The high cost of our cheap fashion | Maxine Bédat | TEDxPiscataquaRiver

Do you know where your clothes come from? The apparel industry is one of the biggest violators of both the environment and human rights. In this compelling and information-packed talk, co-founder of Zady Maxine Bédat shows how you can take back the power of your wardrobe and feel better in (and better about) your clothes.

Maxine Bédat is the co-founder and CEO of Zady, a fashion brand and lifestyle destination creating a transparent and sustainable future for the $1.5 trillion apparel industry. Her background in international law and diplomacy, including serving as a legal clerk for the U.N., led her to found The Bootstrap Project, a non-profit organization that works with entrepreneurs in the developing world.

For its work in sustainability, Zady was named one of the world’s “Most Innovative Companies” in retail by Fast Company and its creativity was recognized by Mashable, which called the company “the #1 business rocking content marketing.”

Bédat serves on the Council of NationSwell, has spoken at some of the world’s leading conferences, including the WWD Apparel/Retail CEO Summit, and has been regularly featured as an expert by Bloomberg, Forbes, Business of Fashion, CNN and the Huffington Post. Bédat is a graduate of Columbia Law School.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

So, scientists have been warning us
that we're wreaking havoc on our planet.

We're told about how our soil
is getting deteriorated

and our fresh water supply,
as we just heard, is getting polluted.

We're told about all of these problems,

and we're told how
it's going to impact us.

It's not just our polar ice caps
that are going to be melting,

but it's going to impact
our coastal cities.

We're told about all of this,

but then we're not really
given many options

on what we might be able to do about it.

We're told to recycle,
use fuel-efficient cars,

maybe turn the lights off
when we're leaving the room.

We feel powerless against this issue.

And it also seems

as if it's the responsibility
of government to take care of.

And yet we know
that government is in gridlock.

So now, what are we left to do?

Well, what if I told you
that we actually do hold the power?

And that power is what we wear every day.

It's our clothing.

Because what people haven't told you

is under the radar,

the apparel industry has actually become

the second most polluting
industry in the world.

So, I'd like to talk today
about how we got to this place

and how we can take back control
and use our power

to both answer the question,
"What am I going to wear today?"

and the world's more pressing problems.

So, it's the leadership of Ikea
that recently said

that we have reached peak stuff.

And that is certainly true
when it comes to our clothing.

You see here, in the 1960s,

the average American invested
in 25 new pieces of clothing every year.

A generation later, today, and we purchase

three times as much clothing
as we did in the 60s.

So how did this come about?

Did we just decide one day,

"Oh yes, I want to purchase
a lot more clothes of less quality.

Sign me up for that"?

It didn't happen that way.

It started as trade barriers
actually came down,

which created financial incentives

for brands to move
their production overseas.

And this generally created a trend
for cheaper and cheaper clothing

using cheaper materials and cheap labor.

Meanwhile, these fast-fashion companies -

and that's what this industry is called -

these fast-fashion companies
had huge marketing budgets

to try to convince all of us

that their cheap clothing
was somehow covetable.

So we bought more and more.

But more isn't always more.

You see, in the 1960s,

when we were investing
in 25 pieces of clothing -

and they really were investments
because at that time,

we spent over 10% of our salary
on clothing every year -

95% of American clothing, what we wore,
was American-made.

Today, it is less than 2%.

And that drop actually
represents an 80% drop

in apparel-manufacturing
jobs in this country.

So, I'm sure we all have
our own experiences

of dealing with fast fashion
and experiencing fast fashion.

I have my own.

Having come from Minnesota, I remember
going to New York when H&M first opened.

And I was so excited, I have to admit.

I loved the size of the store
and the lights,

and the smell was kind of crazy,

and there was this blasting music,

and I just ate it up.

And I bought clothes by the bagful.

And I didn't really think that I -
maybe knew what I wanted,

but it didn't really seem to matter,
because the prices were just so cheap.

I mean, a jumpsuit for less than $20!

But what I ultimately found out
is that all of that cheap clothing

has huge consequences

both for the environment
and for the people making our clothing.

So let's take a look at why that is.

So, it turns out
that the fast-fashion industry

is fuelled by a new type
of fiber: polyester.

You can see there, there is a line:

H&M opens in New York in 2001 -
that's when I was visiting -

and you can see, at that stage,
that was when cotton was no longer king.

And just take a look
at the rise of polyester

as fast fashion has come onto the scene.

Polyester, for those that don't know,

is a polluting plastic
made from fossil fuels.

And it's now in over half of our clothing.

Let's talk about why
that might be an issue.

