Where does my T-Shirt come from? 

The image above was drawn by Audrey Blair Brown (and shared with her permission). Check out her work on Instagram  @aud.makes.stuff, or 

through her website https://www.audreyblairbrown.com/.

Walking into Primark, I am overwhelmed by the amount of people here, seeking out the latest trends for the lowest possible prices. I keep my head down and walk to the section where I know the basic t-shirts live. It’s hard to imagine that they had a whole life before they were neatly folded and housed in regimented rows on this shelf. Pick one up, pay, leave. £3.50. Twenty-five minutes of work for a Brit on minimum wage.

With a price like that, it is easy to believe that the t-shirts just appeared on the shelf, as if out of thin air. The price permits the cognitive dissonance which allows us -the consumers- to ignore the journey of this t-shirt over vast swathes of time and space and lives.

Even the conscious consumer, who wants to understand this journey, will encounter a frustrating lack of complete information. The facts are disparate across different parts of the company website. You need to know the right questions to ask, to find the information you need, to make a conscious choice about whether this garment is an ethical purchase. To understand the scope and type of questions to ask, you may need a crash course in how the garment is made. A quick google image search can show you simplified diagrams with a broad outline of steps in the supply chain (Figure 1), or maps which show the global nature of this supply chain. While these graphics are useful for introducing consumers to the concept of a global supply chain, they often cannot provide their audience with a critical understanding of each step - the how, the why (sometimes even the where is a question mark). 

These images can be useful, especially for people who are trying to not get bogged down in the details. But, this graphic doesn't tell me anything about who is doing the work to produce my garment, or tracing the circuits of waste that it may enter into once I am finished with it. I also learn very little about the practices involved: growing, harvesting, ginning, spinning, knitting/weaving, processing, sewing, trading. While this graphic shows me the steps that are involved in making a garment, the pastel pink and aesthetic images obscure the negative externalities that are associated with the process. 

In response, I have tried to create my own commodity chain graphic. I have attempted to make this graphic specific enough to give you a better understanding of the commodity chain. To some extent, the complexity of a global commodity chain cannot be accurately captured in a graphic, which is a tool representing partial information for the sake of clarity. However, if all this graphic achieves is confusion, I still think that it has done important work. Commodity chains are confusing. Companies also have a vested interest in gatekeeping certain practices from their consumers and the public in order to protect their image and their profit margin. I hope that this graphic provides some context for the practices involved in making a cotton t-shirt. I hope that it complicates your understanding of a 'simple' commodity chain. But most of all, I hope that it makes you ask questions. 

I have overlaid orange text with the steps of the commodity chain. I encourage you to look into any steps you are interested in. Once you know the technical name for the step, and where it fits into the process of creating cotton/ a cotton t-shirt, it is often much easier to find out information about it!

The process begins with planting cotton seeds, which then grow through processes of photosynthesis. Once fully grown, after ~160 days, they are ready to be picked. Cotton picking may be done by hand, at a rate of 20 plants in 10 minutes, or by machines, at a rate of 1200 plants in 30 seconds. From here, the cotton is transported to a factory where it undergoes a process called ginning: the seeds are separated from the lint. At this point, it also goes through a carding machine in order to detangle and clean the fibres, ready for the next step. The cotton is then moved (maybe to another part of the factory or a new location altogether) to undergo spinning. This is where the cotton is turned into a thread or spool of yarn. From here, the cotton yarn is transported again, and is turned into fabric either via weaving or knitting. This fabric is shipped to a finishing plant, where it is beached, stretched and dyed. From here, it is sent to another factory where the fabric is made into a cotton t-shirt. My t-shirt was made in Bangladesh. Many workers here experience poor labour conditions and are frequently not paid a living wage. From here, the t-shirt is shipped to store fronts  around the world, particularly in the UK. 

Usually, this is where the commodity chain ends, however, when we are paying attention to slow violences, it is also important to think about the circuits of waste that the t-shirt could enter into. I identified three options: (1) the t-shirt is thrown away and ends up in landfill; (2) the t-shirt may be resold and remain in the global north e.g. through sites like Depop, and (3) the t-shirt may be exported as textile waste to locations in the Global South e.g. Kantamanto, Ghana. Activist and author Aja Barber (2021: 67) suggests that Kantamanto, a market for second-hand clothes imported from the Global North, shows how sustainability can be an integral part of culture due to the ‘make-do-and-mend ethos’ that Ghanaians employ in repurposing and reusing these items. Thinking through alternatives to, and afterlives of, clothing value systems is also a way of unearthing the systems that perpetuate the environmental and social harms associated with fast fashion. This is because waste and undesirable products are often sent to or situated within the poorest and most vulnerable communities (Barber, 2021: 43; Cairns 2021; Nixon, 2011).