Minimalism is Not Always an Ethical Choice
If you’re minimalist, you may be supporting slave labor and harming the environment
“It is in exchanging the gifts of the earth that you shall find abundance and be satisfied.
Yet unless the exchange be in love and kindly justice, it will but lead some to greed and others to hunger.”
— The Prophet, Gibran Khalil Gibran
If you’ve decided to be a Minimalist, or at least to use the methods of minimalism, then you’ve cozied up to the idea of giving up the hunt for a large collection of possessions, and believe it will improve your life. You are decluttering your life of the things that do not align with your values and your goals. You might even say that you are doing it for your happiness.
So you’ve chosen to reduce your consumption, for one reason or another. Breaking away from the social norm of a life chasing after fame, fortune, and possessions. You’ve already made the first step into a world where experiences and people are far more valued. You’ve chosen to look at things for their intrinsic value: for their merits, instead of their assigned monetary value. Now more than ever you are thinking critically about every item you own, and every purchase you will be making in the future.
Have you ever stopped to consider where your objects are coming from? Sure, you know what you are using each item for and how it makes you feel, but have you considered how it was made? In a world built on the extraction of monetary value out of every last object and experience, it is probably not surprising that a good deal of your possessions were produced at the cost of someone else’s well-being somewhere along the commodity chain. Whether it’s the over-extraction of natural resources, unsafe or unhygienic working conditions for those who manufacture the products, or even the product of conflict or slave-labor, it is likely that you own many things, even in your minimalist home, that are tainted with costs that weigh heavily on those exploited through the commodity chain. To exemplify this, let’s take a look at a couple specific stages of one particular commodity chain: clothing.
Working Conditions
The working conditions of those who pick our food and sew and package our clothes is frequently poorly understood, and often not a priority for consumers. Studies have even shown that in the face of other qualities such as “organic,” qualities such as “produced in a safe working environment” or “fair trade” are often at the bottom of the list. People will even use the fact that something is organic as an excuse to not care about other ethical aspects of a product’s manufacturing¹, despite organic having very little to do with ethical standards.
Perhaps unsurprising to the average reader of newspapers, or the aficionado of exposé documentaries, the clothing industry is rife with unfair and unsafe working conditions. Retailers and brands, especially over the past few decades, have been heavily consolidated through the power of mergers and acquisitions, centralizing their power. The suppliers who make these lead firms’ products however are the opposite: hundreds of thousands of small factories spread throughout a great deal of what many would call “developing” countries. This dynamic is called an “oligopsony,” a situation in which only a few buyers exist for a product. This means that factories have to drive down their prices and meet the specifications of those lead firms in order to have any hopes of staying in business.
In Bangladesh, we see a macrocosm of the conditions that encourage and produce unsafe and unfair working conditions. 76.33% of Bangladesh’s exports, and 13.64% of the country’s GDP are made up of the production of garments for lead firms. The owners of factories are beholden to the cost margins and production timelines that lead firms such as Wal-Mart or H&M give them. The firms expect items to be ready by a specific date, and they will not pay more than a set amount up front.
These requirements drive factory owners to pay their factory workers as little as possible, but also to seek out as inexpensive housing for their business as possible as well. This leads to underpaid and understaffed factories that have subpar working conditions. These factories are often housed in facilities that are unprepared to deal with the heat of Bangladesh’s subtropical climate, have severe safety hazards such as exposed wires, and are in general just too small and too crowded to be safe.²
In addition, factories are prey to the world’s current rate of “fast fashion.” As the seasons for clothing trends shorten, the time frame from design to retail store must also shorten drastically. This means that production cycles are horribly irregular, and so some weeks there is barely any work while other weeks the understaffed factories can have workers working 70 hours a week and still not meet the quantity deadlines set by the firms.
The workers at these “sweatshops” have the legal right to form a union, however the government does not actively support or protect the creation of such organizations, nor do any factory owners tolerate such unions, and quickly attempt to quash them. This lack of ability to withhold labor collectively without fear of termination prevents the workers from being able to campaign for better wages, benefits and working conditions.
Currently, the average pay for a factory worker in Bangladesh is USD 0.392 an hour (roughly USD 62.40 a month at 40 hours a week), which is severely below the simple cost of rent and utilities, which according to numbeo.com are around USD 128 and USD 41 a month respectively.³ Even during the heights of production cycles for clothing the hours worked by employees, i.e. 70 hours, does not amount to even the average for rent.
Forced Labor
On a similar note, it should come as unsurprising that what we purchase also comes with the risk of being produced under circumstances in which the person has no choice but to comply and/or is not compensated for their work. This we can call forced labor, or if you prefer, slave labor. But does forced labor really exist in 2020? Signs point to yes, unfortunately.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimate that 21 million people are facing some form of forced labor, modern slavery, and/or human trafficking. The most significant of these numbers are in the Asia Pacific region, where some 11.7 million people find themselves without choice. It is estimated that forced labor also generates some 150 billion dollars USD in annual profits the world over.⁴ While the scope of this problem encompasses the whole world, let us focus on one issue in particular: the cotton industry in Uzbekistan, which just so happens to be a source used by Bangladesh for its clothing materials.
