July 26th
Is this your t-shirt? These two Turkish children, estimated to be 10 and 8 years old, are picking cotton. Turkey is the third largest producers of cotton shirts with $2.8 billion revenue. The other two countries in the top three are China and Bangladesh, where child labor enjoys a similar status.
How can you know whether your t-shirt was made by children? You can’t. But you can deduce the circumstances in which clothing is made from the price. The incredibly inexpensive chains such as Primark don’t care much for social responsibility so you better stay away from those. But in the stores where they do sell cheap t-shirts, you might be able to ask by whom and under what circumstances the clothing was made.
Of course a vendor can’t do much and most won’t know that much either. But the customer is king so if everyone starts to ask if the clothing is made on under ethical conditions, that will eventually make the difference.
Get rid of those antisocial big clothing wholesalers. Children have to go to school to learn and have time to play.
