Home >

The "Unbearable Weight" Of Fast Fashion Brand H&M.

2018/5/2 20:41:00 101

H&MZaraFast Fashion

01

Ubiquitous fast fashion

Walking on the streets of Hongkong, on the roadside

H&M

The huge advertisements are broadcast continuously day and night; the fashionable girls are holding large and small ones.

Zara

The shopping bag; opened Instagram, Forever 21 bought the promotion, and is on your screen.

No matter whether you have such a fast fashion in your closet, every brand always brushes the sense of presence around you, forcing you to immerse yourself in a new carnival atmosphere on a Monday.

But you may not know.

Fast fashion

Consumption may also be an irresponsible consumption.

The desire for "fast" and "fashionable" points to the endless cycle of consumption and waste: consumers are crazy to pursue low price fashion, and clothes that are out of date or damaged only in a single season become waste at the end of the season and are disposed of conveniently.

The retailer, under the banner of "fast", tries to shorten the time from design to delivery in order to occupy itself in the rapidly changing market.

From top to bottom, the pursuit of "fast" was eventually pferred to the assembly line, and assembly line workers had to work hard day and night.

At the same time, fierce competition in the industry has shifted the cost pressure to the underlying suppliers: most of the suppliers of fast fashion industry are in the developing countries whose laws are not sound. In order to achieve low cost and low quoted prices, some suppliers have drilled legal gaps and omissions in law enforcement, thus encroachment on workers' rights and interests, lowering pollution control standards, and even building factories illegally.

From the concept of product itself to the supply chain management, the fast fashion industry has all been criticized.

This case study will focus on fast fashion and responsible consumption. Let's take a look at several public relations crises and official commitments of H&M, a fast fashion giant in recent years, to explore the evil and redemption behind fast fashion.

02

H&M's public relations crisis

Around the issue of workers' rights and interests, H&M has been repeatedly sweatshops and related protests: according to the world clothing and shoe net, three H&M sweatshops in Kampuchea were exposed in 2015: restrictions on toilets, signing contracts without sick leave, fainting employees due to the factory's no temperature lowering measures, and wages below the statutory level.

In 2016, H&M, a 14 year old worker at the Burma H&M factory, said in his interview that he needed to work for twelve hours a day.

In 2017, H&M launched a massive labor protest at a Chinese funded factory in Burma, which was damaged by angry workers.

With the worrying labor treatment, there are many problems in the design of factory buildings.

In April 2013, a factory called Rana Plaza collapsed in Bangladesh, killing 1138 people and injuring more than 2000 people.

The reason for the collapse is that the factory illegally covers the factory in order to save costs.

Later, the media further pointed out that the factory is a joint supplier of H&M and ZARA.

In addition to landslides, fire accidents in Bangladesh were frequent because of fire safety standards and escape facilities. In February 2016, a fire broke out in a garment factory in Bangladesh, which supplies H&M and JC Penny. Four people were injured and some workers jumped out of windows to escape.

According to Worker-Driven Social Responsibility Network, since 2005, more than 2000 workers in Bangladesh's textile industry have been killed due to fire or factory collapse.

Photo source: Reuters

You may ask, what happens to the supply chain accidents? What are the responses of these industry giants such as H&M, Zara? After the outbreak of the Rana Plaza incident, global anger has been aroused. H&M, Zara and other garment industry giants finally commit themselves to sign the "Bangladesh fire and building safety agreement" (Accord on Fire and Building and).

However, three years after the signing of the agreement, a number of NGO jointly pointed out that most suppliers of H&M did not make enough improvement according to the agreement, and 70% factories still lacked enough escape measures.

Part of the brand image of the agreement is: CorpWatch

{page_break}

In addition to the issue of labor rights, the fast fashion industry represented by H&M has also been criticized for its environmental problems. In recent years, many fast fashion documentaries, such as "River Blue" and "The True Cost", have mentioned related issues.

The clothing industry will consume a lot of water in the production process. It also says that the waste water containing cadmium, chromium, mercury, lead, copper and manganese will be discharged into rivers, threatening the production and life of the surrounding residents, causing coronary heart disease, causing infertility and inducing various kinds of cancer.

At the same time, a lot of cilia will be produced in garment production, which will endanger the health of textile workers.

The protective measures of factories are often inadequate, making the problem even more serious.

In addition, waste has always been a haze on the top of H&. Clothing production itself has high environmental costs, and it is not a waste of people but a waste of disposable energy.

On average, every American throws 70 pounds of clothing each year, and 5% of them are textiles.

Fast fashion pursuit of fast updating fashion concept is also contributing to this waste.

H&M itself is also overproducing and discarding brand new seasonal clothing: the Danish media pointed out that H&M only burns 12 tons of new clothes every year in Denmark.

All these social responsibilities and the underlying problems have become the "unbearable weight" of the fast fashion brand represented by H&M.

03

H&M official report

Contrary to a large number of negative reports and accusations, H&M officials have made efforts to shape a good corporate image: H&M has established a special website for sustainable production and published their related reports.

The following extracts are part of the compliance report from the H&M sustainability report.

The report provides compliance with the H&M's commitment to sustainability by H&M, a world class supplier. Some factories are unable to provide relevant information and are not included in the statistical data.

Like most clothing brands, H&M's clothing suppliers are mainly located in developing countries and regions.

In Asia, Kampuchea, China, Indonesia, Burma, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka all have garment factories for H&M.

Due to the imperfection of law, the backwardness of economy and the relative indifference between human rights and environmental awareness, some countries have become the "heaven" of international garment giants seeking ultra-low quotations factories.

