Fashion Industry Regulations Don't Do Enough to Protect Workers or the Planet — Here's Why

Yahoo

12-02-2025

Jens Kalaene/picture alliance via Getty Images
'We're producing 100 billion pieces of clothing a year,' explains Katrina Caspelich, executive director and chief marketing officer of Remake, an organization that advocates for garment worker protections and against overconsumption. 'We don't need to be doing that. Everything…that you could need has probably already been made.' And yet, we keep buying more.
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Though COVID curtailed our buying, after the height of the pandemic Americans are actually increasing their spending on clothing. According to a report compiled by the Business of Fashion's data and advisory team and McKinsey & Company, in 2025 'industry growth is expected to remain low, but increase slightly from 2024.' The global fashion industry is projected to reach an astonishing $1.8 trillion by 2025 according to one analysis.
Aided by the low price point and availability of fast fashion, we're continuing to stock our closets with flared leggings and cow-print totes. But rampant overconsumption isn't just rough on our wallets. It's bad for the planet, for workers, and for consumers too. The fashion industry has normalized supply chains that are as opaque as they are complex, stretching across the planet and making regulation difficult. Now, a new generation of fashion industry workers and organizers aims to address the lack of regulation in the industry and propose legislation that can actually change the harmful status quo.
'I think what we're ultimately trying to do is reduce the impact,' states Maxine Bédat, a lawyer turned founder and director of the New Standard Institute, a think tank that advocates for the passing of a landmark Fashion Act, 'and the most direct way to do that is to put into law requirements that those companies reduce the impact.'
In her book, Worn: A People's History of Clothing, artist and writer Sofi Thanhauser explains that while the textile industry has been hazardous since the Industrial Revolution, 'three of the four deadliest garment factory disasters in history occurred during the 2010s.' It seems as though the disposability of people has closely paralleled the disposability of fashion. The global fashion industry employs 94 million people, according to a 2023 report published by the International Labour Organization (ILO) on gender equality in garment supply chains. Most of these workers are women, most are criminally underpaid, and all are susceptible to the whims of an industry that can always drop them when they demand more.
Take Bangladesh, for instance. In 2023, the country's garment workers brought production to a screeching halt. A decade after the Rana Plaza collapse that killed over a thousand workers, the Wall Street Journal reported that 'tens of thousands have refused to work, calling for the minimum wage to be raised to nearly three times that amount.' Protestors burned buildings and ruined machines, calling for Western companies to pay up. Yet, at the time, these brands were ambivalent at best. In the 2023 Journal report, H&M, among others, admitted to some degree that the workers' requests for higher wages were valid, but could not commit to steps to meet their demands. As protests intensified, Bangladesh's government raised the country's minimum wage from $75 a month in US currency to $113 a month. Even with the pay increase, and with some companies like H&M providing additional increases, these wages still fell far short of what the workers wanted.
Bangladesh is still paying the price for these protests. In the aftermath, along with a constitutional crisis earlier in 2024, the country is struggling to convince Western customers that its supply chain is as stable as those of competing nations. Reuters recently reported that the country's garment 'exports to the US fell by 0.46% to $6.7 billion between January and November last year, while India's exports rose 4.25% to $4.4 billion.'
The industry is also impacted by child labor and forced labor, the latter defined by the ILO as 'all work or service which is exacted from any person under the threat of a penalty and for which the person has not offered himself or herself voluntarily.' The stats included in the United States Department of Labor's annual report were grim: While labor exploitation happens in virtually every region of the world no matter the country's income, the report added 37 new goods to the list that were previously in the clear, as well as four new countries. Of the 82 countries, a large swath (including Argentina, Bangladesh, Benin, Burkina Faso, the list goes on alphabetically) engaged in labor exploitation within the garment industry or associated industries, like gold or cotton.
While the United States isn't exactly included on the Department of Labor's list of offenders, the report does admit to a whopping '88% increase in the number of children employed in violation of federal child labor laws' in the country since 2019. Anecdotally, the report mentions busting American poultry factories and sawmills for using child labor. What it doesn't mention is the exploitation of models, including children, in American fashion.
Thanks to prodding from organizers, government officials have finally started to address the harms experienced by fashion industry workers. In 2021, for example, California passed the Garment Worker Protection Act, protecting these workers from wage theft and ensuring that they get paid an hourly wage versus payment for each item they produce. The European Union's Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, which takes effect in 2027, is aimed, among other goals, at protecting labor exploited in global supply chains.
Other promising legislation is underway to protect models. Led by Sara Ziff, who modeled for Gap and Chanel before becoming an organizer, Model Alliance helped push a landmark pro-labor bill that New York governor Kathy Hochul signed into law late last year. The bill protects models from the misuse of AI, allows models to directly access their contracts with clients, and guards against harassment and abuse, among other protections.
According to December 2020 research from Science Feedback, a science education nonprofit, the fashion industry emits 3 to 10% of the world's greenhouse gases. Climate change affects everyone on the planet, subjecting us to more extreme weather events, from heat waves and droughts to flooding. (It's worth noting that the countries likely to feel the first and worst impacts of the crisis include those from which the world sources many of its garment workers. A 2022 article published by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with Reuters highlighted that even with intermediate warming 'Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka's exposure to wildfires, floods, major storms, and also water shortages mean South Asia has 10 to 18% of GDP at risk, roughly treble that of North America and 10 times more than the least-affected region, Europe.')
Yet, according to the 2025 State of Fashion report, as executives struggle to invigorate a sluggish fashion market, businesses will likely make sustainability less of a priority. Despite fast fashion's staggering environmental impact, the report points out that most US and UK customers state that when buying they are more concerned about price than sustainability.
Underregulation also means that consumers are often paying for low-quality clothing that is sometimes made with unsafe materials. There's also the fact that most fast fashion is so poorly constructed that garments tend to fall apart after a handful of uses, according to UCLA's Sustainability Institute. Fast fashion also leans heavily on synthetic materials produced from petrochemical-based fabrics. Journalist Alden Wicker has also flagged how some chemicals used in fashion production have been linked to infertility.
Whether personally or collectively, we hold the power to transform how fashion is consumed and governed. 'I [am], like, a reformed fashion girlie,' Caspelich confesses. 'I used to be a fashion editor. Oh, leopard's in? I'm buying leopard. Oh, you know, green's in? Buying green. And now just even waiting a week to purchase something to see if I still want it, it makes such a difference!'
In the US, organizers like Bédat are optimistic about state-level policy changes that can protect consumers and won't be at risk each time a new president is sworn into office. 'We've seen in history, that when the federal government relinquishes its responsibilities, the states really have carried the load in terms of ensuring that we are still able to make progress,' she says. Bédat's work at the New Standard Institute aims to champion the passing of the Fashion Act, a bill that mandates 'environmental and social due diligence' for companies with global revenue of over $100 million selling merchandise in a particular state. It requires companies to set and achieve 'science-based targets for reducing carbon emissions,' as Atmos notes. So far, versions of the legislation have been introduced in New York, Massachusetts, and Washington.
Bédat says that during one of the Fashion Act's advocacy days, high schoolers were the ones who spoke out and best commanded the attention of elected officials. 'They did a much better job than I did because they could really speak from the heart,' she said. 'There was a vibe shift when they spoke.'
Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
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