CHAPTER FIVE

NOT ALL FACTORIES ARE EQUAL, OR EVIL

Line Production Done Well

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You can design and create . . . but it takes people to make the dream a reality.

—WALT DISNEY, AMERICAN ENTREPRENEUR

In early summer of 2017, I visited a denim factory in Nicaragua, where I tried my hand at sewing a pair of Wrangler jeans. I was seated on a little backless operator stool in a big, air-conditioned room, an industrial sewing machine on a metal arm between my knees. I was wearing jeans myself, as I often am, and a flowered blouse with bell sleeves—it was June in the Caribbean and sweltering outside. I had a pair of giant safety goggles strapped over my face and sat hunched over the machine with a hunk of denim in hand, ready to make some jeans . . . which I absolutely could not do.

Denim is surprisingly stiff and thick! I was totally incapable of sewing two pieces together in a straight line. I’d worked on a sewing machine in the past and assumed this experience would be similar, that the denim would feed smoothly under the needle. This was not the case. My sewing would never pass quality control; it was like a child trying to draw a masterpiece with crayons. My hair was loose and kept falling in front of my face, complicating matters. The operator whose stool I’d borrowed was assisting me and laughing nonstop, apparently having the time of his life watching this pathetic American woman attempting to do his job and failing miserably.

I was laughing pretty hard, too. It was fun to try to create something I always wear but have never seen made. It was as if I’d stepped into a kitchen for the first time to bake bread after having eaten it my whole life, and wound up with a doughy mess. We’ve all worn jeans, most of us for decades (some of us rarely wear anything else). Yet we’ve never tried to make them, let alone given much thought to how they’re constructed.

In another section of the factory, workers created that on-trend, “distressed” look, which isn’t just printed on denim, it turns out. Men manually sand the jeans, slipping one pair after the next onto horizontal mannequin legs, and running a hand sander back and forth. The workers had the attitude of craftsmen, trying to achieve exactly the right well-worn look—faded around the knees and at the hips. They were using a huge amount of physical effort, as if they were in an all-day rowing competition. I was shocked to see how much work went into the jeans.

Seeing firsthand the labor and sheer skill involved in making these clothes was an important lesson for me. We’ve lost the connection between what we buy and who made it, in many regards. We don’t see our mass-produced products being made, and the level of quality and uniformity at factories today can make it easy to forget that real people work there, that someone’s day was spent making those jeans or shoes or mugs. When you buy a unique handicraft made by artisans, the irregular look may make you reflect on the fact that those beads were rolled by hand. But some of the products we buy today from factories are so perfect and sometimes so affordable that it’s easy to assume they were manufactured by a robot.

For most of human history, clothing was made by hand for a specific person. If we’d been born a hundred years ago, we’d each have only a handful of items, all sewn by our own mother or by a seamstress down the street, whom we perhaps also saw every Sunday in church. Our makers were close to us, literally and figuratively. Today, the average American buys something like seventy pieces of clothing a year. Between the years 2000 and 2014, the number of garments the average consumer bought increased by 60 percent. I can’t imagine what someone living in the 1800s or mid-1900s would think about the piles of sweaters, T-shirts, workout pants, and jeans most of us have crammed into our drawers, or the dozens of dresses, blouses, jackets, and coats dripping from hangers in our closets.

When thinking about the rise of mass production, most people point to the aha moment of Henry Ford, who brought the efficiency of assembly-line production to car manufacturing in Detroit in 1914. But clothing factories and fabric mills had been operating in England since the mid-1800s, often employing workers, including children, who were subject to punishingly long hours and unsafe conditions. The Industrial Revolution that kicked off in the mid-1700s brought with it faster, more efficient ways to spin cotton into thread, and then to sew fabric into clothing. After the sewing machine was invented in the mid-1800s, mass production of clothing really took off, and has been accelerating ever since.

In the United States, the “rag trade” became a major employer in New York City’s Lower East Side by the turn of the twentieth century, with young immigrant women laboring in sweatshops, often in utterly deplorable conditions. In the 1900s, when our industrial age took off, there were truly dangerous practices and plenty of cases of labor exploitation here.

