FBC MOLLY MACAULAY 1 | Page 9

Globalisation This continuous growth of the mass market isn’t looking to slow down anytime soon, due to our consumer driven society, that’s why Zara has 2,100 stores located in leading cities across 88 countries adding another 77 stores in 2015 because of this high demand (Rae, Philipkoski, and Alexander, 2016). In order for us to understand how we got to this point, we need to understand Globalisation, and how it makes our buying habits so unsustainable. Globalisation has profoundly restructured the world economy, global culture, and individual daily lives. Nowhere are these changes more profound than in the way fashion is produced, marketed, sold, bought, worn and thrown away. It’s the increasingly closer integration of countries and people of the world, brought about by the breakdown of barriers to the flow of goods, services, capital and knowledge. (Globalisation - clothing and fashion, 2009) This break down of barriers is important to consider, when researching sustainability and ethics, as it’s globalization which allows brands to use cheap manufacturing in sweatshops and use factories for dyeing in countries where more water pollution is allowed by their government. It’s also globalisation which allows consumers to order the cheaper products at a click of a button, off websites like EBay, with no thought into where it’s coming from, how many thousands o