The Garment Worker Crisis In Bangladesh Proves A ‘Buy Less, Buy Better’ Approach Is The Only Way Forward

During a stroll down a busy street in London earlier this year, I clocked, next to the entrance of a fashion emporium, stacks of plastic pull-carts, like those you see in grocery stores. Inside, scores of shoppers were dropping the brand’s trendy, cheap clothes into those carts, with nary a thought about the impact those purchases might have on humanity or the planet.

But what happens if we swing the other direction, and stop buying clothes, cold turkey, as we have with the onset of Covid-19 and the practice of self-isolation?Zara, with more than £16 billion a year in turnover, reported a 24.1 per cent drop in sales during the first two weeks of March. In response to those tumbling revenues, as well as government decrees to stay home, Inditex, the group that owns Zara, Massimo Dutti, Pull & Bear, shut nearly 4,000 shops in 39 countries.

Overall, 20,620 stores in the UK will close permanently this year, the Centre for Retail Research reports. It added that between store closures and workforce reductions, 235,704 jobs will be lost – a 61.5 per cent jump over the 2019 figure. If stores remain closed until June, the loss due to unsaleable stock will exceed more than £20 billion. In all, analysts predict the fashion industry could lose £800 million in revenue.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Other, better business practices do exist. Take “slow fashion”: the concept of small companies producing locally, often to order, with zero waste. Or rightshoring: the return to manufacturing in regions that were gutted by the 1990s offshoring exodus, with new, state-of-the-art factories run by workers via computers in clean rooms, allowing manufacturers to adjust volume demands to the ebbs and flows of the economy without causing a tsunami of layoffs.

Source: News Formal (newsformal.com)

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