You Might Think Twice Before Buying Those New Jeans

to what you're buying and how it's made. My colleague Shared in Presso is an investigative reporter for Bloomberg. She set out to find where the cotton enclosed from one of the world's biggest brands really comes from. And she's with me now, Shared And, thanks so much for being here. Hi, thank you. You've written a big investigation of a large retailer called she And. Can you tell us about this company? So? She And is based in China. It is the largest

online only retailer in the world. It's valuation earlier this year became greater than H and M and Zara combined. So it's one of the most valuable startups in the entire world, and it doesn't really have Althose had a couple of pop up stores, it doesn't really have that kind of brick and mortar you walk into a store and make purchases. You go exclusively online really to buy she and products, and they don't really have to rely

on the model of selling in retail stores. They can just appeal to people through social media, TikTok everywhere like that, and that's how people through the whole social media phenomenon have gotten to know the company, especially in America. So with a fast fashion company, the clothes are changing all the time and they're relatively inexpensive, so you can just buy them and buy them and buy them without doing

too much thinking. That's right. It is kind of the leader now in what's called fast fashion, where they turn out a lot of fun, fast designs that kind of pop out quickly and also fade very quickly. They're not necessarily very well made. They fade quickly or fall apart quickly, but that's okay because they're not in fashion for very long. They just are kind of, you know, flash in the pan, and then they're sort of meant to be disposable in

a way. And this company has risen very quickly to become super popular, and they sell clothes all around the world. So their global business is about five billion dollars total. About a third of that eight billion dollars a year is estimated to be in the United States. Now, why did you take a look at this company? What interested you about them? So for a long time? Because she

is from China operates in China. They have been accused of using labor from the western region of China called shin Jang, And this would be a big deal because China's harsh treatment of millions of weaker Muslims who live in Jinjiang has been all over the news. The United States and other Western countries have accused China of repressing and imprisoning leaguers and other ethnic minorities, and they also accused them of carrying out a policy of forced labor,

including harvesting cotton. China should say strongly denies this now because roughly of China's cotton comes from that region, any retailer that is using cotton from China is essentially thought to be using the product of forced labor. And in fact, the US government passed a law last year. It was a regulation became a law this year, basically banning all products from Shinjang. President Biden has passed a new law banning goods from China's in Young Region unless companies can

prove they aren't made with spots labor. China's and ounced retaliate wory sanctions against US officials and a Canadian lawmaker as the row over alleged human rights abuses in Jinjiang escalates the sanction individual. But the accusation against she and is of course, because there is so much of Chinese cotton supply comes from Shinjang. It has to be from there, but no one was ever able to prove it before.

So since the law was passed, I decided, well, maybe there's a way to test it and find out for sure. How did you go about doing that? I originally wanted to try to find a laboratory that would do this kind of testing, and I tried one big name in the industry is based in the UK. I tried them first.

They're called Rattine. I contacted or attain. At first they seemed receptive to doing the test, and then after a little while they came back to me, and they said, oh, you know what, never mind, we are now under contract with she and and it would be a conflict of interest now to test it, are you? So then it took me a little while longer. I found another testing

lab in Germany. That lab said we can test it for you if you can obtain a sample of cotton from Shinjang, we can do a matching test whether it matches or not. And once that company agreed to do the testing for us, I went online, ordered some Shin products, obtain a sample of cotton from Shinjang, and sent both of those to the laboratory in Germany. And where did you find? The way that the lab works is they test the ratios of three elements. They test carbon, oxygen,

and hydrogen. The ratios of those isotopes in the cotton fibers can tell you where the cotton was grown. So it's unlike DNA testing. DNA testing will tell you the origin for example someone's you know, DNA will tell them that I have European ancestry, for example, but it wouldn't tell you that I grew up in America. So cotton ice tip testing does tell you where the cotton grew up.

Because it's measuring the levels of oxygen, for example, that can tell you the altitude at which the cotton was grown, or for example, the amount of water that was used, the fertilizer that was in the soil, contents of the soil as well. So when you do that kind of ratio testing, you get something that's like a fingerprint. So a fingerprint has like a seven point match or nine point match somebody like that. You can do the same thing with these ice tip ratios in the cotton fibers.

And so you sent it off. They gave you this lab test, and the lab test said the she and cotton matched the Shinjang cotton within a range that tells us that it does come from Shinjang. And now is that true in each of the pieces of clothing that you sent the lab to be tested. So I originally sent six different garments over the course of a couple of months earlier this year. It found that one of the items that I had sent turned out not to be cotton. After all I thought it was. It was

a T shirt. It looked like cotton. I should have checked it more carefully before sending it. Another one was more of a blend. It had cotton mixed with something else and couldn't be determined. So four out of the six were definitely within the range of Shinjen cotton. So in addition to testing to get a fingerprint to match to the sample, they can also match it to other

samples that they have from other countries. So, for example, they have a fingerprint already from cotton that comes from Egypt, and from the United States, and from Turkey and Africa and other places they grow cotton. And what they determined is with nine accuracy that cotton definitely doesn't come from any other of those places, and it even does not come from another region of China called Shandong, where they also grew cotton. So it's it really does. All of

