Ethics & Consumerism: Where did we go wrong?

THE ETHICAL IMPERATIVE to avoid the extremes of consumerism (I’ve also heard the word “materialism” used in a more puritanical sense) is not a new idea. “Waste not want not.” is a very very old saying, but the principles of this maxim still hold value today. However, somewhere along the way, we lost sight of the finer points about being an ethical consumer of goods.

In the last 100 years, society has watched a polarizing transformation occur. There are the extreme consumers & the lesser consumers. It is important to point out the fact that EVERYONE CONSUMES SOMETHING, regularly. The distinguishing feature is: HOW MUCH, and WHY.

This transformation has also effected the thousand of humans who work, live, and die making the products we consume. The 1st recorded sweatshop tragedy in modern history happened right here in America. In 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City caught fire, and hundreds of women & children burned to death inside. How did this happen? There was a policy in factories at the time, to lock the doors during work hours - mainly to prevent the underpaid workers from stealing - the locked doors allowed foremen to check them as they left at the end of the day. So you were essentially trapped until the foremen released you. The factory owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist had also neglected to keep the factory up to fire codes, and when the inevitable fire started, the women & children were left in the locked factory to burn to death. There are sickening photos of women and children who jumped from the 8-story windows to escape only to fall to their deaths on the street below. The youngest who died that day was only 14 years old. Thankfully in America, the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire launched effective change in our manufacturing standards & policies, and millions of American lives have been the better for it.

However, this did not touch the fundamental issue at the heart of the tragedy. Instead of exploiting the American workforce - WE IMPORTED OUR EXPLOITATION TO 3RD WORLD COUNTRIES. 

Our hunger for more, cheeper, faster products has reached gluttonous levels - meaning conditions in manufacturing countries are far worse than the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in 1911. In 2013, The Rana Plaza Factory collapsed in Bangladesh - crushing over 1000 people to death. Again, management cost cutting at the expense of the lives of the workers was the culprit. Rana Plaza was an 8-story building that had structurally been designed to hold offices - not giant machines & generators that exist in modern factories. Workers who survived described feeling the structure moving while they worked, creaking under the weight and vibrations of the machinery. When the UN investigated the tragedy, they found that the factory had been making clothes for brands like Childrens Place, Primark, and Walmart.

You might not fully understand what I mean when I say “ management cost cutting”. Modern factories face increasing competion to produce products faster & cheeper for COMPANIES WHO ARE COMPETING FOR YOUR DOLLAR. So factories will: pay their workers less than living wage, employ women & children for even less pay (who have less rights than men in some countries), rent inappropriate structures for their factories (Rana Plaza), and subject their workers to illegal & inhuman conditions (Triangle Shirtwaist), to accommodate the LOW COSTS demanded by 1ST WORLD COMPANIES, REINFORCED BY 1ST WORLD CONSUMER SPENDING.

Now, as a modern consumer who considers themselves ethical, the usual thinking is simply to not spend so much of their hard earned money on things like clothing, furniture, decor, etc. - these items are non-necessities, therefore not a good use of your spending. Better to donate to charity instead of buy the pricier dress - BUT there is a moral dilemma here.

As we have outline already, a lower full priced item (We are not taking about clearance or resale - those are all GOOD ways to spend less), signals that the brands manufacturing costs were less, which means they very likely employed a factory with unethical practices.

Lets do the math: 

$5 individual childrens tee 

• most likely ordered in a batch of 50,000-100,000/items by your average retailer

• 3-5% of the price is the cost of textiles, processing, manufacturing, shipping, and packaging

$5 x 5% = 25 cents x 100,000 tees = $25,000 in costs  

$5 selling price per tee x 100,000 tees = $500,000 gross profit - $25,000 costs = $475,000 in profits

The problem with this example is the the extremely low “costs” compared with “amount of product made” and “end result profits for the brand”. 25 cents per tee does not ethically pay the costs of the farmers, processing worker, seamstress, shipping workers, warehouse workers etc. who’s salaries all take a bit from that 25 cent cost of that $5 tee. By conclusion - a $5 tee can only exist if human lives are exploited. Any American, UK, EU or AUS small business owners will understand what I’m talking about. Its impossible to compete with exploitation, without exploiting as well.

So how to be an ethical consumer?

BUY BETTER, BUY LESS.

We need to reframe how we think about ethical consumption. Buying Better - buying the ethically made & sourced kids tee that might cost more, AND only buying the 5-7 a typical child needs - is an example of how we can start to truly feel like our spending is lining up with our ethics. By remembering that there are dozens to thousands of real PEOPLE behind making the items we buy, and who we are either supporting or harming through our purchasing, is how we can truly call ourself ethical consumers in todays world.

Also, demand more from the brands you buy through your spending! Encourage brands that share details about their manufacturing practices, make improvements in standards, and support local communities. Shop small businesses. Support business with fair wages, genuine family leave policies, and humane working hours (Think Chick fil a, and their Sunday’s Off policy). WE CAN INCITE CHANGE through our spending, and where & how we choose to spend.

Bring the humanitarianism and charity back to ethical consumerism.