The most infamous accident in a U.S. sweatshop occurred at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in New York City in 1911. The company had sweatshops on the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors of a factory building on the Lower East Side. The factory owners had been warned about the risk of fire but had not made changes. The factory employed mostly young women, immigrants who’d fled poverty and religious persecution in Russia, or who’d come to the United States from Italy. They sat hunched over sewing machines in the cramped, crowded building, working six days a week sewing “shirtwaists,” or ladies’ blouses. For immigrants in NYC, particularly those in the process of learning English, working in garment factories was often the best option.

When a fire broke out on March 25, 1911, it quickly ignited the fabric scraps lying around. The fabric burst into flames. The women scrambled for the exits. Some women were able to escape by the stairs or the elevators, until smoke and fire made these unusable. But the door to one of the main exits was locked, reportedly a common practice in factories at the time to discourage workers from slipping out for a break or stealing.

About twenty women crowded onto a single fire escape one hundred feet above the sidewalk. But the fire escape was insecurely attached and eventually collapsed, plunging the workers to the sidewalk and killing them. Other girls jumped out of windows to their death. Some hid in stockrooms and died by asphyxiation or burning.

When the firefighters arrived, their ladders weren’t long enough to reach people, and their nets ripped under the weight of those who jumped. By the time the fire was out, 146 people had died, the vast majority women, some as young as fourteen. This was the worst industrial accident in New York City and one of the worst in the United States. This incident put new focus on labor conditions at factories here and led to real changes in workplace safety.

In New York, a committee on safety was formed, led by Frances Perkins, who had been an eyewitness to the fire (and was appointed United States secretary of labor two decades later). This committee identified problems and led to the creation of the Factory Investigating Commission, which conducted exhaustive research at facilities around the state. The factory investigating commission ultimately led to dozens of new laws being passed in New York state, and eventually nationally, including everything from requiring fire extinguishers and fire sprinklers in buildings, to constructing bathroom facilities for workers, to drafting labor laws to protect women and children. Labor unions also began forming and strengthening, including the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, which fought for more improvements.

Shortly after, American factories began ramping up production, turning their attention to manufacturing wartime necessities. In World War II, production increased again. The contribution of weapons made in U.S. factories was a decisive factor in both world wars. I read so much about military strategy in high school and college, and I was amazed to learn that the munitions industry in the United States was staffed by a significant number of women, many of whom stepped into traditionally male roles after the men went off to fight. The “We Can Do It” image of Rosie the Riveter, wearing a red kerchief and a work shirt with rolled-up sleeves, is a lasting visual reminder of women’s efforts in factories during World War II.

After World War II, these factories kept working, but they switched to churning out consumer goods. There are a handful of famous pop cultural references to this rise of mechanization. My favorite is the classic I Love Lucy episode called “Job Switching,” from 1952. Lucy and Ethel get jobs in a candy factory to prove a point about their competence to Ricky and Fred. At first, they calmly wrap up each piece of chocolate as it passes by on the conveyor belt. Then the belt starts moving faster. Lucy and Ethel can’t keep up. They begin popping chocolates into their mouths and sweeping chocolates into their factory-supplied hats. Lucy dumps chocolates down the front of her dress. The manager, seeing their “success,” increases the conveyor belt speed. Chocolate chaos ensues.

Many economists look at the increase in mass production as intrinsically tied to the rise of the American middle class. As mass production grew in the United States, the cost of consumer goods fell. Many people could now stock up on clothing, shoes, and appliances—the kinds of nonessential products formerly reserved for the rich. Factory workers began to have enough income to buy single-family houses in the comfortable suburbs that grew around cities; foremen, managers, and executives could spring for even larger spreads.

American companies also began operating factories abroad, generally in countries that used high tariffs and quotas to block American imports such as toothpaste and cars. Overseas factories also allowed companies to easily tweak products for specific markets and access raw materials that were abundant on the ground. By the 1980s, this trend of manufacturing and selling overseas to tap into the wealth of non-U.S. consumers had really accelerated, specifically in Europe and Asia. As Oren Shaffer, then chief financial officer at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, told the New York Times in 1989, “If you really want to be a player, you have to be inside foreign markets. You can’t export.’’

But U.S. companies also began doing something else that troubled some industry analysts—and increasingly, U.S. workers: manufacturing overseas with cheaper labor and then shipping products back to sell to consumers here. Debates raged about the economic and social good of offshore production, and continue today. Regardless of how you feel about offshoring, one clear result is that the majority of the products we buy and use are made by people living very far away. Only about 15 percent of apparel is manufactured in the United States, North and South America, and the Caribbean.

