Translator: Michele Gianella Reviewer: Robert Tucker
I am here to tell you the story of this shirt.
An apparently ordinary,
innocent t-shirt.
It could also be the story of any garment
we casually buy almost any day.
But we have in our pockets
a very powerful tool, our money,
and I will show you how our purchasing choices
can shape the world we wish for.
So let's talk about this t-shirt;
I picked up a red one in honor of the Ted Talks.
The first question is, what is it made of?
It's made of cotton.
We think of cotton as a natural,
soft and breathable material,
so it must be a good choice for us
and for the environment too.
But we have to ask ourselves, Where does this cotton come from?
Cotton is mostly grown in the Earth's southerly regions,
more precisely in South East Asia,
in India, South America and Africa.
What happens there?
The people who grow and take care of the crops
are very poorly protected, We can see these two poor farmers
spraying each other with pesticide.
They are not equipped at all for this activity,
so they don't just spray a load of pesticide onto the plants.
Imagine that 25% of all pesticides used every year in agriculture
is used on cotton crops,
so a hell of a lot.
But also these pesticides,
besides hurting the people who work on the crops,
stay in the cotton's fibers and therefore in this t-shirt.
Believe it or not, this t-shirt is still full of pesticides.
Plus, as the previous speaker eloquently showed,
these pesticides kill bees,
and we know how devastating that is.
And I will tell you more,
No more than two weeks ago,
I read in an Italian newspaper
that there's an even bigger problem related to the bees.
In India, transgenic cotton, Bt cotton,
has started to be sold by Monsanto.
But there's a slight problem with this cotton,
It has to be pollinated by hand.
So, what happens then?
Young girls, 9 to 11 year olds, are sold
by very poor families in Uttar Pradesh, for example,
taken away from their family, taken out of school
and kept in semi-slavery
to do this awful pollination by hand work.
They have to get up very early in the morning,
because the male flower opens before 5,30 in the morning.
So this bee issue also brings about slavery.
And then this beautiful red t-shirt obviously has been dyed.
Look where the dye ends up,
In absence of adequate filters, it ends up in the watercourses.
And this happens frequently, in the places
where our t-shirts are produced.
There are no filters; the effluent of these companies is not treated,
and ends up in the rivers and in the sea.
So, what's the result of this?
All the fish,
all the plants, all the creatures in the rivers and the sea
are poisoned - but not only poisoned.
European and American laws
mandate that items
sold in our stores
are manufactured with heavy-metal-free, non-azo dyes.
Greenpeace, having its doubts, sent out some volunteers,
who, without disclosing who sent them, acquired garments
from the usual suspects, H&M, Zara, Benetton,
and also a bit higher up, from the designers,
Dolce and Gabbana and so on.
Having bought the clothes, they brought them to the lab,
did tests and discovered
that none of these clothes met the required standards.
They were all full of heavy metals.
Greenpeace therefore launched the Detox Campaign stating,
Not only do these horrible dyes pollute water
and endanger the health of the workers,
but they are also a danger to those who wear them,
causing skin allergies, and among others there are studies
that suggest that they have a devastating effect on our DNA.
So, who makes these t-shirts?
How much do workers earn?
While we are all happy because we only paid $14
for the t-shirt, and think we found a bargain;
the person who sewed this t-shirt gets only 12 cents.
12 cents can't buy much
of what one needs to survive.
Let's then talk about the living wage.
What does it mean?
To live a decent life, people must be able to buy enough to eat,
pay the rent, provide for healthcare,
educate their children,
buy clothes to wear,
have transport to get about and to get to work each day,
and maybe even save some money too.
We say that a living wage is a human right.
But how does the world go on?
Not quite according to that idea.
The living wage in Bangladesh, for example,
should be 259 eurosper month
to meet all those basic needs.
But the workers only get 28.60 euros.
That's a huge shortfall!
Bangladesh is the most outrageous case,
but Cambodia and Sri Lanka don't do much better.
In India and China, of which we speak so badly,
it's actually slightly less bad.
So there isn't fair pay for the labor,
people get hungry
and can't live a decent life.
What about safety, then?
You have probably heard about the tragedy
that happened in Bangladesh on 24th April 2013.
Since then, the 24th April has become Fashion Revolution Day,
when we're all asked
to wear our clothes with the label on the outside
asking, 'Who made our clothes?'
What happened there?
This is a dilapidated building in Dhaka
where the workers were locked in.
'Locked in'. What does that mean?
There were iron bars on the windows
and the gate was chained and padlocked
because the guard would sometimes go for a coffee
or something to eat - and locked the workers in.
These facts were filmed and confirmed by the BBC
and in Italy by Milena Gabanelli.
This particular building had cracks in the walls
and it had already been condemned, and it came down
taking with it the lives of 1,121 people
making our cheap clothes.
So we might say this t-shirt is made from 60% cotton,
20% sweat and 20% blood.
People are understandably getting really angry,
and we don't need any more social unrest,
demonstrations, people saying out loud,
'That's enough. We can't go on like this!'
And it's happening all over the world.
And then there's the child exploitation.
We know that in many countries families are so poor that they need
their children to work to survive,
but if the rights of adults aren't protected,
how can children's possibly be?
