The Dirty Side of the Garment Industry: Fast Fashion and Its Negative Impact on Environment and Society

226 Pages·2015·3.04 MB·English

by  Nikolay Anguelov

Supply Chain Management A The Dirty Side
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When thinking about lowering or changing consumption to lower carbon e
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footprints, the obvious offenders come easily to mind: petroleum and o
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Garment Industry
petroleum products, paper and plastic, even food. But not clothes. Although
the clothing industry is the second largest polluter after agriculture, most
consumers do not think of clothes as a source of environmental damage. T
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The Dirty Side of the Garment Industry: Fast Fashion and Its Negative
E Fast Fashion and Its Negative Impact
Impact on Environment and Society exposes how clever marketing

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tactics designed to increase demand skillfully hide this reality.
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R on Environment
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An in-depth examination of the international fashion trade and related
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goods, this book raises visibility of the ethical aspects of promoting and Society

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overconsumption through explaining the ecological damage resulting
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from the high rate of discarding old clothes. It focuses on the promotion, D
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globalization, and integration of the apparel sector into our social and

political landscape. It presents an expert overview of the garment industry, O
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highlighting the harsh realities of the environmental and labor problems

associated with it. It tracks the commercial and cultural factors that have led T
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to the growth of fast fashion retail and its dominance of the entire industry.
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The book covers current regulatory policies, both national and international,
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on production and labor, and the author does not shy away from making R
recommendations for change. He examines marketing, business, and eco- M
nomic models to explain how assumptions of traditional economic theory E
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on industrial growth and prosperity fall short in addressing the high social
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costs of promoting the overconsumption of cheap and readily disposable

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clothes. You will come away with a detailed, holistic understanding of the N
garment industry as well as clarity regarding the larger issue of finding bal- D
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ance when it comes to the ethics of consumption.
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The Dirty Side
of the
Garment Industry
Fast Fashion and Its Negative Impact
on Environment and Society
The Dirty Side
of the
Garment Industry
Fast Fashion and Its Negative Impact
on Environment and Society
Nikolay Anguelov
The Dirty Side
of the
Garment Industry
Fast Fashion and Its Negative Impact
on Environment and Society
Nikolay Anguelov
CRC Press
Taylor & Francis Group
6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300
Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742
© 2016 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business
No claim to original U.S. Government works
Version Date: 20150717
International Standard Book Number-13: 978-1-4987-1223-1 (eBook - PDF)
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Contents
Acknowledgments ................................................................................vii
Introduction ...........................................................................................ix
Author .................................................................................................xiii
Chapter 1 From Fashion to Fast Fashion ...........................................1
A New Way to Create Trends ......................................................1
Teaching versus Listening to the Customer: Building
the Foundations of Manipulation ..............................................4
Global Brand Proliferation ..........................................................9
Fast-Fashion Retail .....................................................................13
Chapter 2 The Promotion of a Lifestyle ...........................................21
Advertising Behavior, Not Product ..........................................21
Global Branding ..........................................................................26
Global Taste and Preference Convergence ..............................31
Chapter 3 The Production Platforms of Modern Garment
Manufacturing .................................................................37
Industry Agglomeration ............................................................37
Changing Supply Chains ..........................................................46
Retailer-Driven Business Model ...............................................49
Chapter 4 Regulatory Environment .................................................57
Deregulating the International Trade in Clothes...................57
Policy Winners and Losers .......................................................66
Recuperating Regulatory Losses through
Environmental Sourcing ...........................................................73
Chapter 5 The Carbon Footprint of Textile Manufacturing for
Fast Fashion ......................................................................77
The Ecological Impact of Fiber Production and Supply........77
v
vi • Contents
King Cotton: The Economic Power of Cotton
Producers ..............................................................................81
Exporting Cotton = Exporting Pollution ...............................88
Existing in Isolation in the Production Chain? ....................104
Chapter 6 The Direct and Social Costs of Low Prices ..................109
The Social Cost of Firm Profitability .....................................109
Understanding Customer Utility ...........................................117
Theoretical Implications for Economic Analysis: Elastic
Choice but Inelastic Sales ........................................................121
Chapter 7 The Economics, Demographics, and Ethics of the
Low Price Quest .............................................................133
The Industrial Psychology of Impulses..................................133
The Moral Universe of Nonwage Earners .............................138
The Elasticity of Dirty Consumption ....................................145
Utility, Ethics, and the Quest for Sustainability in
Fashion Commerce: Not While Prices Are Falling .............156
Chapter 8 Implications and Conclusions .......................................169
The Economic Reasons for Ignoring Social Costs ...............169
Social Costs and Perverse Incentives in Fashion
Economics ..................................................................................175
Telling the Hard Truth: Why Extant Solution
Recommendations Are Ignored .............................................180
Epilogue ...............................................................................................187
References. ...........................................................................................189
Acknowledgments
The writing of this book was a process of uncovering information not
easily found in research sources. The inside knowledge of fashion indus-
try professionals and economic development policy analysts directed
the quest to identify, synthesize, analyze, and link together the varied
academic disciplines that examine the global commerce of apparel.
With respect to specific guidance in fashion-related international trade
dynamics, especially helpful was the input from Professor Patrick Yanez
and Dr. Kristine Pomeranz of the International Trade and Marketing
Department at the Fashion Institute of Technology as well as the legal
direction and input of Sophie Miyashiro, US Customs Broker. Direction in
legal issue analysis also came from Professor Chad McGuire, LL.M., Chair
of the Department of Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts,
Dartmouth.
I am especially grateful for the ongoing support and training in inter-
national economics I received under the tutelage of two World Bank
economists who have devoted their careers to issues of global justice and
poverty alleviation in the developing world—Dr. Holley Ulbrich and
Dr. William A. Ward. I am thankful to both for their input on neoclassical
and neo-institutional economics theory, which helped define the contents
of Chapters 6 and 7. I must express a special note of gratitude to Dr. Ward
for his ongoing support of the project and continuous input with valuable
insights on issues of developing nation industrial upgrading and global
governance. In addition, I am thankful for the enthusiastic encourage-
ment and direction from Dr. Aleda Roth to focus on the gaps in the supply
chain management literature with respect to the global carbon footprint
of international fashion economics.
I am also grateful to Joshua Botvin for his editorial help and assistance
with manuscript layout and preparation.
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