H&M 60% is from Bangladesh and Kampuchea.

At the beginning of the compliance report, child related issues were mentioned. H&M reported in the report that there was no factory using child labor in the entire supply chain.

This makes people wonder, because H&M seems to have been on the side of child labour many times.

But it is worth noting that H&M is the reason why the definition of child labour in the international labour law is only counted for children under fourteen years of age.

Young people aged 14~18 years are defined as juvenile employment.

According to the report, only 65% of young workers under 18 are legally employed.

In terms of workers' rights, we can see that the basic wages of all factories meet the local minimum wage standard. However, only 25% of factories have overtime hours per month, which is in line with the legal provisions of their locates (17% in Asia, 10% in the Far East).

There are many problems of deducting overtime pay, and the treatment of piece rate worker is significantly lower than that of workers with monthly salary.

89% of the fixed salary employees can receive legal overtime pay, while for piecework workers, the figure is only 70%.

After overtime, some factories even promise that no factory can promise the hourly wage to meet the statutory minimum wage.

Besides basic wages, 60% of the factories provide social security for their employees, and 85% of the factories provide other insurance for employees without social security.

The safety and hygiene of the factory is doubtful. The report shows that all factories provide basic safety protection, but only 58% of the factories that meet the additional safety requirements.

Since the report is only a few words, what is the "extra" and "basic" content?

In addition, only 73% of the factories can provide hygienic and dust-free production environment for their employees.

A major problem in the report is the lack of trade unions - only 18% of factories have unions, which means that when rights are infringed, workers lack effective ways to communicate with their bosses and protect their rights.

In terms of environmental issues, the score of the chemicals concerned is worrying: in nearly half of the factories, containers for clothing chemicals are not properly labeled, and there are not enough safety guidelines.

Only 76% of the chemicals used for production meet the requirements of H&M for APEO/AP (Note: APEO and AP are auxiliaries for printing and dyeing, and are toxic to animals and plants).

The standard rate of wastewater treatment standards is basically 85%, and it is worth noting that only 80% of the waste water containing hazardous wastes has been disposed of legally.

H&M claims to be an industry leader in sustainable development.

By 2016, H&M was already the second largest recycled plastic user in the world, making use of waste materials to make new clothes.

The government also promised to achieve "full green production" by 2040, one hundred percent using recycled materials as raw materials, and using renewable energy to produce.

Although the reality is full of contradictions, everything seems to be developing in a good direction. The existing problems can be solved.

Is this really the case? Not necessarily - in fact, the agreement on fire and building safety in Bangladesh is not the only commitment of H&M to be "unfinished".

In 2013, H&M also proposed to raise the wage level of garment workers in Bangladesh and Kampuchea to the local living standards by 2018, but now the performance of this commitment is not satisfactory.

Neither consumers nor policy makers should put all their sustenance in the enterprise itself.

03

Right to vote

Ironically, many consumers criticisms of brands like H&M, but in actual consumption, they still choose fast fashion because of convenience and price considerations.

Research shows that when prices are similar, consumers tend to buy products that perform social responsibility.

But the implicit premise is that under the better labor security and higher environmental standards, the responsible production enterprises can reduce production costs to the standards similar to the H&M - look, there are no such enterprises in the industry.

Therefore, in pursuit of environmental protection, morality, quality, classic and succinct "slow fashion" movement in the past few years, although rapid development, it can not impact or replace the status of fast fashion, but as a new concept, facing its own specific customer groups.

Some people say that fast fashion and environmental protection, labor rights between really no drug solution, just like Kentucky invested more energy to do obesity related social welfare, also can only attract a curse.

Fast fashion plays the role of environmental protection banner, which is more like a pure public relations means and green cleaning.

In the face of this embarrassment, can we only look forward to the progress of the law, or do we expect technological innovation to bring about such environmentally friendly production methods such as anhydrous dyeing and reduce the production cost of environmental products? Or, can we expect the brand of the pparent flag with the supply chain to develop more competitive products, forcing the traditional fast fashion giants to accelerate the reform? Of course, before all the assumptions become true, do we really have no choice as consumers? There are countless stories behind every price tag, each of which is the votes in the hands of the everlane.

We can urge the internal pformation of clothing brands to choose the more pparent brands of the supply chain, or step back and choose the product line of fast fashion and environmentally responsible and responsible production.

Responsible consumption is not just about catching up with fast fashion, but paying close attention to every brand that we use.

It is a question that every consumer should think about whether to choose to see whether or not to turn every bill into a vote.

More interesting reports, please pay attention to the world clothing shoes and hats net.

  • Related reading

Taiwan Embroidered Skirt - Black And White Interlaced Feminine Elegance Arises Spontaneously.

Fashion brand
|
2018/4/28 9:36:00
220

Sustainable Fashion H&M2018 Environmental Conscious Action Limited Series Shanghai Released

Fashion brand
|
2018/4/23 9:45:00
190

In April, We Should Be Ready For Summer Fashion.

Fashion brand
|
2018/4/17 15:27:00
154

快时尚品牌们最近有点忙

Fashion brand
|
2018/4/17 15:10:00
550

Unveiling The New Fashion Of New Retailing

Fashion brand
|
2018/4/17 14:10:00
1373
Read the next article

Notice On The Organization'S Participation In The Training Course Of 2018 Textile Vocational Skill Appraiser And Referee Of Professional Skills Competition

In order to standardize and orderly the professional skills appraisal and vocational skills competition activities in our textile and garment industry, we are going to select 2-3 people who are familiar with vocational skills appraisal, vocational skills competition activities, and those who have rich experience.