Uzbekistan is the second largest producer of cotton in the world, shipping most of its cotton to manufacturers in China, Bangladesh, Korea and Russia for processing into garments and other products. There’s a problem however with this rate of production. Since their separation from the Soviet Union on August 31st, 1991, they have lost much of the technological infrastructure that allowed them to be such a large producer of cotton (which was the lot in life cast upon them by the Soviets to begin with). Under Soviet control, some two thirds of the cotton harvested in Uzbekistan was harvested by machines. When the Soviets left, so did their machines, and that number dropped dramatically to only one tenth of cotton being harvested by machines.
What is a country to do when it needs to pick the cotton before the rainy season so that they can keep their GDP from suffering? Slave labor was the answer the Uzbek government decided was the best option. The cotton industry is controlled by the Uzbek government, and so it stood to reason that compelling civil workers, especially teachers, as well as school children into picking cotton would be quite easy. In 2000, UNICEF reported some 22.6% of Uzbek children aged 5 to 14 (in the tens of thousands) worked at least part-time in cotton harvesting, while the less conservative reports of the Environmental Justice Foundation reported around 200,000 children working in cotton-growing regions each year.⁵
Headmasters at schools in the cotton harvesting regions were told that each student and teacher had a quota to make in the field, and that there would be repercussions for failing to meet these quotas. For teachers the punitive measures for refusal to do the work translated into job loss, the slashing of benefits, or potentially imprisonment. For students, the threats for failing to meet quotas came in the forms of detention or lowered grades, and flat-out refusal to work or fleeing from the farms could result in their expulsion. Whether teacher or student though, there was no monetary compensation for the work in the fields.
But is this practice still occurring today? While many brands in the world such as Tesco and H&M have refused to purchase cotton harvested in Uzbekistan, there has been little tangible data that proves that this practice has stopped. In 2012, the Prime Minister of Uzbekistan, Shavkat Mirziyayev, who is now the President of Uzbekistan, issued a decree that banned child labor in cotton fields. In March of 2020, the law removed government-set quotas, but research has shown that local officials are frequently at talks with purchasers of cotton where private contracts with farmers are discussed and expected quantities of product delineated, strongly mirroring the federal actions of the past, just on a local scale. Uzbek Forum, an international nongovernmental organization has also found evidence in official government documents that the mobilization of forced labor among civil servants is still occurring.⁶ So signs are looking pretty dim on this front.
Environmental Degradation
To round out this examination of the commodity chain that is the source of a sizable amount of the world’s clothing, let us look at the source of water for the cotton that Uzbekistan grows: the Aral Sea Basin. The Aral Sea was once the fourth largest lake in the world with 68,000 km² of surface area prior to 1960, but large scale irrigation initiatives have reduced the sea to merely 10% (6,800 km²) of its original size.⁷ The irrigation project is considered by many to be one of the worst ecological disasters in history.
Irrigation of the Aral Sea Basin on a large scale began in the 1960s as an initiative by the USSR to set up an economic sector in Central Asia that would provide the USSR with the cotton and other farming products they desperately needed that preferred warmer climates. This changed the economic landscape of the Aral Sea Basin from one of fish exporting and river-based food agriculture with minimal irrigation to one of heavily irrigated cash crop agriculture and no fishing industry to speak of.
The basin contains regions of 7 countries including Uzbekistan, and irrigation from the basin’s source rivers accounts for around 84–90% of the water usage in the region. In 2000, Uzbekistan accounted for 51.7% of the land irrigated using the Aral Sea Basin at 43,090 km² of farmland (which is 2.48 times more irrigated land than the next country in the region, Turkmenistan). While amount of water being irrigated is steadily increasing as more and more farmland is being used, the amount of water in the Aral Sea is decreasing more than expected. Calculations estimate that the sea’s volume without any irrigation should be around 1000 km³/a, and with irrigation it should be around 450 km³/a, but the actual reported volume of the sea is only around 100km³/a.⁸ This lower than predicted volume is largely attributed to increased evaporation due to the shrinking volume and increasing salinity of the remaining water as well as other forms of loss to the water while on its way from source rivers.⁹ As the sea continues to shrink, the rate will only increase as a lower volume and surface area and higher salinity means easier and faster evaporation.
