The True Cost Page #6

I think not just about creating jobs

for 7000 people working at People Tree.

It also seeks to be a catalyst for change in the sector,

showing, proving that the model works.

When we begin to be organic,

I think we were only two or three at the time,

Marketing Cooperative formed the Texas Organic Cotton,

and the agreement was that they grew and sold it.

So I started going to Jacob Javits

and with all this cotton plants and everything,

we said, "Yes, we have organic cotton"

and people looked at us like we're totally crazy.

Consumers often become aware of ...

Organic milk, or have an allergy.

And, curiously, cotton,

and what they put on the body

although the skin is the body's largest organ,

it is not even important

they do not understand the connection of saying,

"I like this organic apple,

so I'm not getting directly

pesticides or chemicals, or whatever the case. "

But they do not understand the direct connection with clothing.

And so you have to start looking at the broader community level.

This is our air, our world.

This is our planet, our people.

And so that awareness of ...

You may not feel they have a direct impact

buying this organic shirt.

But the impact

It is in the bigger picture, in the world at large,

and especially where the community has grown cotton.

As hard frost arrives,

as organic farmers, we hope that icy

because that literally skims, removes leaves the plant,

so that when harvested, mature capsules are open,

and cotton leaves here,

and you can see what comes in sections.

This machine is called cotton harvester.

And it is called cotton harvester

because literally it comes and starts,

use something like fingers, and literally starts

all capsules of this plant.

So if you look here, you can see

Combine and went out there and has collected all the plants.

I think one of the problems we have in the current model

It is that what matters is profit.

And do not take into account: "This cost, at what price?"

The price of polluting the water,

the price of labor,

the bars on the window,

that people die when a fire in the factory,

the price of farmers who have no access

education and health services.

And so we really have not calculated what the real price.

Kanpur is located along the Ganges River,

which is the most sacred river.

And it is also very important for 800 million Hindus

and also it serves as a way of life for northern India.

Leather factories Kanpur

They are polluting and killing this river.

With the growing demand for inexpensive materials such as leather,

Kanpur is now the capital of leather exports from India.

Every day, more than 50 million liters of toxic wastewater

leaving local tanneries.

Chemical complexes used to treat leather, such as chromium-6,

flow into local agriculture and even drinking water.

In places like Kanpur, hidden in the eyes of the world,

big Western brands get cheaper materials

while avoiding any responsibility for the rising cost to human health

and the environment.

The people in that area is affected by pollution from the tanneries.

The local environment is polluted, the soil is contaminated.

The only source of drinking water,

groundwater is contaminated with chromium.

Agricultural products,

even vegetables and salad products,

They produced there.

The health of people affected.

People have different types of skin problems:

skin rashes, blisters, pustules,

numbness of the limbs.

People have stomach ailments, they may also have cancer.

My daughter suffers from jaundice.

Every year, people in nearly every house in this region

suffers from this disease.

Even my wife had jaundice.

As I said, many people every year have the same problem.

We used all our savings to treat diseases,

because the chromium in the water

attacks the liver,

creates digestive problems, and many people can get jaundice

or liver cancer if we do not take precautions.

You may have the best materials

the market for high-end fashion in Milan or Paris or London.

But there has been so much work behind it,

and they have been used many chemicals,

effluents were discharged into many rivers.

But we're just looking at that moment in time

the finished product.

We have to go back and think about it.

The fashion today is the second most polluting industry

on earth, second only to the oil industry.

The alarming thing is that fashion not only used

a wealth of natural resources,

and make amazing environmental effects,

these natural resources and the impact often are not even measured.

As they have been so abundant these resources,

it is assumed that they will be around forever.

So I think the industry has not justified

because it is only from the 50s

we've really had this industrial expansion

at such a rate that we start to see exponential growth

and exponential use of natural resources.

Our lives depend on the economy first nature.

Nature has an economy.

That economy is enormous. It is not counted.

Then there is the economy of the people, the workers, laborers,

Farmers growing.

That became invisible through this construct,

first the Depression, then during the war years,

the number called GDP, gross domestic product,

that only measures which are traded,

and it has become a commodity.

Many resources

we use to make our clothes have not been justified

in the production cost of such clothing.

Then you have the water used to produce clothing,

land used to grow the fiber,

chemicals used for dyeing.

Those things are all inputs.

And as inputs, they have a cost,

and also give products

in some cases, good products, the clothing itself, jobs,

but in other cases, bad products, such as harmful chemicals,

or emissions of greenhouse gases,

and those things also have a cost.

Sleeping on pillow.

Do you feel bad leaving Nadia?

Of course I feel bad, but I can not do anything.

Working here, I am forced to leave the village.

In the past two months, he did not sit with their books.

Just watch TV and cartoons.

And music videos.

But if he stays in the village, you can not do that.

He goes to school in the morning, again at noon

and 3 pm will tutoring.

That's not possible here.

What do you do with Nadia now?

Sometimes I leave with the neighbor,

Sometimes his father used to take care of it.

And I took my works sometimes.

I took her to the factory yesterday.

The same low wages that make places like Bangladesh

so attractive for brands to do business,

have left millions of workers working long hours,

unable to afford to keep their children with them,

even in the poorest slums.

To give their children an education,

and the chance for a better life in future factories,

many textile workers here, as Shima, leave their children

to raise them family or friends in villages far from the city,

and only see once or twice a year.

This is my dad,

over a year since I saw him.

Sometimes I talk to him by phone,

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