Today is International Day of Democracy and in today’s world we all want our opinions to be acknowledged, so this blog will help you get started and have our say. That is why we have selected some very worthy causes trying to make a change in the world – that you can support from your sofa or without even leaving the office.
THE #PAYUP CAMPAIGN
Coronavirus caused massive disruptions to the clothing industry, with stores around the world closed unexpectedly and consumer demand in dramatic decline. Many clothing brands and retailers put their financial fallout onto the garment workers and factories. In Bangladesh alone, brands cancelled or put on hold over $3 billion worth of clothing orders, including orders that were completed or in progress.
The #PayUp campaign demands that brands pay their factories and garment workers for all orders that are in production or completed. This money is rightly owed to factories for work that’s already been done, for costs that have already incurred. With no source of income, millions of women who sew our clothes will end up starving on the streets of supplier countries, like Bangladesh, Cambodia and even the United States.
You can take part in this campaign by visiting @remakeourworld on Instagram for all the resources on how to tag and call out brands. You can also sign the petitions linked below:
- ➡️ The remake petition
- ➡️ The Oxfam petition
- ➡️ Labour Behind the label petition
- ➡️ Traidcraft exchange petition
THE TRANSPARENCY FOR FASHION CAMPAIGN
The aim of this campaign is to create legislation that would require all companies within the fashion industry to produce and publish a transparency index, requiring them to disclose information about their product chains, including working conditions, waste disposal and their use of chemicals.
If you ask me this legislation is desperately needed, the fashion industry is one of the most polluting industries in the world. Many companies have already started focusing on being sustainable, but real change will not happen until the majority players are putting sustainability first, this legislation would ensure that they do.
Support this campaign by following the link below and signing the petition
➡️ Transparency for fashion petition
PETITION FOR FASHION RETAILERS TO SET ENVIRONMENTAL TARGETS
This petition is run by Sum Of Us, an organisation that fights for people over profit. The fashion industry is one of the most harmful industries in the UK, it produces more pollution than international aviation and shipping combined. Sum Of Us wants to change this, the aim of this campaign is to set mandatory environmental targets for fashion retailers with a turnover of 36 million or more.
This is not this organisation’s first campaign, their past campaigns have been very successful. Last year Sum Of US ran a campaign to stop Levi’s polluting the atmosphere with the equivalent of 1.1 million cars a year, over 100,000 people supported this campaign and in the end, Levi’s announced it would cut its greenhouse emissions by 40%. This set an unprecedented standard for the industry and showed that people power really can make a difference.
Follow the link below to sign the petition.
➡️ Set mandatory environmental targets for fashion retailers
PETITION FOR PLASTIC FREE PACKAGING FROM AMAZON
As the title explains, this petition is aimed at forcing Amazon to provide a plastic-free packaging option for consumers at check out as well as plastic-free labelling available for sellers we already choose to use more ethical alternatives. Whilst Fashion may not be their primary product or focus, lots of fashion brands do distribute via Amazon. We need to recognise the role Amazon plays here within the fashion industry too.
Every day thousands of amazon packages are shipped around the world, many with unnecessary plastic wrapping and cushioning. Of course, the ideal solution to this would be to stop using Amazon all together but this is simply not realistic, whether we like it or not amazon are vital to a lot of small and medium-sized businesses, they connect them with a larger customer base and help them sell their product.
Amazon is also one of the largest e-commerce companies in the world if they were to introduce a plastic-free packaging option for their customers it would only be a matter of time before other companies followed suit and it became the norm.
Follow the link below to sign this petition and do your bit to end the use of harmful plastic packaging.
➡️ Make Amazon provide an option for plastic-free packaging
PETITION TO PROTECT YOUNG PEOPLE IN THE MODELING INDUSTRY
This petition may not be about sustainability but it is about ethics, it was started by 27-year-old fashion model Rosalie Nelson with the aim of protecting vulnerable young boys and girls in the industry. She wants the UK to introduce legislation which would protect and achieve a healthy standard for models, similar to that recently introduced in France when they criminalised the use of dangerously thin models. This is another reason why we love our newest members of the Ethical Brand Directory: YOU Underwear, as they have a policy of using real bodies and no photoshopping in their marketing.
Rosalie says her own experiences within the modelling industry drove her to take this call for action. She says there is an underlying message to models in the industry and that is that they should not eat, for example, some shoots will last up to ten hours with no food being provided for models. She also recalled being told by one particular modelling agency to lose more weight because they wanted her ‘down to the bone’, the fact that these practices are still going on right under our noses is honestly disgusting.
Support Rosalie’s campaign by following the link below.
➡️ Protect young people in the modelling industry
We hope you’ve found these campaigns encouraging, and that you’ve felt motivated to have your say. There’s so much more we can all do, but sometimes signing a petition and boycotting a brand until they’ve changed their ways is one of the easiest ways to get started.
Have we missed any campaigns? Let us know in the comments if there’s ones we need to sign.
The EBD Team x