Bolivians actually started a children's workers union
to protect the rights of child workers.
And then on top of all this,
we buy many, many of these cheap products,
and after a short while
we get tired of them
and we chuck them out, creating mountains of textile waste
that's filling up the world's landfill sites.
But I'm not here to be a Jonah,
or to tell you what you've probably already heard or read.
I'm here to tell you that there is an alternative,
the key to which you already have,
as I said before, in your pocket,
Fair Trade, an equitable and sustainable way of doing business.
Fortunately, about 10 years ago,
after a life spent doing 'regular' fashion
with runway shows and all, I found myself
around a table discussing the length of a skirt for 2 hours,
and I said to myself, I can't do this anymore,
I need to do something that I believe in,
something that'll help make this world a better place,
improve working conditions and the environment.
So, I found Fair Trade.
What is Fair Trade?
It is an international organization, the World Fair Trade Organization,
that has a set of standards.
Here are some of the standards, transparency and accountability;
payment of a fair price - what we were saying about a living wage;
no child labor; respect for the environment.
All standards that we take for granted
but in reality aren't granted,
since, as we saw, in those countries
exploitation and impossible conditions
are the order of the day.
So the World Fair Trade Organization
certifies organizations
that guarantee these working conditions,
and make sure, for example,
that effluents are filtered before re-entering the environment.
Here I am in Ecuador with some of the artisans I work with
about 13,000 feet up in a place called Salinas,
a very successful example of a fair trade co-operative.
It is a small village at which a priest from Venice
arrived 40 years ago and never left.
He has created a sustainable economy
where for example these women knit for me,
or better, for me as creative director
of the fashion brand Auteurs Du Monde, Authors of the World,
our artisans therefore,
making Altromercato products.
We work with all these organizations where a fair price is paid,
where workers have medical insurance,
get medical assistance, work in healthy environments.
Here are some other pieces from the collection.
This a cotton cardigan made by a cooperative
in Kathmandu in Nepal.
It's called KTS, Kumbeshwar Technical School.
I love them particularly because they're an example of social entrepreneurship.
Which means that they are indeed entrepreneurs,
but that they invest part of their profits back into the community
and so provide education
for street children aged 3 to 11,
who wouldn't otherwise, be able to go to school,
but can now get an education through this initiative of KTS.
I think in this social entrepreneurship may be the formula
to save this country from the crazy world it's immersed in,
Do business, pay a fair price,
take care of your workers
and reinvest some of the profits back into the community
making it a better place for everyone.
Then you can choose organic cotton.
Organic cotton is free of pesticides,
using integrated pest management principles.
I went to visit a wonderful place called Sekem in Egypt
where they apply biodynamic agriculture.
To fight pests, for example,
they use yellow paper cones
with a sticky, fragrant resin inside.
Insects are attracted
and once they get in
they remain there.
So the soil stays fertile,
you can rotate the crops,
the land does not turn to desert
and the cotton is organic,
biodynamic in this case,
with none of the horrible features we talked about before.
And then you can dye cotton and other fibers with plants;
the threads of the tapestries we admire in museums
and in the beautiful villas on Lake Como,
were dyed hundreds of years ago,
yet they're still vibrant and beautiful,
so there still is a way to do it.
This is an Ethiopian gentleman I work with
in a cooperative called Sabahar,
where they dye everything with plants, with natural colours.
If you don't have natural dyes, there are azo-free colours,
chemical dyes with no heavy metals,
dyes that don't pollute the watercourses,
don't harm the workers or the people who wear the clothes.
These are more designs
I did for Spring/Summer 2014.
I'm committed to creating a style that is beautiful,
interesting and that you want to wear,
but also one that's fair and sustainable.
These two garments were made in India.
This gave me the chance and privilege
to build a reputation in the field,
so I have become a reference point for all
the fair and sustainable labels in Italy and the world.
Famous brands like Moschino, for example,
who asked me to improve their
CSR (corporate social responsibility) profile.
Together we produced beautiful crochet garments in Kenya,
with these nuns, called the Crochet Sisters.
Then Pinko came to me to design a line of bags,
and I suggested making them in Ethiopia.
I took inspiration
from Omo river valley body painters,
from whom the idea for these graphic prints came.
The bags were all produced in a small factory in Addis Ababa.
Ultimately 45,000 bags were produced,
with a wonderful impact on the whole area with work for all.
Here in Como I know there are many important businessmen,
some of whom I met last night,
so if they don't quite want to go about saving the world,
they should consider a growing sector of the population, the millennials.
Millennials are the kids born between 1980 and 2000,
they'll be 46% of the working force in America 10 years from now.
What do millennials want?
Millennials want quality of life, and they prefer companies
with a high social responsibility profile,
that is life beyond work.
They want quality of life and reward the companies that behave,
and being always online they know who does what.
So, and this is the main message of my talk,
every time we spend our money
we cast a vote for the type of world we want.
We have the solution in our pocket
and we must be aware of it every time we spend money.
Plus, as my sweatshirt - designed for Oxfam,
then sold at Coin stores - says,
'It always seems impossible, until it's done',
which is a statement that was made
by Nelson Mandela.
Thank you!
(Applause)