There are four primary things
that we need to think about

when we think about
this rise in polyester.

First of all, it's non-biodegradable.

Consider this: every piece of polyester
that has ever been produced

is still on the planet today.

So, when you think about the fact

that there are 150 billion
new pieces of clothing

being added onto the planet every year,

that's a lot of plastic
that's not going away.

Second: these polyester fabrics,
when you wash them,

thousands of these
microplastics are shedding,

and they're entering our water systems
and ultimately our oceans.

And what's happening is that the fish
are consuming these microplastics

and we are consuming the fish.

There was a recent study in California,

and they went to the fish
markets in California.

And they found out that actually

one in four of the fish
that are sold at the markets

contain these microplastics.

And researchers are saying
that while the big plastics you can see,

the greatest pollution
is actually these microfibers.

Third: have you noticed that recently,
you have been sweating more?

This is not just a coincidence,

because polyester, it turns out,
is non-breathable,

unlike the natural fibers.

So, what that means is that heat
is trapped into your body

and you sweat more.

Finally, polyester is extremely
energy-intensive to create.

Just how energy-intensive?

Take a look at this graph.

This is showing the relative
energy-intensiveness

to create each type of material.

This linen sweater that I am wearing

requires just [one eighth]
of the amount of energy

it does to create polyester.

So, now we have a tripling of the amount
of clothing that we buy,

this clothing is no longer made
from natural materials

but incredibly energy-intensive polyester,

and now we have to think about
where this clothing is being made.

Take a look at this graph.

This graph shows the total apparel imports
into the US by volume.

You will see here that China is actually
our biggest trading partner on this -

a little more than 40% of our clothing
is coming from China.

Remember this graph,

and as I show you this one,

take a look at this map.

This is a map

of the energy-intensiveness
of the power grids

of where we're getting our clothing from.

Consider this:

in China, 3/4 of the energy supply
is coming from coal.

So when we are churning away
all of that clothing,

it's coming from
the dirtiest form of energy,

which is coal.

Even in the United States, which itself
is not the cleanest power grid,

it's not 77% as in China,
it is about 33%.

So, now we know
we're making too much clothing,

it's being made of
a very high-intensity product

in a place that is taking up
a lot of energy.

And all of this is adding up
to the fact that the apparel industry

is responsible for 10%
of the total carbon output

for the entire world.

To put that into some perspective,

that is five times more carbon output

than all airline travel combined.

But that's just the environmental impact.

Now we have to consider
who is making our clothes

and what is happening to them.

If you remember
where our clothing is coming from,

now we're going to look
at the Department of Labor

and where they are finding
forced labor and child labor.

And you're going to see
that they match up almost exactly.

It is believed that one in six people
around the world

work in some part of the apparel industry.

So, it employs a lot of people.

About 80% of those people are women.

And 98% of them
are not receiving a living wage.

What that means is they are getting
locked into a channel of poverty.

So, that's the bad stuff.

But it seems, in all of this,

that no one is really winning.

Nobody in the supply chain,
no one in the value chain

is really winning,

except for maybe two CEOs
of fast-fashion companies.

And perhaps nobody is winning -
even us, the citizen consumer.

Because if you take
the interest in tidying up

and the best-seller Marie Kondo's
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up,

you see this explosive growth in interest
in cleaning all of that up.

And I share that personal interest.

After living over a decade
with my fast-fashion habit,

I was so tired of shopping all the time
and never having anything to wear,

my closet in New York
bursting open with clothes,

always trying to struggle
with what I'm going to wear every day.

So, one day I decided I had had enough.

And I wanted to understand:

What exactly in my closet
did I enjoy wearing?

And why did I enjoy wearing it?

So, I was digging through things
and looking at tags

and I started to google.

Really aggressively.

And what I found out is that I am
actually not alone in this pursuit.

If you type in "is linen" in Google,
it actually autocompletes to

"is linen cotton?"

I asked that question myself.

And now I know that linen is not cotton.

Linen - the sweater
that I am wearing today -

comes from flax -
that's the plant on the left -

and cotton is that thing on the right.

So, I'm googling away,

and it really started for me
with a personal desire to buy better.

So, I started to search for ethical
and sustainable clothing.

But what I ended up finding,
after doing further research,

is that those words
are really unregulated.

So, companies can say they are ethical,

and they can show
a picture of their factory,

but the picture is hiding a lot of things.

First of all, the picture doesn't say
anything about transparency.

Transparency is when a brand
is willing to name

the factories that they are working with,

allowing third parties -
customers, the media -

to actually research
whether what the brand is claiming

is actually what is taking place.

