from Pakistan made to order?
In the city of Karachi, Bayen meets an employee of the company Mughal Brothers Vintage Wholesale, which distributes videos from the factory in Sialkot on Tiktok. This is evident from posts on Bayen's Instagram profile. What they discuss is not known, but evidence points to a lively business relationship.
When CORRECTIV confronted Bayen with the accusation of counterfeit goods, Bayen first switched his high-reach Instagram profile to private, then back to public and published part of the request as a story.
He wrote in an email about the trip that he had met various textile traders in Pakistan; Mughal had shown him the industry. His findings, "especially the 'vintage plagiarism'" were "great and sometimes frightening". CORRECTIV asked Bayen specifically whether he had sold his customers vintage counterfeits on a larger scale than genuine second-hand clothing. Bayen's answer sounds as if he is referring to the market's shortcomings - not his own business. The fact that there are counterfeits is nothing new, he writes. The real problem lies elsewhere. "Namely the fact that people spend 600 euros on a pair of trousers while others starve."
Remember the 3 Rs: Reduse, Reuse, and Recycle. Mend your clothes when you can
I really wish tailoring clothing was easier/more accessible. A lot of my clothes get thrown out when they stop fitting well in certain spots (especially the groin) or when they get small holes.
But why would I spend as much to repair that pair of kind of worn down pants as it would cost to buy a new one?
This is why sewing should be taught at schools