Yet again, I was going down a deep, deep rabbit hole of things we don’t see and learned that an ethically produced t-shirt just brings pennies of profit.
See, after sending the last email my mind was rambling on the paper vs electronic and smartphone thing and that this contradiction is not quite obvious at first sight.
And was already writing the next email showing how utterly complex this topic can get. Until one of the random thoughts-guys reminded me that I watched a German documentary about “How much a t-shirt actually costs”.
And the documentary was astonishing and frightening at the same time.
Frightening because of all the shady stuff going on and the burdens put on people, communities, and the environment.
See, the reporters investigated how the source materials were gathered, how the shirts were manufactured, how the people along the chain are treated, etc.
And guess what.
Normal clothing companies don’t care and take all the profit while outsourcing the dangers and costs to societies.
No healthcare for workers, no safety for workers, for their families, handling toxic materials, flushing those into the next river, damaging the environment, making people sick, people can’t work and can’t feed their families, kids go working, etc.
It didn’t matter if it was one of the cheap clothing companies or the major brands. They all did the same shady things.
Hiding behind company rules and putting the blame on the actual manufacturing companies while pressuring them into cheaper and cheap production.
But they never pay for any of the resulting damages to humans, local communities, and their environment.
It’s burdened on the societies…
All for offering you and me cheap t-shirts.
Exceptions were the ethical and fairtrade companies.
Those cared.
And they do as much as possible to be ethical.
But as a thank you, they got another problem.
Damn low margin.
20 cents profit made a big German ethical shop from a 20 Euro t-shirt considering all costs from end to end.
You make more selling a 99c ebook on Amazon.
There’s always a deep deep rabbit hole behind every “x vs y” topic.
Don’t just jump to conclusions, peek at least into the rabbit hole and reflect on it without the outside noise.