A family walking past a brick kiln (Thomas Cristofoletti/Ruom. Copyright©2018 Royal Holloway, University of London)
Not far from Phnom Penh, a mother walks along balancing her youngest son against her hip, whilst her eldest clutches her hand. Their walk, taken multiple times a day, is past a brick kiln fuelled by the multi-coloured garment waste that can be seen spilling out of plastic bags. As part of a debt-bonded migrant workforce, the family work and live on site, their corrugated tin home located just metres from where the garment waste is being burned. The kiln is part of Cambodia’s lucrative domestic brick-making industry, feeding and fed by Phnom Penh’s construction boom. Rather than relying on wood for its fuel the kiln owners use off-cuts from the country’s garment factories, sourced mainly from a dedicated dump. Those garment factories comprise Cambodia’s principal export-focused manufacturing sector, supplying particularly European, fast-fashion retailers. A national-level survey of all brick kilns (2020) recorded that 23 kilns out of 465 (4.9% of all kilns) use garments as fuel.
In our newly published (open access) journal article in Social & Cultural Geography, we explain how current understanding of fashion waste is limited by its predominant focus on postconsumer geographies of clothing discard in the global north. The article advocates for greater attention to preconsumer garment waste in the global south: the multiple industries which collect, materially transform, and profit from it; and the lives of precarious workers who are incorporated into, and are formative of, these discardscapes of fashion.
Based on extensive mixed-method interview data, investigative research, documentary photography and particulate air readings undertaken in Cambodia between 2017 and 2019, we provides new insights into the journey of preconsumer garment waste from Cambodia’s factories to the brick kiln via a dedicated garment dump.
These insights are especially prescient at a time when COVID-19 is sending demand shocks through the global garment industry. The majority of press coverage about a ‘new wave’ of garment waste linked to the pandemic is focused, again, on post consumer waste in the global north; the closure of charity shops and the limited storage capacity of recyclers (see also here). But manufacturing shutdowns in the Asian region and consumer lockdowns in the EU and US have also led international retailers to cancel orders. EURATEX, the European Apparel and Textile Confederation, has conducted a survey among European companies showing that more than half of the companies expect a drop in sales and production by more than 50%. The Blood Bricks team are concerned about where these clothes may end up. As a former Cambodian garment factory manager reveals, it is his ‘reasonably informed hunch that the canceled orders will either go to landfill or be incinerated’.
The burning of garment waste has been described by Orsola de Castro, co-founder and creative director of activist group Fashion Revolution, as the fashion industry’s ‘dirtiest open secret’. In July 2018, high-end British fashion brand Burberry hit the headlines. It had burned unsold clothes, accessories, and perfume of an estimated worth of £28.6m to protect its brand. The story broke only two months after the brand announced it was a core signatory to Making Fashion Circular, an initiative aiming to design waste out of fashion and keep resources in circulation. As journalist Lucy Siegle points out to the contrary, ‘When you cremate clothes, that’s obviously not going to happen. The materials are lost. It’s the antithesis of the circular economy.’ The Burberry expose, moreover, is not an exceptional, one-off event, but is more routine within the fashion industry. Swedish fashion retailer H&M, for example, has also stood accused of burning 12 tonnes of unsold garments per year despite its ongoing sustainability efforts to close the loop in fashion. While these high profile cases relate to the intentional burning of ‘dead stock’ over intellectual property and brand image concerns, our newly published article explores the overlooked significance and meaning of preconsumer waste in the form of off-cuts and labels, which have not dissimilar risks for fashion brands if identified and publicised in the public realm.
Our concern is that a further excess of preconsumer garment waste will be amassed through the cancellation of orders linked to the pandemic. With the Cambodian construction sector slowed by the pandemic, the demand for bricks may contract, and their prices likely squeezed. The temptation of brick kiln owners looking to maintain their profit margins could rely partly or in full on garment waste to lower fuel costs. Excess garment waste may be headed for Cambodian brick kilns, with toxic consequences for its workers and the environment.
Toxic fashion
Offcuts, even before the COVID-19 crisis, were readily available and are a cheaper and less environmentally regulated alternative to using forest wood as kiln fuel. Hundreds of brand labels could be found amongst the scrap fabric at our case study kiln factories. Those identified included British (Marks and Spencer; George at Asda), Spanish (Pull&Bear) and US-run companies (J Crew; Walmart; Old Navy). Returning to the kiln site for the final visit in February 2019, the academic researchers found different labels this time, but interviewed a family who were hanging out their clothes to dry with M&S hangers. We reported our findings to the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, who contacted the brands. All the brands’ replies can be found here, except Old Navy who did not respond.
Labels found at a Cambodian brick kiln (Thomas Cristofoletti/Ruom. Copyright©2018 Royal Holloway, University of London)
With no let-up in the use of garment waste across 2018 and into 2019, workers consistently felt that the switch from wood to garment waste had adverse impacts. The garment burning, often for several weeks at a time, had a profound influence on residents’ health. Brick workers and their families have no protection. Even men who stoke the fire typically do so without a mask, and others try and make do with only cloth over their mouth and eyes.
