True Cost (essay)

Did you know in Bangladesh there are about three million people working on cheap fashion. More than half of those people are women. The women that are working on making the fashion are getting paid less than minimum wage. The clothes get sent at least five different countries. They are even forced to work fourteen to sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. The women have to go weeks, even months without seeing their children. Some women even take their children to work with them.Sweatshops are the places they work and they are pretty tiny, so they are packed in these tiny shops. There are positive and negative effects on the sweatshops. Positive for us because we are not the ones that have to sit in those places to make the clothes. Negative for them because they aren’t getting what they deserve.

You don’t really know the story behind cheap clothing and shoes until you’re sitting in class one day watching a documentary about it. In Bangladesh, there are cheap clothing being made as we speak. Rana Plaza is a factory where cheap clothing was made. In April of 2013 it collapsed killing more than 1,100 people and injuring more than a thousand. The Plaza consisted of eight stories which held five garment factories. The reason the plaza collapsed was because of how old it was and it wasn’t built very good. Five months before the Rana Plaza incident, a fire broke out in the Tazreen Fashion factory trapping at least 112 people with no way of getting out. Those people then ended up dying because there was no possible way to get to them. Since the Rana Plaza incident there has been no more than 109 incidents.

Are cheap clothing worth it? Knowing that lives are being taken for cheap clothes is a very touchy subject and knowing that nothing is going to change is really sad. My opinion i don’t think cheap fashion is worth it. Lives are more important than cheap fashion. The true cost of cheap fashion is that there are women sitting in factories for hours a day making the same hundred shirts, pants, jacket, ect. and getting paid no more than three dollars a day.They are packed together in little sweatshops, probably hungry because they didn’t get a lunch break because they have been working so hard. They do all that work just for something to get shipped to the United Sttes or, where there getting shipped to just to sit in someone's closet.

In conclusion, cheap fashion is not worth it. When people are not getting treated good and not getting what they deserve none of it is worth it. If the people from Bangladesh are making cheap clothes that actually sell and are helping put money into our economy, they should be treated way different. In the future I do not think the clothing industry will change because people don’t care and if it does change that will pretty crazy but good at the same time. Will my shopping habits change? Usually I don't shop at these stores that sell cheap fashion. I will go and look in them but that's usually not my go to. If I did shop at cheap stores I don't think I would change my shopping habits because I still need to help the economy. Yes, what is going on in Bangladesh is wrong and everything but the clothes are still here. We still need to put money into the economy. I really hope something changes about the clothing industry. 

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