About Clothes for a Change

Clothes for a Change is a global campaign to raise awareness about the negative health and environmental effects of conventional and genetically engineered cotton and the institutionalized exploitation of clothing sweatshops.

By uniting organic consumers, anti-genetic engineering activists, trade unionists, religious social justice advocates, progressives in the fashion & apparel industry, and the Fair Trade / anti-sweatshop communities into a potent force we can change the dynamics of the marketplace and fundamentally alter public policy.

The Clothes for a Change Campaign Is Demanding that Major Clothing Retailers & Manufacturers:

• Stop using genetically engineered cotton.
• Start blending in certified organic or "transition to organic" cotton in their clothing.
• Guarantee that they meet independently verified Fair Labor (non-sweatshop) standards.
• Eliminate all production and export cotton subsidies in the U.S. and convert to Green subsidies for organic and transition to organic cotton production.

While the OCA and our allies put marketplace pressure on the clothing giants, we will also be enlisting public interest groups to support the campaign by:

• Committing to procure non-sweatshop, environmentally sound products.
• Signing-on in support of the core demands of the Clothes for a Change campaign.

LINKS

SUSTAINABLE COTTON PRODUCTION

• Sustainable Cotton Project - Information about farmers, manufacturers, activists, retailers and others who are devoting their energies to making organic cotton a viable agricultural and economic alternative.
• Behind the Label - Promoting the collective bargaining power of both workers in sweatshops and communities of consumers.
• International Organic Cotton Directory -Directory locates links in the organic cotton chain: organic agricultural input suppliers, farmers, gins, mills & retailers of organic cotton products.

LABOR ISSUES & SWEATSHOP INFO

• National Labor Committee - Educating & engaging the public on human & labor rights abuses by corporations.
• Global Exchange - Human rights organization dedicated to promoting environmental, political, and social justice around the world.
• Workers Rights Consortium (WRC) - A non-profit organization created by college and university administrations, students and labor rights experts on over 100 campuses. The WRC's purpose is to ensure that factories producing clothing and other goods bearing college and university names respect the basic rights of workers.
• Campaign for Labor Rights (CLR) - Working to inform and mobilize grassroots activists in solidarity with major, international anti-sweatshop struggles. CLR has been called the "grassroots mobilizing department" of the anti-sweatshop movement
• UNITE! Fighting for good jobs everywhere. Our union is supporting workers in other countries who are fighting to organize their own unions to improve wages and working conditions.
• Clean Clothes Campaign Campaignind to improve working conditions in the garment industry.
• Ethix Merch A supplier of custom made, union made and organic promotional products and the new Alta Gracia line of living wage, union made clothing. Ethix Merch also hosts a blog that discusses workers rights, sweatfree campaigns, fair trade, and the environment.

Visit the CFAC Background Information Page

Background Info

PESTICIDES INFO

• Pesticide Action Network (PAN) - Working to replace pesticide use with ecologically sound and socially just alternatives.
• PAN Pesticides Database - Current toxicity and regulatory information for pesticides.

Message from Earth:
Organic Matters

CFAC News Digest

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Facts

• In the US, it takes about a third of a pound of synthetic agricultural chemicals to grow enough cotton, enough for one T-shirt. -Sustainable Cotton Project
• Federal report: Children exposed to "cotton poison," methyl parathion, suffer memory loss, emotional swings. -U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry
• In Bangladesh, women earn 1.7 cents for every baseball cap they sew with a Harvard logo and 5 cents for every Disney T-shirt they sew that sells for $17.99.-National Labor Committee
• Cotton accounts for 25% of the world's insecticides and 11% of global pesticide sales, making it the most toxic crop grown on the planet. "With full time wages as low as $US2 a day, workers in clothing factories often live in extreme poverty and those with children must either send them to distant villages to be looked after by relatives or else go into debt to meet their basic needs." -We are not Machines: Nike and Adidas workers in Indonesia.