Slide 2

Kahoot! Instructions – See Kahoot! Instructions Deck

Slide 3

Last week we learned about the first 4 stages of the apparel production cycle. These include:

• Fiber

• Yarn

• Fabric

• Finishing

These steps create the materials used in our clothes. Today we are going to learn how these materials are combined to make the clothes we wear every day. We will start by returning to the Planet Money Tee story we began last week. The last video focused on the machines that prepare the materials for apparel. Now we get to see these materials transformed into tees.

Slide 4

Now before we discuss some of the topics brought up here, we need to be mindful of different cultures than ours and seek understanding before judgement. One of the points of this video is to show the how the shirts on our back have global impacts. Jasmine and Doris may come from a different perspective than you are used to.

1. Present the People Video.

2. Stop video at 2:50 mark

3. Now ask the students the following questions – Does anyone know what a dowry is or has a guess?

   • A dowry is the money or goods that a bride's family gives to her new husband and/or his family when they are married.

   • How might a culture rationalize using a dowry system?

4. Before starting video back up again:

   • I want to warn everyone that the following scenes are going to depict scenes from a garment factory that collapsed and there will be graphic images showing workers that perished in the accident. Feel free to look away and I will let you know when we've passed that portion.

Slide 5

As we just saw, when the fabric has the desired color and properties, it is shipped to production facilities to be made into finished products. This step includes processes such as cutting, sewing and the addition of buttons and zippers.

1. In addition to preparing the materials that make up our clothing, several other steps must be completed before transforming these materials into clothes. The first is the design of the piece of clothing to be produced. This includes sketch designs, a digital pattern, and material needs. The designs, pattern, and materials needs are then combined into a Tech Pack which is provided to the factory. If your shirt was a cake, the tech pack would be the recipe.

2. The next step, Pre-Line Samples, is basically a test of the initial design and components of the desired product. An initial sample, called a prototype, is made from the tech pack to see if there are any issues with the design or materials. Samples are made in each style the product will be offered in to test fit and the factory’s ability to produce the different sizes consistently.

3. Once the Pre-Line samples have been evaluated and approved, the tech pack is revised if necessary and all of the materials needed to build the product are sourced. This includes fabric, trim, label, hang tags.

4. Before final production begins, several additional sets of samples are created. These include:

   • Sales Samples (to sell the line to retailers and use for marketing images)

   • Pre-Production Samples (review design, including stitching, labeling, or other manufacturing processes to be confirmed before large-scale production begins)

   • TOP Samples (taken off the line during first production run to test quality control).

5. Once each of these additional sample sets are approved, final production begins.

Slide 6

There are 2 types of factories in the garment industry:

1. Full Service Factories offer a full range of services including:

   • Fabric and trim sourcing

   • Labels and hang tags

   • Patterns and product development

   • Grading and marking

   • Samples

   • Production

   • Packing and shipping

   They have large internal teams and connections to outside vendors to source the needed materials.

2. Cut and Sew Factories make samples and bulk production. Clients are responsible for sourcing and purchasing all the materials and getting them to the factory on time.

Slide 7

Did you know that clothing production has doubled in the past 15 years while the world population has only increased by 15% in the same time frame?

Slide 8

The environmental impacts of apparel manufacturing are significant.

• Up to 90% of waste in the global apparel business occurs in production.

• The annual amount may surprise you, at an estimated 10 -30% of all input materials.

Slide 9

The social impacts are also immense primarily affecting the millions of workers making our clothes. According to non-profit Remake, 75 million people are making our clothes today, and 80 percent of apparel is made by young women between the ages of 18 and 24. These jobs require long hours, and the workers are the lowest paid in the entire production cycle.

• Garment workers on average work at least 48 hours (6 days) per week. Most garment workers earn between .5% – 4% of the retail cost of the clothes they make (for a $20 pair of jeans this equals 10 – 80 cents divided by the 30 workers involved) or less than a penny per garment.

• In Bangladesh, for example, workers make about $96/month. The government’s wage board suggested that a garment worker needs 3.5 times that amount to live a “decent life with basic facilities.”

• As production has shipped from local and regional areas around the world to SE Asia and China, the environmental and social impacts have become concentrated in those countries. Many of the social impacts could be addressed by increasing workers’ wages. It is estimated that the entire cost of paying living wages within brands supply chains would cost less than 1% of the price of a garment, 17 cents on a $25 shirt for example.

Slide 10

• In the 60s, only 5% of clothes sold in the US were made overseas. In the 70s that number has increased to 25%; most recently in 2021, that number is at 98%.

• Can anybody tell us why?

Slide 11

• Here are the average monthly wages of people involved in the Apparel stage of the production cycle from all around the world.

Slide 12

• Economic Impacts

• Living Wage

• Social Impacts

Slide 13

Graphics, images, and video are great ways to describe complex subjects. Together, we are going to create our own Gallery of Sustainability. We will close each class by designing a poster that graphically illustrates what we have learned that week. Each poster will be displayed in the classroom until we have completed our gallery.