Despite all of the work being done to reduce the impact of the fashion industry on the environment and increase health and safety for the workers, there are still many issues remaining.
Nearly 21 million people are still in forced labour across the world (that’s 3 out of every 1,000 people) and around 168 million are in child-labour, although this is down from 246 million in 2000, improvement is just too slow!
Progress in reducing fast fashion is incredibly slow mainly due to the immense scale that the industry is at, businesses are global, and supply-chains are complex and overall, it is going to take a huge cultural shift to change the third largest industry in the world. Firms also find it hard to prioritise sustainability over profit and many of them seem to be all talk.
Many issues have only been brought to the public eye recently (Boycott Boohoo was only last summer) and so it will take time to make effective changes and many people believe that it is better to have a low wage than no wage at all, which is seemingly the alternative in many places. However, a lot of these changes are necessary and coming.
Written by Pippa Seager
Artwork by Delicia
