Direct by Kathryn Judge

Author:Kathryn Judge
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-04-16T00:00:00+00:00

SUSTAINABLE JEANS

Since I have no aspiration of ever sitting in a corner office, it is easy for me to criticize the lack of executive accountability. But there are times that I too take shelter in the ignorance that long supply chains can foster. For example, I know that inexpensive clothes are often the by-product of cotton farmers and garment workers laboring away for too little pay in unsafe conditions, and often entail environmental harm. Yet, that only sometimes stops me from buying them.

In this regard, I am not alone. As we have learned, people today buy more clothes and shoes than they did even a decade ago, and far, far more than their grandparents. In addition to using fancy data analytics to encourage people to buy more, the middleman economy facilitates this extra consumption by shielding buyers from seeing the effects of these buying decisions.

One of the factors that behavioral economists have identified as critical to real-world decision making is salience.33 This helps to explain why people eat cake even when they want to lose weight, and why people who care about the environment may nonetheless drive large, gas-guzzling vehicles and take long showers during a water shortage.34 The immediate, tangible joy of the experience is more salient to them than the abstract, probabilistic impact of their actions on their health or the environment. For better and worse, most of us overvalue what we see and experience and discount what we don’t.

One challenge with behavioral biases is that knowing about them doesn’t free us from them. When I see a bar of chocolate at checkout, I am often still tempted to buy it despite what I know about cocoa labor practices. Similar issues arise when I shop for new T-shirts and jeans for my family. In the moment, I instinctively still prioritize price, convenience, style, and comfort. When that happens, I often compromise on other values that I would like to think are more important to me, such as respecting the dignity of all human beings and our planet.

The problems start with the cotton that goes into those T-shirts. Picking cotton has always been laborious, which is one reason that the work is so often delegated to those who have the least amount of control over their circumstances. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, seven of the top ten cotton-producing countries use forced or child labor in their cotton industries.35 The United States, Australia, and Mexico are the only top producers that don’t; and, with the use of prison labor in parts of the United States, some wonder whether it too should be on the list.

The cotton then needs to be sorted, made into thread and then textiles, dyed, and transformed into T-shirts and other finished products. Questionable labor practices pervade each of these nodes.36 For example, numerous reports suggest that China has been relying on forced labor by 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its cotton production and thread/yarn, textiles, and garment industries.37 Companies identified by U.

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