真正的成本

1. unsustainable nature

GDP, which has become the uniform standard, only measures what is being trade. However, the most natural resources are neglected and not-recorded, when we use them to make cloths, such as the water supply volume, the land used to harvest fiber and all kinds of chemical agents. The first system we can use is the natural system. It is huge and immeasurable, and if we ignore it, we will lose ourselves sooner or later.

Apart from asking for resources, we produce waste. I was sorry when I learned that people in Haiti were buying second-hand clothes that we threw away and wearing them. Worse, It has destroyed their original clothing business. Will they be happy about their “new” clothes?

With the expection of clothes that are resold, the vast major of discarded clothes end up in landfills, where they will not degrade for 200 years. Many of them have never been worn, so what are they made for, what are they bought for?

Every industry, every company should undertake their social responsibility. Money is not everything.

2. sweatshop

In order to get a bigger profit, fast fashion companys keep pushing down the price it pays factories in developing countries. Those factories have no choice but to depress wages. 3 dollars a day, what kind of life they live.

What is followed is poor working conditions and angry workers. There were frequent safety accidents, like factories collapse. Workers marched in the streets, but were suppressed by the government and even killed. What can the government do? They need orders, and cheap labor is their only advantage.

Sweatshop isn’t the inevitable product of globalisation, and when we chase for profits, we should not hurt anyone.

3. consume and advertisement

Somehow, what is the most ordinary people really need and what is really valuable to us is more and more expensive, even unaffordable, like medical treatment, house and education. However, those what we don’t really need and those what can be quickly consumed or throw have become cheaper and cheaper, and it gives us a false apperance that we are rich enough to buy a lot of things.

So,we are getting poorer in consumption, and further and further away from valuable things.