Social Justice vs. the Cheap Sweater - Unsustainable Consumption and the Global Economy

Social Justice vs. the Cheap Sweater - Unsustainable Consumption and the Global Economy

by Juliet Schor

As globalization becomes more pervasive, cheap imports are getting even cheaper. While that may seem like a boon to the consumer, there are serious negative effects to be considered.

Thinking about the ecological impacts of the global economy, an image that comes to mind might be turtle-costumed protesters on the streets of Seattle. But sea turtles aren't the only bycatch in globalization's net. The ecological damage associated with global trade is widespread. Burning fuel to transport goods around the world is a major source of greenhouse gases. Falling commodity prices and the pressure to convert resource-rich landscapes to export-oriented monocultures degrade ecosystems and lead to severe declines in biodiversity. Globalization also encourages Faustian bargains by which countries are compelled to pay off crushing debts to Western banks and the IMF by selling precious natural resources such as forests and minerals.

Proponents of globalization respond that these are unintended consequences, or "externalities" (to use economists' jargon), which technological development and reform can manage. But there's another element of the global economy that is having an enormous effect on the environment, and this time it's because globalization is operating the way its proponents say it should. It's making products cheaper. Much cheaper. That in turn is leading consumers to buy more of them. The standard theory, and the conventional political wisdom, says that's a good thing. But from the point of view of the planetary ecology, and perhaps even from the point of view of consumers' welfare, it's a more complex picture.

The Consumer Buying Spree: Free Clothes and the $29 DVD Player In the last 10 years, consumers have been purchasing ever-larger quantities of imported goods in product categories such as apparel, footwear, toys, computers, software, cars, and consumer electronics. This is a well-known story. What's less well-known is that not only are the foreign imports cheaper than domestically-produced alternatives, but their prices have been declining over time.

Apparel is the paradigm case, and worth a closer look. By 2002, in all but three of the 19 primary apparel categories, imports accounted for more than 80 percent of domestic consumption. (Dresses, men's suits, and women's swimwear were the exceptions.) In 10 of these categories, the share of imports exceeded 90 percent.

A 10 percent decline in the price of apparel between 1993 and 2003 has driven this growth in imports. Clothes from countries such as China and Bangladesh are cheap, and they're getting cheaper. So cheap, in fact, that they're almost free. It's now possible to buy brand new shirts for 99 cents in stores like Old Navy. Even at my local mainstream department store, I've had shirts ring up at $3.50 after discounts. It's a similar story for pants, skirts, and sweaters. T-shirts are even given away free at concerts, sports games, and charity events.

Why have prices been falling? One reason is that the globalization of production makes it easy for firms to outsource to cheaper wage areas. The Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s was another factor - the resulting unemployment depressed wages throughout the region. It also reduced the demand, and hence the price, for second-hand clothing. That's because after we import new clothes from Asia, wear them, and discard them, we send the garments back to Asia to be purchased by consumers there. After the crisis, Asians couldn't even afford our cast-offs.

The Wal-Mart effect has also been important. Wal-Mart is the world's largest retailer of apparel and has used its unprecedented market power to drive garment wages down. The women who work in apparel factories in poor Asian countries typically earn below 25 cents an hour and are forced to work many hours of unpaid overtime in unsafe and stressful conditions. The hyper- mobility of capital makes it almost impossible for them to improve their wages and conditions.

Back at home the collapse of prices looks like a boon, and consumers are buying at record rates. Between 1996 and 2002 the number of pieces of imported apparel purchased by each American consumer rose 83 percent and the average American bought 48 new items of clothing that year. All that acquisition has led to a culture of "disposable clothes," dramatic increases in consumer discard rates, and mountains of perfectly wearable but economically valueless garments piling up all over the country.

