What Happens When It’s Too Hot to Make Fashion?

0:04Hi, this is Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of the Business of Fashion. Welcome to the BOF podcast. It's Friday, December 27th. In recent years, extreme weather events have become commonplace catastrophes. And in a post-colonial fashion system, developing nations often bear the brunt of climate crises. For fashion and its complex global supply chains, which disproportionately depend on resources and labor from these countries near the equator, one of the most urgent issues is extreme heat. In April, the Philippines, Thailand, Bangladesh and India all experienced merciless and sometimes deadly temperatures, which shuttered workplaces and schools.

0:49According to the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Information, Africa, Asia and Europe all logged their warmest Julys since global records began in 1850. To examine what this means for fashion, BOF's chief sustainability correspondent Sarah Kent convened a panel of global experts at BOF Voices 2024. From Royal Holloway at the University of London, Laurie Parsons, who focuses on the garment industry and climate vulnerability. I think what's at stake is the productivity of the industry, the health of the workers, and absolutely, as more and more of these stories come out, the reputation of an industry.

1:29From Sri Lanka, Abhirami Sivaloganathan, country coordinator of Asia Floor Wage Alliance. The freedom of association should need to be ensured, where the members or the factory workers should be able to talk, to be part of the union, to fight for their rights with the factories, management. And from Brazil, Beto Bina, the founder and CEO of supply chain consultancy Far Farm. Thinking as a supply chain, as an ecosystem, you can bring philanthropic capital, you can bring public policies, and you can think internally that's not a job from the buyer or the supplier. That's a job from innovation, from marketing, from sustainability.

2:13Here are Beto, Abirami and Laurie, together with Sarah Kent on the BOF podcast. So I found it really interesting in the session about the state of fashion this morning to hear that sustainability had moved down the agenda for CEOs. Because as Imran just outlined, actually the real tangible impacts of climate change are being felt right now across the value chain. And that's having real life consequences for the industry today. And, Abby, you and I were talking about this in the spring when there was record-breaking heat waves across South Asia. And you were telling me what people were experiencing in the factories and how that was affecting people working in the industry.

2:59What were you hearing? Yeah, so Asia, including Southeast Asia and in South Asia, most of the garment factories are not shaped or not in the infrastructure of those factories are not adequate enough to handle the heat waves, right? So back this spring, specifically in India, 52 Celsius was the heat of temperature in 74 years of history. So during the time, mainly in North India, most of the factories faced significant issues because of the heat waves. Most of the garment workers fell sick but forced to work, forced not to take leaves, and then they had wage issues. Most importantly, they could not even be able to take water break because of the higher heat waves.

3:53So these are the issues that garment workers faced during the high heat waves in India. In Bangladesh, most of the pregnant women, they faced health issues, could not be able to even have normal deliveries just because they asked to work in the high heat stress and they were not even able to take off. So the problem that we heard from South Asia, mainly the garment factories, mainly, you know, like in the industry zones, they failed to accept the fact workers start falling sick just because of the heat waves and then threats, and then acknowledge the fact, you know, like the government workers need a break.

4:35So, I mean, that's what something that we were talking about in the spring. And it's something as basic as just giving people a chance to get up and have water or go to the bathrooms. Yes. That's not catered to. I think, you know, it's interesting because there's often a perspective. These are countries where it always gets hot, but obviously these heat waves are becoming more common and more extreme. Laurie, you've actually been monitoring this. You've been taking temperatures in factories in Cambodia. How hot is it getting? What are we talking about? As you say, it's amazing that this has slipped down the agenda because we've had record-breaking temperatures not just this year, earlier this year, but also the year before throughout Southeast Asia.

5:14And, you know, the agenda who it hasn't slipped down for is the workers themselves who are saying, you know, it's never been this hot before. We've never experienced heat like this before. And that's a consistent thing that's being said. massive health impacts of that. And if we actually measure what's happening in factories, it's really quite serious. I mean, there's no clear maximum temperature for a factory in Cambodia. It's not set, but in Vietnam, it's 32 degrees. Now, during this period... That's legally mandated, what the factory... It's legally mandated in Vietnam, and in some of the countries it isn't.

