Fast fashion — the clue is in the name — was never going to be a sustainable business. It exacts a heavy toll on too many stakeholders, starting from the $100-a-month garment stitchers in places like Bangladesh, through to the planet itself: three in five of the 100bn pieces of clothing made in 2018 will end up as landfill within a year, says the Clean Clothes Campaign.
Most brands are no longer torching stock, but coronavirus, having shuttered shops across the world, has left warehouses, ships and ports with tonnes of unsold clothing. Primark, with stores in Europe and the UK, has £1.9bn of unwanted stock collecting dust in closed stores as well as warehouses and transit. The group reckons it can still sell most of this — timeless T-shirts and bikinis for those summer holidays we may yet get to take. Yet that sounds ambitious. Primark has made a name by aping catwalk trends. Even T-shirts can go out of fashion.
Factories, too, are also home to cartons of retailers’ unwanted inventory spilling over shelves and, anecdotally, blocking fire exits. The fate of these boxes is uncertain, but in the best case labels are ripped out and the garments sold locally at a deeply discounted price; just as likely clothing will be shredded or end up as landfill. Some retailers have agreed to take mothballed stock once shops reopen, so long as it is in pristine condition — not always easy in humid factories.
Coronavirus is highlighting more than the industry’s wasteful ways; its iniquitous supply chain is also in the spotlight. Both Primark and an increasing number of its peers have agreed to share some of their suppliers’ liabilities. But others such as Asda have cut payments. It is a delicate balance: closed shops do not sell clothes. But factories in exporting countries like Bangladesh have even more precarious finances than faltering stores.
Many are reliant on bank loans to buy raw materials and tide them over until payday. That leaves them especially vulnerable. The country’s trade body, the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, says more than $3bn of orders from fashion retailers have been canned or put on hold; one in four of the country’s garment workers have been furloughed or terminated. Bad for Bangladesh but bankrupted factories do not bode well for overseas retailers either, once shops reopen.
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Source: Economy - ft.com
