Last September, a report from the trade publication Business of Fashion found that the Chinese retailer Shein was the world’s largest polluter in the garment industry, but a casual reader of corporate news media would likely be none the wiser, because the report received little to no coverage by the establishment press. As of July 2025, new US tariffs on Chinese manufacturing, including the products of many “fast fashion” brands, could cause prices for clothes from Shein and its competitors to spike. Elizabeth Cline of The Atlantic has warned that tariffs “won’t kill the industry,” but they may worsen its waste and exploitation problems.
Overconsumption is nothing new, but over the last decade, it has become common for microtrends to saturate social media and the internet, spurring consumers across the developed world to buy new products. The pressure to purchase each frivolous thing that appears on our screens is supported by the structure of the global economy and our desire for instant gratification. This is particularly reflected in what consumers choose to wear. In the last five years, online brands like Shein and Temu have exploded in popularity among consumers looking for goods that are fashionable at the moment but cost as little as possible. The constant stream of items made to be used for the short time that they are stylish and then quickly discarded does not arise out of thin air. Real people, often mired in poverty, work in squalid factories to make these products; some even lose their lives because of corporate callousness and greed.
The men, women, and children working in these factories, however, do not reap the benefits of the unprecedented profits that their work generates for their corporate employers. More than seventy-five million people worldwide work to bring cheap, fashionable clothing from sweltering factories in developing countries to stock shelves in wealthier, more secure nations, and less than 2 percent of these workers are paid a minimum wage. Factory workers producing goods for Shein work upwards of seventy-five hours a week, which far exceeds legal limits in China, and are paid for each item they make, rather than earning a standard wage. These factories rarely issue employment contracts, leaving their employees without a clear delineation of their rights. Shein is not required to perform any kind of inspection to ensure fair treatment of its workers, and as of late, has not deigned to do so. Even in factories producing for bigger, more prestigious brands, workers suffer.
In May 2025, for example, ProPublica reported that, despite Nike’s promised reforms, workers in a Nike factory in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, continue to faint from heat exposure or exhaustion. The extended supply chains that wealthy, Western consumers take advantage of are designed to make as many goods as possible for as cheaply as possible, while distancing consumers from the exploitation and abuse of workers. The major companies that reap the profits maintain headquarters in wealthier, more developed countries but enlist labor from poorer nations where labor standards, regulations, and oversight are much weaker and do not stand in the way of soaring profits.
In the most severe cases, workers can even lose their lives for the profits of factory owners and major companies. To note one notorious example, on April 24, 2013, the Rana Plaza factory in Savar, Bangladesh, collapsed, killing more than 1,100 workers. The day before, cracks in the eight-story building’s structure were discovered, leading shops and banks in the building to evacuate, yet factory overseers forced their employees to return to work the next day. When the complex came crashing down, workers endured total misery. Some were trapped under tons of rubble for hours or days before they could be rescued, and others had to amputate their own limbs to escape. In the face of mass outcry, officials in Bangladesh promised change, yet more than a decade after the disaster, workers who protest against poor conditions are frequently arrested and sometimes even battered in the streets.
It would be easy to dismiss the current state of affairs as the whims of faceless corporate elites, but the truth is that the blame also rests on consumers. Our incessant need to spend in excess rewards the bad behavior of corporations and enables their mistreatment of their laborers. A steady flow of revenue only emboldens corporate greed, and even momentary contractions can give them an excuse to exploit workers further. The COVID-19 pandemic brought the luxury of working from the comfort of one’s home to millions, but drove factory workers in the periphery further into despair.
The economic downturn in 2020 led people, and then corporations, to halt payments for orders to protect their assets. In surveyed countries, including Ethiopia, India, and Myanmar, nearly a third of workers lost their jobs, and the ones who remained employed saw their wages slashed and their working conditions further deteriorate. About one out of every five workers was even denied basic necessities at work, such as access to water and the use of the restroom. These people are then driven further into personal and household debt, which sends them into a downward spiral into further poverty and squalor. This pattern shows that the choices we make as consumers have tangible effects on the livelihoods of the workers who make our goods.
Why is it that corporate media are loath to report all but the most catastrophic effects of this miserable supply chain? The simple fact is that they have too much to gain. Corporate media has always had an interest in influencing what people think, but since the advent of the internet, people are constantly inundated with content that tells them that they need to consume as much as possible to stay current with the latest styles and trends. Of course, these messages are tailored by corporate entities to maximize their profit. More and more people buying cheap, mass-produced products gives the corporate media a wider audience whose ideas and decisions can be influenced. The idea that more and more products are only useful as long as they are “in” serves to spike demand for goods among consumers who can spend money frivolously, which in turn spikes production in distant factories where manufacturers abuse and exploit the workers who produce those goods.
As dire as this situation may seem, there is still some hope. Nina Gbor, a sustainable fashion educator who is the founder of Eco Styles and serves as the director of the Circular Economy & Waste Program at The Australia Institute, told Project Censored that “it could take the knowledge of exploitation becoming somewhat of a trend” to encourage consumers in the imperial core to care about overconsumption. The poor treatment of workers in peripheral nations and the industry’s effects on the environment are, she says, “social injustice, political, economic and humanitarian issues amongst other things” that activists can amplify.
When it comes to a personal change of perspective, however, Gbor concedes that “you can bring the issues to people’s awareness but you can’t make them care.” Ultimately, Gbor is sure that “we need legislation and policies that will change these systems of injustice in global supply chains,” and for that to happen, “we need enough people to advocate for these laws and systems to change.”
The solution to this cycle lies in the choices that consumers make. Reducing the demand for cheap goods with no long-term utility is key to sending a message to the corporations that profit from the abuse of their factory workers. Furthermore, we must recognize the power of working together to project one united voice against the exploitation of laborers to satisfy fleeting consumer demands. Collective action is key to forcing the hand of these large conglomerates. One pleading voice alone cannot effect the type of change that is necessary—we must coalesce into one collective force to demand it. If we can redirect towards making conscious decisions to buy goods that will last longer than the latest trend cycle and make clear to corporations that we will no longer be distracted by the cheap baubles of the day or tolerate the suffering involved in making them, we can do our part in removing the incentive to abuse workers for profit.
- First published at Project Censored.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jayden Henry.