5:43But if you take that as a guide in Cambodia, that is exceeded in these kind of months almost 100 % of the time. And in 20 % of the cases, it's 35 degrees inside. And about a third of the cases, it's hotter inside than outside. So you're really doing something wrong, if that is the case. Laura, can you just contextualise what that means for the human body? If you're working consistently in a 35 degree conditions, what does that do to you? Right, yeah. So what my work tries to do is to move beyond just looking at the temperature in the room and actually understand what goes on in the human body.

6:15So the human body is very adaptable to different climates. But what we don't realise is that we actually have to do a lot of work to maintain what's actually a very kind of fragile, slim line of acceptable temperature. So when it gets cold, we put on a jumper. When it's cold, we go into it. When it's too hot, we go into a breezy place, for example. And that keeps our body temperature consistently between 36.5 and 37.5 degrees always. If it goes above 37.5 or above 38, then we've got problems. We start to immediately have health problems in a very short time. So what I've tried to look at is what percentage of these garment workers are going above that 38 degree threshold and thus immediately beginning to have real health problems.

6:55And the results really show how severe this is during these times. If we look at a month like March this year in 2024, we saw at any one time 25 % of workers are experiencing heat stress over 38 degrees. So to give you an idea of what that means, these are just, their workers are sitting down, they're just sitting down. 38 degrees is where I get to after a 5k run in a stuffy gym. So this is the extent of the kind of things we're putting the bodies of the workers in our supply chains through. And so the minute you've got anyone who might have already been ill, who was pregnant, that's a huge amount of stress to put the body under.

7:29Beto, you operate in a slightly different part of the supply chain. You work with farmers, you're at the raw material level. How are you seeing this play out at that part of the value chain? I work with smallholder farmers in Brazil and also I'm really proud to do this work. If you see myself here is not just Beto. I represent 500 ,000 family farmers living under$100 a month and I'm really proud to be here talking on their behalf. What I'm seeing on agriculture, these communities are doing the type of agriculture we need in the world. They really depend and collaborate with nature, but nature is changing and specifically it's changing on the season.

8:06For example, in cotton, it takes from 120 days to 150 days from planting to harvesting. In the beginning, you need to have a lot of rain when your harvest needs to be dry. But the season is changing so much. So you're not having a lot of rain in the beginning or having too much rain when you're harvesting. So these families, they're already really humble communities are not being able to produce cotton enough. And then they get less money. And then all these vicious cycles gets worse and worse. And so essentially it's becoming harder to grow the raw materials that are needed for the fashion industry to operate.

8:39And especially becoming harder to work with raw materials. They're doing the type of agriculture, truly regenerative, that we need. And not the conventional type of agriculture that took us where we are right now. So essentially, the agriculture that could prove a solution is becoming harder to do because of the way the climate is changing. One of the things that really struck me, Abby, when we were talking is there's obviously a huge human impact, huge human cost. but there's also a manufacturing cost. If people are sick, they cannot work as well as they can when they're healthy. They're not as productive and there's been a lot of studies on this.

9:17When you talk to the workers, what do they say about how they're able to do their jobs when it gets this long? So first, one thing is important. Not even workers, including the suppliers in the garment supply chains, they don't recognise heat stress as an issue. That is the most important thing. It's really fancy to listen to sustainable development, just transition. It's OK to throw all these words. But then people itself who are the victims, they don't recognize it as a problem. And then they won't even talk about it. As a worker, if they come and say, like, oh, I have stress because of the heat, I have fever, I'm sick, they are worried about losing the wages.

9:56They have multiple issues to talk about. They have issues with gender-based violence, wages, and then they have freedom of association issues. Who is going to sit and talk about heat waves and then heat stress? They don't even recognize it, right? So that is the major issue that the garment industry in Global South face these days. So first, people need to, the workers need to recognize. So I remember talking to workers from Pakistan and Bangladesh. They're like, oh, do you know what's happening in Bangladesh? We don't need to talk about that. We don't even have wages. The government is falling apart.

