figure 4.
Even though consumers shopping in the mass market are
becoming increasingly ethically
and sustainably-aware, they
still want the brands to do
the moral work for them, in a
primary research survey it was
shown that when asked “when
shopping how often do you
think about how sustainably
and ethically sourced your
item of clothing is?” 38.24% of
consumers do consider sustainable and ethical fashion
but not enough to go out and
look for it, and 32.35% of people
never consider it. This attitude
isn’t surprising because, in as
early as 1997 even CEO’s of giant
retailers, such as Philip Knight
of Nike, claimed they had no
responsibility for working conditions in sweatshops because
the owners were independent
contractors, so if the brands
consumers love don’t care
about ethics and sustainability,
then why should they? (Rabine,
1997)
20 years on, there’s still a low
emphasis on ethical and sustainable mass market clothing,
the most we normally see is
a small tab on their website
which states their ethical and
sustainable values, but doesn’t
tell us how they are putting
them into place or how they
are helping consumer’s to be
more ethical or sustainable.
In the fast world we live in
ethics and sustainability needs
to be more than just a tab on a
website, it needs to be forced
into consumers faces, society
needs to be educated, about who
we’re exploiting due to cheap
clothing and how we’re ruining
the earth with our throw away
mentality.
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