Available online 28 August 2015
Global inequities and emissions in Western European textiles and clothing consumption
Highlights
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- We assess the sustainability of Western European textiles & clothing consumption.
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- Impacts are analysed over 15 years at both regional & sectoral scales.
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- We find large labour and wage inequities between BRIC and Western Europe.
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- Carbon emissions fell slightly 1995–2009 but the trend was not linear.
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- We argue that increasing BRIC wages could reduce both inequity & environmental impact.
Abstract
Rising
demand for cheaper textiles and clothing in Western Europe is well
documented, as are changes in the Textiles and Clothing industry's
globalised production structure. We apply a sub-systems global
multi-regional input–output accounting framework to examine the
sustainability implications of meeting Western European demand for
textiles and clothing goods between 1995 and 2009. Our framework
estimates environmental and socio-economic impacts of consumption in a
consistent manner and shows where these occur both geographically and in
the value chain. The results demonstrate that Western European textiles
and clothing consumption remains dependent on low-cost labour from
Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC), principally in the Textiles and
Clothing and Agricultural sectors. Conversely, we show that the wage
rate for BRIC workers in the global value chains serving Western
European textiles and clothing consumption has risen over time but
remains low relative to the wage rate paid to Western European workers.
Likewise, we find that profits are increasingly generated within BRIC
and that they are now at comparable levels to those generated in Western
Europe. We find a slight overall decrease in the amount of carbon
emitted in the production of textiles and clothing goods for Western
Europe between 1995 and 2009. However, the trend is not linear and the
importance of different underlying drivers varies over the timeseries.
We conclude by discussing the implications of these results for a more
sustainable future for Western European textiles and clothing
consumption.
Keywords
- Textiles & clothing;
- Carbon footprint;
- Social footprint;
- Input–output analysis;
- Globalisation;
- Global value chains
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