the evidence points to Snjang as the origin. You said within arrange. What does arrange mean. It's a little bit like an opinion poll where there's a plus or minus one or two percent margin of error. But it is virtually certain that this cotton comes from Shinjang. My conversation with shared In Prasso continues after the break. Shared In you found through your testing that this cotton almost certainly came from Shinjang. What did she in the company say

when you brought them this evidence? So she and gave us a statement in which they didn't deny that their cotton comes from Shinjang, And then they also said that they have these audits of their supply liars and they ensure that all of their suppliers adhere to international standards

of labor. So the interesting thing about that is that because the Chinese government doesn't consider that their work programs that they are essentially forcing people from Shenjang to participate in the Chinese government says that does not constitute force labor. Then therefore there's no way that their suppliers could be

in violation of international labor standards. She and is in a different position because if they admit that their cotton comes from Shinjang, they obviously risk a consumer bath clash. If they deny that any of it comes from Sinjang, they risk angering the Chinese government. And in previous instances, a group of concerned nationalists who were supported by the Chinese government organized a boycott of H and M in China because H and M said that they were no

longer going to use cotton from Sinjang, for example. So she AND is kind of between a rock and her place. But she AND didn't say that the cotton came from some place else. No, she didn't deny that the cotton comes from Shinjang. Now she AND is a big company, and they're making a lot of clothing, but they're not the only fast fashion brand or branding general that's using cotton from all around the world. Are there other companies

in a similar position. So, because most of the brick and mortar retailers in the United States chip their clothing in bulk, they are subjected to reporting requirements from U S Customs and Border Protection. So any time a big retailers ships in a container of clothing from China or from anywhere in the world, they have to disclose the origin, the value, the weight, all kinds of things for customs declarations. All these clothing heading into stores physical stories that you

walk into exactly. And so what we've been seeing is a lot of the US retailers have now shifted. If you go into GAP and you look at some of the clothing labels, where does their clothing come from? You see places more and more India, Turkey, Bangladesh, things like that, other places that are now bigger suppliers of clothing than they were in the past. And she and However, because they ship only online, they send you your items that you order in a package of plain white Polly envelope

that doesn't say she in on it. It arrives in the mail like you know, your Amazon package, just like anything else that is not subject to US customs declarations, and therefore it is slipping under the radar. The U S Customs Department does not have enough people too. I think it's it's two point seven million such packages every day arrive into the United States. I guess that raised the question is there anything that the US government or other governments are going to try to do about this?

You mentioned a law earlier about this very thing. Can you describe what it is? So? The Weird Forced Labor Protection Act was passed in December of last year. It went into full force in June. Massachusetts Congressman Jim McGovern says, if you bought something manufactured in a specific region of northwest China, there's a good chance at least part of

it was made with slave labor. It's supposed to be illegal for us to be able to uh utilize products and that were the result of slave labor, and yet the Chinese government is cleverly found ways around it. What we can say, I guess is that because of the way that the Chinese government has been treating the weaker people, essentially, the US government considers that all products, anything that's made from shinjang, anything that comes from Shinjang, is the result

of forced labor. Since the implementation of that law, we have seen over a thousand shipments detained or confiscated or held up in costs ums while the importers are being asked for more information. Those are bulk shipments that are being stopped. However, she and garments can continue to come in because they come in by mail, and they come in at a value that's less than what's required to

trigger reporting. They are still subject to US laws, but the ability for the Customs Department or the U S Mail to police those and to actually stop illegal stuff coming in, which shinjen cotton is now illegal to import into the United States, That means the stuff can still get in because it's coming in under the radar. Is there any movement now in Congress or with the Biden administration to do something about this. Earlier this year, there was a proposal that was passed as part of well

ultimately became the Bipartisan Innovation Act. There was a bill in the House measure of the House version of that Act to try to require all shipments from China to requ our customs declarations, and that would have effectively required she and to be more transparent about what they're shipping to the US, she And and everybody else, including packages that are carried by Amazon. It would trigger a lot of reporting requirements for UPS and FedEx and everybody else.

So that measure was not contained in the Senate version, and the version that ultimately passed didn't carry that provision. But there are some people in Congress who would like to see anything that gets shipped from China to carry a requirement for customs inspection and declaration. It's interesting to note that China requires any items valued at more than seven dollars to be reported to their customs, so they're putting greater scrutiny on goods coming in than the United States.

Is goods from China coming to the US absolutely shared in press. Thanks so much for joining me today. My pleasure. Thank you. So, how can you tell if the clothes that you're buying are coming from a good place? The answer to that question after the break, Aisha Baron Black joins me now from San Francisco. She is the founder and CEO of Remick, which is a company that advocates for fair pay and safe working conditions in the clothing industry.

