There are many occasions when I forget to keep my mouth shut. That was one of those times. I replied that there is something wrong when a bowl of rice with teriyaki chicken is that dirt cheap.
He paused. He said he decided against getting that for lunch and returned to his office.
Feeling bad that he was sitting hungry in his office, I took to him a chocolate bar.
Even faculty who intellectually engage with various aspects of the environment and the economy apparently do not think much about the inexpensive chicken lunch at the local diner.
They should.
And about other aspects of life too.
Like the clothes we wear.
One needs to wonder how it can be possible for a brand-name t-shirt to be manufactured on the other side of the planet, transported all the way here, and retailed for just a few dollars a piece. It can mean only one thing: The workers who grow the cotton, and the workers in the garment industry are being screwed.
I think of my own life, and can easily see how rapidly my consumption has increased. Take, for instance, clothes. Back in the old country, all my clothes could have been packed into a small carry-on. Come to think of it, way back, many kids did not even wear underwear. I say this with confidence because one of the punishments at school was to stand up on the bench. One of the old jokes related to this punishment is this:
The teacher asks, "where is Kenya?"
The teacher asks, "where is Kenya?"
The student has no clue.
The teacher tells the student to stand on the bench.
The smartass student then asks, "if I stand up on the bench, will I be able to see Kenya?"
The teacher tells the student to stand on the bench.
The smartass student then asks, "if I stand up on the bench, will I be able to see Kenya?"
It was a public shaming--the one standing up on the bench did something wrong according to the teacher and now the entire class and anybody who passed by is made aware as well. Such a "stand up on the bench" would sometimes result in the nearby kids being able to see the bat and balls, if you know what I mean. Kids went commando by default and not by choice.
We now own clothes in quantities that perhaps even royalty a thousand years ago could not have had. And they are inexpensive too. There's something wrong with this picture. What's wrong? "People with money need to realize that there is no way workers are being paid fair wages for a $10 dress."
Should be obvious, no?
It is not sustainable any which way you look at such consumption.
The Western notion of “sustainability” has always looked very white, yet the process of garment-making largely relies on nonwhite people. It is nonwhite people working in those sweatshops and having resources taken from their land. Our fashion system hurts the countries we’ve outsourced labor to, and they are tasked with having the world’s clothing “donations” dumped into their backyard.
You read that correctly--our out-of-fashion clothes are donated to, and dumped in, the countries of the non-white people, and almost always somewhere in Africa. Like in Ghana. Accra has “become the dumping ground for textile waste,” Of course, not all the donations are usable, which means that now they have a waste management problem also to deal with.
I shudder to think about how this is all going to end!
Oh my!!!
— Sriram K (@congoboy) October 6, 2021
👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽 https://t.co/aaiEQsWT2W
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