There are so many consequences of this desiccation that it’s baffling. Biodiversity in and around the sea has been almost obliterated: the amount of macroinvertebrate species has shrunk from over 200 to less than 30, the amount of land animals from 180 to just a few dozen, and from 24 fish species to none whatsoever. There were attempts to preserve the fishing industry of the Aral Sea by introducing fish that could handle the increasing salinity of the water (the major cause of the local extinction of species) but all this did was hasten the demise of the local fish.⁹ Although, due to large scale efforts, the North Aral Sea has successfully been restored enough to support fish such as sea bream and flounder these efforts did not bear fruit until around 2018.¹⁰
The desiccation has left behind a dried up seabed that is covered in salt, making it completely unfarmable. Fertilization efforts in the region have also started to exhaust the soil and result in pollution downstream that has worsened the outlooks for the sea. Dust storms and salt storms have also increased greatly in size and frequency (around 10 a year, and being hundreds of kilometers wide), the salt is being spread around the region by these storms spreading the desiccation. It is estimated that some 100,000 inhabitants have been displaced by the drying of the sea, and that more than 5 million people’s health has been adversely affected in the region. Medical conditions such as anemia, brucellosis, bronchial asthma, typhoid, and tuberculosis have spiked dramatically. Some, such as typhoid, are eight times more prevalent than the national average of the countries involved for those in the basin, particularly near where the sea once was.
What You Can Do About It
You may be asking yourself just that question. Yes, it’s horrible. Yes, we should feel bad for the people affected by this commodity chain, but what can we do? What should I do? I humbly suggest that you make your purchases conscientiously. When buying products new, do your research into the company selling the product. What sort of causes do they devote themselves to? Do they mention attempts to improve living standards for their workers? You should also ask yourself similar questions about your desire for the product: is that new computer worth the types of labor that went into harvesting the resources for it and assembling it? Better yet, you should ask yourself, “do I really need to buy it new when there are plenty of second hand stores that can help reduce the demand for such colossal extraction efforts and production regimes
Ultimately, only you can decide what is important to you. I do also concede that it is impossible to be 100% ethical in any purchase, even if a product is made “ethically”: sustainably sourced, good working conditions, etc, the machines used to extract or manufacture the product likely aren’t. It’s unrealistic in our current world system to commit to being 100% ethical in our purchases.
So here’s my proposition: do the best you can. One of the most effective ways to change the world is to vote with your money. If you don’t approve of the way something is made: don’t buy it. Be an active member of your society: by communicating with others the problems with our economic systems, we can open a dialogue socially, economically, and politically about what can be done, and how we should proceed.
Another caveat: we are bound by what we can afford. If you are among the minimalists who are doing it out of economic necessity (involuntary simplicity some call it), then you are part of the economic system that we are talking about that puts certain people at a disadvantage, and to force you to bear the burden would be unjust. If you can’t afford the sustainably sourced shampoo with no plastic container, then you shouldn’t beat yourself up over it. You should instead turn to corporations and to your government and find ways to demand or encourage these products to be more accessible. But, admittedly even civic engagement can only be realistic for those with the time to dedicate to it.
I firmly believe that voluntary simplicity is the perfect battlefield for ethical purchases to be made, as the conscientiousness is already there. You already think about what products you actually need anyways, so why not do the extra leg work that would help support others to have the means by which they can attain their own sense of stability, happiness, and safety?
Citations:
- Engel, Jannis; Szech, Nora. A little good is good enough: Ethical consumption, cheap excuses, and moral self-licensing. PLoS ONE. 1/15/2020, Vol. 15 Issue 1, p1–19. 19p.
- Anner, Mark. Squeezing workers’ rights in global supply chains: purchasing practices in the Bangladesh garment export sector in comparative perspective. Review of International Political Economy. Apr2020, Vol. 27 Issue 2, p320–347. 28p.
- Numbeo. Cost of Living in Bangladesh. Numbeo.com. Accessed 10/25/2020 https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_result.jsp?country=Bangladesh&displayCurrency=USD
- Statistics on forced labour, modern slavery and human trafficking. The International Labour Organization. 2012. Accessed through ilo.org 10.29.20
- Bhat, Bilal A. Forced Labor of Children in Uzbekistan’s Cotton Industry. International Journal on World Peace. Dec 2013, Vol. 30 Issue 4, p61–85. 25p.
- Ramachandra, Komala. Forced Labor Persists in Uzbekistan’s Cotton Fields: Report Highlights Shortcomings in Recruitment Practices and Accountability. Human Rights Watch. June 25, 2020 9:28 AM EDT. accessed through hrw.org 10.29.2020
- Wikipedia. Aral Sea. Accessed Nov. 27 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea
- Aus der Beek, T; Voß, F.; Flörke, M. Modelling the impact of Global Change on the hydrological system of the Aral Sea Basin. Physics & Chemistry of the Earth — Parts A/B/C. Dec 2011, Vol. 36 Issue 13, p684–695. 12p.
- The Aral Sea Crisis. Columbia University. Accessed Nov. 27 2020. http://www.columbia.edu/~tmt2120/environmental%20impacts.htm
- Chen, Dene-Hern. Once Written Off for Dead, the Aral Sea Is Now Full of Life. National Geographic. Mar16. 2018. Accessed nov. 27 2020 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/03/north-aral-sea-restoration-fish-kazakhstan/#close
