The softshell on your back.. who made it?
31st March 2011
Part 4 of Ed's 10 part exploration into ethical issues behind the production of our adventure gear.
Employment then.
We have all heard the examples over the last few decades of factories exploiting their workforce – over worked, no safety, underpaid, and sometimes underage. Of course, this happens with your favourite brand ‘having no idea it is going on’ and ‘being absolutely shocked and disgusted’ when it is revealed to them. ‘Changes will be made’ we are told.
As an outsider looking in, when it comes to employment, and bodies existing to protect the rights of the worker, all I see is confusion. There are Non Governmental bodies, Govenmental Bodies, Multi Governmental bodies, there are associations and initiatives, and there are standards. Through all the promises and standards, it is so hard to find evidence of enforcement or effective action.
Let us take the case of the International Labour Organisation. This specialized agency of the UN lobbies governments and generates agreement on standards in the form of conventions and treaties. Many countries ratify these treaties, and in good faith, but the ILO is often criticised for a lack of enforcement, rendering the process symbolic.
On the other hand, we have the Fair Labour Association. This nonprofit association brings together academic establishments, civil society organizations, socially responsible companies, governments and unions. They all work together to establish programs and initiatives to protect the rights of the worker. Whilst they do maintain a regular audit body with published results, there are questions over their independence given that they are funded by the very companies they are auditing.
This is not so different to the Business Social Compliance Initiative, which encourages company self assessment based on ILO standards, and the Ethical Trading Initiative, which also has no powers of inspection or enforcement. The problem with promises is that they are too easy to break.
Another approach has been adopted by BlueSign. This fiercely independent audit body exists to establish standards at every stage of the manufacture process. Any part of the 
process can have be Blue Sign approved; your raw material, your chemicals, your employment. BlueSign provide brands with an index of approved factories, chemicals, fabrics… The brands are not employing Bluesign to audit them or the factories they use, this is down to the factory producing the fabric or zip or element. Rather they are consulting a list of ‘ingredients’ that have been approved.
BlueSign is then a generator of virtuous circles. The consumer requires kit that is certifiably ‘ethical’, the brands have the tools to find the materials and labour to achieve this. The factories have an independent and regular audit that allows them to pitch to the brand.
It costs the factory to have Bluesign audit them, it costs the brands to use their index and it costs the consumer a little more to buy a BlueSign approved product. The costs are split between the consumer, the brands and the factories making it a less onerous undertaking for any particular party and allowing Bluesign to be genuinely independent. We find once again that the model relies on the consumer to require change and to be prepared to pay for it. We find also that the inspection / accreditation body must be a business that will succeed or fail.
As a brand, it appears to be very hard to know which way to step. You might like Haglofs, prefer to develop an 'in house' code of conduct, setting out your requirements to your manufacturers. Incidently Haglofs use independant inspection teams to ensure their code of conduct is enforced.
There are of course examples of outdoor brands that weave ethical employment even more closely into the 
fabric of their company. Paramo produce high performance, durable outdoor clothing. The majority of Páramo manufacturing is based in Bogotá, Colombia. Working as part of a social program with the ‘Miquelina Foundation’, Páramo provides valuable skills to ‘at risk’ women seeking an improvement in their life. Whilst Paramo look to social, ethical enterprise in South America, Finisterre use European Family run factories that ensure wages above the European minimum wage,
These very different yet equally transparent approaches both guarantee the purchaser that their equipment is socially responsible and beneficial to the people involved in producing it. So don’t jump on the bandwagon and believe that it has to be made in the UK to be good for the world, but do look before you hand your money over and ask yourself… ‘who made this?’, and ‘are they telling the truth?’.
Previously in Ed adventure into the world of ethical gear and kit:
Article is part of the muchbetter e-mag - a free feature of the people, places, ideas and innovations which fit the muchbetter philosophy
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