10:29Flood is coming, but then wait, we need to talk about our own earnings, not about something that someone's interest, you know? So this sort of the outcome that we have been hearing, and it's really hard for us to say that this is a circle, you know, like heat waves, just transition related to the wages, harassment inside the factories, everything interconnected. But workers are not able to even talk about it. That is the major issue that we don't able to find the solution. So the people who are being most impacted aren't recognising it or aren't connecting all of these dots, which I think is interesting to the point that we started with where the industry, too, doesn't seem to be recognising the risks they face.

11:11And, you know, Laurie, I'm curious from your perspective, why do you think that these dots aren't being connected? Why is there not an understanding that if it's 35 degrees in a factory, that that is a problem? Well, you can't connect the dots if there is no dot. And this is the problem. There's just not the data. Until very recently, this has just not been seen as a serious problem by the industry. It's not been sort of on the radar of factory management programs. So even when you're inspecting factories and you've got your checklist of things to look through, it's just not there. Heat. And as a result of that, the number of factories that actually have thermometers is shockingly low.

11:47And if they do have a thermometer, they might have one, which is almost useless. If they do have one, they're not going to record the data in any systematic way. certainly not upload it and make it public. But actually in Cambodia is a little bit of an exception to that because they've had the influence of the UN's Better Factories program, which has actually done systematic assessments of heat. The problem is when you actually do the research, if you have an industry which is in no way set up to cope with heat, then the results are so bad you almost want to ignore them. So with the Better Factories program, if they look throughout the entire year, about 70 % of factories fail.

12:18The only ones that don't fail are the ones that happened to be tested in the coolest part of the year. And as I've said, in March and April, it's 100 % of factories fail. So the news is not good. So you can gain the system, though, to a degree. Well, if you get lucky, yeah. In terms of the economic impact for the industry, you know, we were talking a little bit about productivity declines. What are you seeing in terms of what this means, not just for human impacts, but for economic impacts? Yeah, well, as we've said, the human impacts are massive, you know, huge proportions of workers are experiencing really significant impacts.

12:49Over 50 % of workers say they experience headaches, dizziness, you know, as just a result of doing their job. But the economic impacts are also really significant. We find, for example, across the sector as a whole, garment workers working in heat stress above 38 degrees of their core temperature are 30 % less productive. If you think about that economically, that's massive. That's a third of the wage that you're paying to that worker lost because you haven't been able to keep it cool. So there's an economic as well as a human incentive to really tackle this issue seriously. Well, one of the things I found really interesting when I was reporting on the heat wave in South Asia over the spring was that it got so hot the machines stopped working.

13:25We were talking about this earlier, you know, you think the mechanisation is going to fix this. It's not, Laurie, I think you were saying that machines are more delicate than humans. Yeah, in Cambodia it's been a big narrative always that when you have the wage negotiations, the factories are saying, well, you know, we'll just mechanise your job if you keep doing these negotiations. If you keep pushing for better conditions, we'll get the machines in. It's just like, good luck with the conditions inside those factories, because the machines will just shut down. They can't work at that temperature.

13:51It's only the humans that can do it. And again, the physical cost, they bear it, but it is lasting. But one of the things I'm always curious about when it comes to the raw material side of things is that this is sort of where you would expect to see the impact play out first. you can't grow the cotton because you've got to irrigate now, or there were huge floods in Pakistan a few years ago wiped out a massive amount of the country's cotton crop. And yet there seems to be a huge amount of resilience in global supply chains. How long do you think that could last? I think my feeling is that, especially in the smallholder farmers, they recognize what's happening and they understand.