Second, the pictures do not show
wages or healthcare coverage.

And when you think back
about how 98% of the apparel industry

is not receiving a living wage,

that's an incredibly important statistic
if you're wanting to shop ethically.

A picture also doesn't show
shadow factories.

Shadow factories is a situation
that is happening in the apparel industry

as we have been really going
on this race to the bottom

when a brand will meet with
what is called a "five-star factory"

and they might be taking pictures
or doing audits of that factory,

but it turns out actually
that to get the prices

that the brand is requiring

or the speed in which
they need that product,

they're outsourcing that production
to another factory.

It's called the "shadow factories,"

which is where really
the production is taking place.

And oftentimes, these shadow factories

have much lower
labor and living standards.

And finally, a picture is not showing
material sustainability.

It's not showing
whether it's organic cotton,

and that turns out to be
incredibly important

because cotton is the fourth largest
pesticide-consuming crop.

That's why we're having a hard time
with the nutrition of our soil.

And it's not showing
whether the dye stuff

is actually being handled appropriately.

So, it turns out that
not only is the apparel industry

responsible for 10% of carbon output,

it's also the second greatest
polluter of fresh water globally.

And that's because dye houses
in the developing world,

90% of them dye their products

and then release those effluents,
release that dye stuff

directly into local freshwater supplies.

So, as I was doing all of this research,

my research entered a Google document

and I just became really frustrated
by the whole thing.

I became frustrated because I saw
while we had this interest in food

and we now had organic food options

and we had farm-to-table restaurants,

there really wasn't a resource that was
putting all of this stuff together.

And as I was putting
these pieces together,

I just saw how huge the problem was.

And so, it was really that frustration

that became the impetus to create Zady.

I wanted a place
that distilled that information

and provided an alternative.

So, along with a researcher,

we translated that disparate
information on the Google doc

to a plan on how we can actually create
sustainable clothing.

Because there isn't an organic standard
in the apparel industry.

There aren't the equivalent
of LEED-certified factories,

so we really had to
do it all from scratch.

And this is what we came up with.

It's called the "new standard."

First of all, we think about
user-centered design.

A common theme in this fast fashion is
that it's all about what can be sold to us

and the marketing that can be done to us,

but unlike technology,

it's really not designed for us at all.

And so, that's the most important thing:

that we're thinking about

what is somebody doing in their day,
where are they going,

and what is the cut and material
that is going to fit them best.

And then we use natural materials
and we work directly with our suppliers

from the farm all the way
through the supply chain.

And that's important,
because 90% of brands

actually don't know
where their material is coming from.

Finally, we have an open-door policy
with our manufacturers,

and we do all of our
production domestically.

In that way, we can see
whether our production

is actually taking place
in the place that we've contracted with.

So, our idea with the "new standard"
and creating the Zady collection

was to show an alternative,

that we really can love our clothes again.

And that brings me back to us.

The citizen consumer.

Because what I have
realized in all of this

is that we hold the power.

And if we see ourselves
as citizen consumers,

and if we vote with our dollars,

we can change the industry

because they're just
following what we're doing.

And so, as a citizen consumer,

these are some of the things
that you can do.

First, just check the tags;
that's where it started with me.

Understand where
your clothing is coming from

and what it is made out of.

That already can advance things a lot.

Second, check the seams of the clothing.

In a lot of fast fashion,
if you turn it inside out,

even in the dressing room
before you have even left the store,

those seams are already coming apart.

So you can really see

whether this is something
that's going to last a long time.

Third and most importantly,

love what you buy.

There's so much marketing dollars

being used to convince us
that we like something

that we don't really get
to focus on what is our style,

what do we really like,
what do we really enjoy.

If we focus on loving what we buy,

we're going to end up buying less
and enjoying it better.

And finally, as a citizen consumer,

you have the power to ask questions.

You have the right to ask questions.

Ask if the material is organic.

Ask what the names of the factories are.

Ask if the mills are certified -

are they dealing with
their dye and water appropriately?

And think of your purchases
in terms of cost per wear.

Think of it like an accountant
would think of these things.

In that way, you're not stuck
just on the price tag,

but you can see your clothing
as an investment in the long term.

Because this chaotic
and polluting and unjust system

is really entirely
within our hands to control.

And what we as consumer citizens
choose to purchase

dictates what direction the industry goes.

If we use our dollars
to support that effort,

to support slow fashion,

we might find that
we feel better in our clothes,

and we'll be using our power
to clean up the planet.

Thanks.

(Applause)