Tomorrow May 10th marks World Fair Trade Day with IFAT member organisations in 70 countries and Fair Trade shops and networks around the world hosting events to promote Fair Trade and the campaign for justice in trade.
Even though I felt I had a pretty good awareness of why choosing Fair Trade is so important, over the past three weeks my understanding of the issue has been heightened whilst tuning in to the new BBC3 series Blood Sweat and T-Shirts. For me anyway, the series has been a real eye-opener into the working conditions of people involved in making garments for today’s throw-away culture of fast fashion.
If you’ve not caught it, the programme follows six young fashion addicts as they experience life at the bottom rung of the fashion industry and are put to work on garment production lines, sweat shops and in the cotton fields of rural India. In the final episode next week, the six travel to work in the slums of Mumbai where a warren of backstreet sweat shops exist and people are living and working in what looks like truly appalling conditions.
For me this programme can only be a good thing. The self-centred attitudes of some of the young people have come in for some heavy criticism on a number of blogs I’ve read but they represent a majority of people here in the UK who don’t give a second thought to where their £3 t-shirt comes from. Hopefully the exposure this programme has generated will change more than a few people’s attitudes as by the end of episode three this week the realisation of how unfair the workers lives are has slowly begun to sink in with all the Brits.
It would have been nice though if the producers had given us an insight into the difference between the working conditions and wages in the sweat shops compared to workers involved in producing fair trade garments. It’s great that the cheap fashion industry is being exposed for what it is but not showing us the difference choosing Fair Trade clothing can make is a missed opportunity. Perhaps that’s series two…let’s hope so. The final episode of Blood Sweat and T-Shirts is on BBC 3 next week but you can still view the last two episodes on the BBC iplayer.
Video is the latest new feature on the ECOutlet website and for some easy to digest product information you can now view a number of short films on several of the product pages.