14:32I feel that the fashion industry has not recognized yet the problems. One important thing for me is that when you think about supply chain, this shouldn't be called externalities. Some consultancy companies call it something that is out of the business, but should be something that is part of the business and the brand. If you're a fashion brand buying cotton, you're part of the agricultural industry. If you're buying leather, you're part of the beef industry. Buying viscose, you're part of the forestry industry. You're complicit with these industries, so you need to start to recognize that this is part of your business.

15:04So I think it would take as long as we understand that we are all this ecosystem and it's integrated and feel responsible about it. And share those risks. Exactly. So what are the solutions? You know, Beto, I'm going to start with you. What could be done better? What could change? On one side, brands need to be committed as a catalyst to develop these new supply chains. On the other side, it's really expensive. They cannot do it by themselves. But thinking as a supply chain, as an ecosystem. You can bring philanthropic capital, you can bring public policies, and you can think internally that's not a job from the buyer or the supplier.

15:43That's a job from innovation, from marketing, from sustainability. If you bring these teams together and develop as an innovative project to start this new supply chain, especially with smallholder farmers, they're doing the type of agriculture that we deserve that could be amazing for everyone. Marketing teams could get their content, sustainability could get the data, research and development could get new materials, and then you can build a supply chain. But that's the point. This supply chain needs to be built. And private companies, fashion brands, has this role and opportunity to be the one creating these new supply chains.

16:16It's this idea of collective action, but also really operating in new and different ways. I think it's a little bit of a different story on the manufacturing level, because there are things that can be done today that can really make it different to address heat. And, you know, Abby, I'm curious to hear from you what those are. Any guess? Any guess? Right. The collective bargaining power the workers should have in the ground level, the factory level or the plant level. How is possible? The freedom of association should need to be ensured, where the members or the factory workers should be able to talk, to be part of the union, to advocate, to fight for their rights with the factories, management, even the biggest players is the fashion brands, right?

17:07First of all, the workers should need to recognize it's a problem. It's a nature problem. They should be able to talk. To whom do they need to talk? They need to talk to the unions who should be part of it. And then as a collective, They should be able to talk to the supplier and, of course, able to talk to the fashion brands. So the fundamental tool of freedom of association is not yet guaranteed in global South countries, especially in government industry. The union busting is the famous term compared to even just transition in South Asian countries. So we need to ensure that that is something where our workers should be able to talk.

17:50OK, I feel sick. This is a problem. I need to find a solution. I need to talk to the factory management. For that, they need to have sort of a collective bargaining power, which is not ensured. So from my perspective, the freedom of association should be ensured to have a collective bargaining power to talk about this. Which is really interesting because that's a solution that's been talked about in relation to many, many different challenges that the industry is based. Laurie, when we were talking earlier, you sort of drew this distinction between the issue of mitigation and adaptation. I wonder if you could unpack that a little bit.

18:27Yeah, I think this is really important. So almost every brand, every garment apparel company has a sustainability policy of some sort. But almost all of them are focused on what, from the perspective of climate science, is only one half of this debate. So in climate science, we have the mitigation side, that's decarbonisation, reducing our carbon emissions. and the adaptation side, that's what we actually do for the populations that are affected by climate change. There is an infinitesimally small amount of sustainability policies in this industry that actually focus on that other half, actually what is happening with the workers.

19:01So if you have your sustainability policy and you're proud of it, but it doesn't feature that bit, you're missing so much. And that is hugely important moving forward as we realise just what a big issue heat is. And especially because this is happening now. You can try and bring down emissions in the future, but you have to adapt today. And I just want to close by asking, if we fail at this, if what we're seeing this year continues, what does that mean? What's at stake? And Laurie, I'm going to give you the last word because we've got no time left. Well, I think what's at stake is the productivity of the industry, the health of the workers.

19:38and absolutely, as more and more of these stories come out, the reputation of an industry, which as these conditions worsen, is becoming increasingly, purely by these atmospheric changes, exploitative of workers who can't cope with these conditions anymore. Thank you all so much.

19:56The BOF podcast is edited and produced by Olivia Davies and Eric Bria.