Similar developments are occurring in other industries, where the globalization of production has kept wages at rock-bottom levels and environmental improvements to a minimum. Plastic Chinese toys made in dangerous sweatshops have taken over the market. Wages in Chinese toy factories range from 7 to 33 cents an hour and toy prices have declined even more than apparel - by 33 percent in the last 10 years. My conservative estimates find that the average American child is now acquiring 69 new toys per year. And, like t-shirts, there's a thriving business in toy giveaways.

Another example is computers. Since 1997, when the government began collecting data, the average price for personal computers has fallen by 81 percent. The growing affordability of computers is certainly welcome, but it has been accompanied by a dizzying rate of discard. In 2001, the latest year data are available, 22.76 million computers were consumed domestically, just about 3 million more than were discarded three years earlier. Estimates are that next year a

staggering 63 million personal computers will be "retired." The trends are similar for other electronics, such as televisions and cell phones. Last holiday season Wal-Mart offered a $29 DVD player, made famous by Patricia van Lester in Orange City, Florida, who was standing at the front of the line waiting to buy one and was trampled by other customers.

Perhaps the most telling set of numbers comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' index of department store prices. Department stores, a category which includes Wal-Mart and Bloomingdale's, are major outlets for imported manufactured goods and their prices provide a broad measure of the costs of these goods to the American consumer. The department store price index indicates that in all categories - soft goods, durable goods, and miscellaneous - prices have declined dramatically. Overall, the total store price index fell about 30 percent in the last decade, with durable goods prices declining a whopping 57 percent.

The Environmental Impacts of Cheap Imports Disappearing tigers and the loss of rainforest have gotten more publicity, but the dramatic upsurge in the consumption of manufactured products also places a heavy toll on local and global environments. The cotton used for all those free t-shirts is pesticide-intensive and depletes soil at a rapid rate. Textile dyes use carcinogenic chemicals, such as azo-dyes, which have been banned in Europe, but not the United States. Textile and computer chip production are extremely water intensive. Tanning (for shoes and leather goods) uses a number of highly toxic substances and is contributing to significant water pollution in regions with tanning industries, such as South Asia. Computer production involves the use of a large number of toxic chemicals, many of which are entering the waste stream. Toxics are also used in the production of plastic toys. Other effects are more complex - the demand for cheap cashmere has led to the expansion of herds, overgrazing, and ecosystem disruption in Central Asia. It's a series of events obscured by the standard discourse, which celebrates the $49 cashmere sweater.

And that brings us to the question of whether consumers are really better off because they've been snapping up clothes, shoes, accessories, bed sheets, TVs, computers, and toys at historically unprecedented rates. The fact that they're also discarding many of them almost as fast should give the proponents of cheap imports pause. And when we add into the equation the loss of domestic jobs, the exploitation of foreign workers, and the degradation of the environment locally and globally, the whole package looks a lot less appealing, and the failures of the global economy more glaring.

The accumulating evidence about the impacts of globalization suggests a number of necessary changes. American consumers must shift to purchasing fewer, higher-quality items which cost more and are used longer. This will require more durability and adaptability in products, and a revitalization of the economy of repair and reuse. Second, we must institute effective labor and environmental standards that will end sweatshop conditions and environmental hazards. If that can be achieved, poor countries can raise wages and support consumer demand in their own economies. Without a widespread sharing of "purchasing power" it will be impossible to create a just and healthy global economy. Environmentalists and consumer activists must be common cause advocates for peace and global justice.

Juliet Schor is Professor of Sociology at Boston College, and a best selling author. Her newest book, Born to Buy: Marketing and the Transformation of Childhood and Culture, will be released by Scribner in September.
Sidebar: Better Buying Resources
Environmental activist Donella Meadows once said, "It's so hard to do right in a world that expects you, rewards you, encourages you to do wrong." Fortunately, activists around the country are making it easier to find more responsible products. We can't change the global marketplace overnight, but we can reduce our appetite for throwaway products, use more second-hand items, and spend our hard-earned money on companies that work for global reform. Here are a few good places to start.