I should thank so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me, West, I'm delighted to be here. I shall. We've been talking about the origins of cotton that is used in a lot of fast fashion items and how some of it is coming from Xin Jang in China, and what a big problem that is. You look at this all the time, the origins of the materials that are used in clothing. How are you able to find out whether the cotton and other materials used

in clothing is coming from good sources or not? You know, West, this is such an important and complex question, which is

exactly why I found it Remake. You know, after spending two decades working on the inside of the fashion industry, I wanted everyday people to have an understanding of who's making their clothes, where are they coming from what are the human and environmental impacts, And the only way to do it is really to come to independent watchdog organizations like ours that are looking at realms and reams of public information to a short traceability, because when it comes

to the fashion industry, the supply chain is so fragmented. The only thing that your label shows is where the final product was made, you know, not where the zips, not where the buttons, certainly not all the way up

to the cotton supply chain. And so outside of really trying to arm people with an understanding of these impacts, a lot of the work that we do on the back end is regulatory reform and getting governments to really pay attention because it really is hard for us to rely on mark based solutions to address some of these human rights violations, like product coming from forced labor in

the shin Gen region. As I was just speaking to share it in Presso who says that the rise of fast fashion means people want clothes quickly, they want them cheap, and they don't care as much how long they're gonna last. Fast fashion is built on a model of overproduction with the reliance on fossil fuel. Today we are making upwards of a hundred billion units of clothes when we don't even have eight billion people on the planet. And because fashion is made in such a throwaway fashion, most clothes

are thrown away within the first day of production. And so the environmental impacts of this some massive. You know, fashion today emits upwards of four percent of carbon emissions. That's more than the entire economies of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom combined. And one of the things that we look at in our accountabile anty ratings for companies is brand's own professed goals when it comes to science

based targets to address their climate impacts. And because of this overproduction, there are nowhere close to meeting those climate targets. And then there's the human side, right, this is an industry that hires upwards of seventy million people, mostly women of color, that work in humane hours, making poverty wages not enough to live in because of the pace of production. So fashion really is one of the biggest climate and gender justice issues of our time because of this reliance

on ultra cheap, throw away goods. So here I am, I'm a consumer. I have a lot of choices of where I can buy my clothes. I want to do the right thing to make sure that the origins of the cotton and other materials came from a good place, that the people who made the clothes are being well paid and not mistreated. How in the world am I supposed to actually know whether or not my clothes I

can feel good about them? You know, Wes, I have so much empathy for the average person trying to understand what's in their food, what's in their clothes, because this becomes very complex, very quickly. And so this is the founding story of Remake. You know, on our website Remake dot world, you can come and visit and know that as an industry watchdog, we take no money from the industry and we are really here to arm you as

everyday people, to come to our side. Look up your favorite brands and see the human rights records, their environmental impacts. And we also make it very easy for everyday people to write to their favorite brands, to engage with them and say hey, I need you to do better. So on your website you can go and look up brands and you can see actually an accountability score. How are you actually measuring this? So the way that we measure brands and retailers, all your beloved companies, whether Gap or

Levi's a Walmart. We look at first of all, traceability, you know, how much is the brand telling us all the way down to the farm where the product is made. We then look at wages and well being to make sure that the people behind the product are moving towards making a pay that would assure life of dignity. We also take a really hard look at commercial practices because so much of how quickly and how cheaply a brand wants products results in the impacts that we're contending with.

You know, as we were earlier, talking raw materials has become increasingly important because we want fashion to divest from using fossil fuel, but also assuring that when it comes to the cotton supply chain, it's not made with forced labor. We also look at environmental justice concerns. You know, are they looking at responsible transitions? Are they greenwashing? Are they actually reducing their overall climate impacts? And finally we look

at governance. You know, is this a racially diverse makeup at the board level, at a management level, is this company really look across all of these things? Because we think that is the best way to really push for a more sustainable and ethical industry. Okay, so I want to go buy a pair of jeans? How do I go about doing it so that I can feel good about the thing that I ultimately buy. So first I'd say, do you wes do you really need another pair of jeans?

How many pairs of jeans do you have? Have you looked in your closet lately? Perhaps there might be something sitting at the back there that you can bring back out, Because the best thing we can do is really do not consume as much. Then if you say, hey, I should in the pandemic, you know, I perhaps put on a few pounds that really do need to buy another pair of jeans? My next question would be is there a local consignment shop in your neighborhood that you could

visit and you could buy something secondhand? Because again going back to that hundred billion number, we're simply buying too many clothes. We have too many pairs of jeans, So could you buy it secondhand? And then if you come back to say no, absolutely not, I want something that's new, then you can look in our directory. There are smaller companies like a newdy Jeans that is really committed to living wages, to repair, to keeping their clothes in circulation longer.

So you could shop with some of the smaller sustainable brands. So those would be the three steps. Do you really need it? Can you buy it secondhand? If you cannot, can you do a smaller company that's really trying to be a disruptor in this space? I share Baron Blood. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me. Thank you, it's been a pleasure. You can read shared Impresso's story about Sheen on Bloomberg dot com. Thanks for listening to us here at the Big Tech. It's the

daily podcast from Bloomberg and I Heart Radio. For more shows from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app podcast or wherever you listen. Read today's story and subscribe to our daily newsletter at Bloomberg dot com. Slash Big tag, and we'd love to hear from you. Email us with questions or comments to Big Take at Bloomberg dot net. The supervising producer of The Big Take is Vicky Burgalina. Our senior producer is Katherine Fink. Our producer

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