Stoking the fire with preconsumer garment waste (Thomas Cristofoletti/Ruom. Copyright©2018 Royal Holloway, University of London)
The 2018 ‘State of Global Air’ report found that in India, which has a ‘brick belt’ across the central regions of the country, smoke emerging from kilns is the sixth-highest cause of respiratory-related deaths in the country. An estimated 24,100 deaths were caused in India by the pollution caused by brick production.
No similar analysis exists vis-à-vis the Cambodian brick industry, however palpable health impacts upon kiln workers were reported in interviews. Clothing commonly contains toxic chemicals including chlorine bleach, formaldehyde, and ammonia. Heavy metals, PVC, and resins are also commonly involved in dyeing and printing processes. The academic researchers inspected and photographed many of the labels on the brick kiln sites. Typically, the clothing was a mix of cotton with elastane and/or polyester. Human-made materials, such as polyester, make up the vast majority of clothing made and discarded globally.
The oily ooze of burning garment waste (Thomas Cristofoletti/Ruom. Copyright©2018 Royal Holloway, University of London)
The commonplace noting of respiratory issues in our research speaks to the degradation of peoples’ lungs in the brick-making sector. The particulate analysis we did when the garments were being burned showed consistent readings for PM2.5 and PM10 of 999.9 micrograms per cubic meter of air (ug/m3), the maximum readings possible on our sensors, and at a level classed as hazardous. PM2.5 poses considerable health risks as fine particles can get deep into human lungs and even the bloodstream, with exposure affecting both respiratory and circulatory systems. Coarse particles (PM10) are known to irritate a person's eyes, nose, and throat.
Interviews we conducted brought home how workers’ ‘choice’ to work in the kiln had been conditioned by a lack of alternative livelihoods given joblessness and poverty in the villages from which the workers originated. Other workers expressed fear, and suggested that they dared not complain about the garment burning given their reliance on, and debt to, the brick kiln owner. Workers were distressed, and were said to be miserable, about the ‘black air flying around’, sucked into their noses, and which meant they needed to brush their beds before going to sleep. According to several workers who had tried to raise the problem with the brick kiln owner, they had failed to listen or act, despite knowing of these negative effects.
Dumped
The garment dump from the air (Thomas Cristofoletti/Ruom. Copyright©2018 Royal Holloway, University of London)
Garment waste is sourced by kiln-owners via intermediary systems of waste management. Our research found that preconsumer waste from garment factories is transported primarily to a vast privately-owned dump site on the 50 trucks of an independent sub-contractor who exclusively sources and collects scraps from the garment factories located in Phnom Penh’s industrial complexes.
Whilst the dump had limited offerings, it afforded materials that allowed workers to create economic value, though at a problematically low level. The majority of pickers interviewed were in their forties and fifties, and several had daughters working in the nearby garment factories. They had come to work on the dump after accruing microfinance loan debts. As at the brick kilns, then, work here is linked to debt, though crucially with greater freedoms than debt bondage allows. Dump workers are independent, are free to come and go as they choose, and tend not borrow money from the dump owner.
Several workers reported that the rainy season made picking difficult and the income that could be derived was inconsistent as a result. One worker complained that she regularly needed to go to hospital because of bacterial infections she contracted on the pathogen-heavy dump. While the dump was used almost exclusively for garment waste, areas of organic material were scattered around, which the foreman explained came from beer factories. Animals also roamed freely around the site.
Picking on the garment dump (Thomas Cristofoletti/Ruom. Copyright©2018 Royal Holloway, University of London)
Fainting was described as a regular occurrence by the dump’s workers, with the heat and lack of food taking its toll. Spontaneous fires were also a problem, arising due to the extreme heat beating down on the garments and the emission of gases. Despite the precarious nature of the work and the income it generated, and the harmful material conditions of the dump, picking over the waste provided a means of just about surviving for the workers we met.
Preconsumer waste and fashion brand responsibility in pandemic times
Widespread academic and policy concern with postconsumer garment disposal needs to be matched by research on preconsumer waste, which up until now has been unduly neglected. A corrective emphasis on preconsumer waste also reorients attention to networks of waste management within the Global South, linked to areas of mass garment production for consumers in the Global North. As it stands the governance of such networks is weak, in part because the geographies of preconsumer discardscapes are ‘patchy’. They sits uneasily with linear models of commodity chains and responsibility. Fashion brands use this patchy geography as they look to externalise this waste and to resist connection to, for example, families locked into debt-bonded labour in Cambodian brick kilns. Communications about where garment waste, including materialisations of their brand labelling, is travelling hence stay unanswered, as part of an apparent attempt to bound what parts of the production and discard networks are their concern. To the detriment of brick kiln workers and the environment at large, it is more important than ever in pandemic times that the production and disposal of preconsumer waste is tackled.