To those of us who love fashion and care about ethical sourcing, one important issue remains unchanged, regardless of where clothing is made. Factories provide real jobs for real people, and we need to pay attention to the conditions in which they work.

THE RISE AND FALL (AND RELOCATION) OF THE BIG, BAD FACTORY

When you look at the low cost of some of the items available to us today, it’s hard to imagine how these prices can exist without labor exploitation. How could such an inexpensive, super-soft T-shirt get made and tagged and shipped without someone, somewhere, going to bed hungry? How can a “fast fashion” brand offer its dresses and down jackets and leggings at such low prices? Fast fashion has been a particularly hot segment of the industry lately, with compressed production cycles turning out up-to-the-minute designs, and consumers treating their lowest-priced garments as nearly disposable, discarding them after just seven or eight wears. We’re keeping clothes about half as long as we did only fifteen years ago. Were these inexpensive items really produced in a way that means we can wear them with a comfortable conscience?

It turns out that line production, in and of itself, needn’t be dehumanizing, dangerous, or environmentally destructive. There are business strategies that can lead to even very low prices, while employing workers in decent conditions at a fair wage. Brands like Old Navy can reap major cost savings through bulk purchases of fabric and trims, such as zippers. You might not think that purchasing at a large scale would make that much of a difference, but fabric suppliers set prices based on the amount you buy, as does everyone else. At To the Market, we procure fabric for some of our cut-and-sew producers, and reams of cotton will literally cost us half when we double our order—and our orders are nowhere near the size of Old Navy (yet!).

Clothing can also drop in price when a company makes more units of fewer designs. A limited number of styles means fewer samples need to be made, which cuts costs and allows for manufacturing efficiencies, such as operators learning the construction or detailing only once and then producing at greater speeds.

These are efficient ways to cut costs ethically, but low prices can also be tied to deplorable working conditions—cost savings made on the labor side in a way that leads to serious human rights challenges. Sometimes workers have no other choice but to take a job that may endanger their lives. The employees may be poor and uneducated, living in remote areas with few options, eager for any kind of work and willing to accept low wages and poor conditions.

A NEW LIFE FOR OLD CLOTHES

Clothing is one of the easiest items to upcycle. A gently used item of yours can be a huge asset to someone else, especially for a special occasion that requires a high-cost outfit. Check out these category-specific ways to donate:

Dress for Success: Preparing for a job interview can take a lot of thought. Worrying about the affordability of an appropriate interview outfit shouldn’t be an additional burden. So goes the thinking of this international nonprofit that provides professional attire for vulnerable women seeking employment. The nonprofit also offers life-skills training and a support system to help women move toward economic independence. Local affiliates accept gently used clothing and accessories and unused beauty products.

Becca’s Closet: In high school, Rebecca Kirtman decided to collect hundreds of prom dresses to donate to girls in South Florida who might otherwise skip the dance due to the high cost of the dress. A year later, while still in high school, this budding humanitarian was killed in a car accident. Her family, along with friends and strangers, started Becca’s Closet in her memory. Becca’s Closet awards “dress scholarships” to high school seniors who have shown leadership in their communities. You can donate your gently used dresses by finding your local Becca’s Closet chapter.

Brides Across America: This nonprofit helps military brides, many of whom are living on a small salary, feel like Cinderella on their wedding day by giving them beautiful (used) wedding gowns. To donate your dress (and wedding accessories, such as a veil), fill out the application form online.

Once Upon A Child: Once Upon A Child is the largest U.S. resale franchise that buys and sells gently used kids’ and baby clothing and gear, helping moms in two ways: by selling safe, clean products at a good price and by offering parents the opportunity to recycle children’s nearly new items and get paid on the spot.

Out of the Closet: This nonprofit with thrift stores in more than a dozen cities donates 96¢ from every dollar to fund AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s HIV/AIDS programs and services.

Factories as a whole can be critical parts of the growth of many developing nations, providing the only real economic opportunity. A community’s life may revolve around the factory (or field). In Uzbekistan, schools will shut down so kids can pick cotton. In the United States today, a city would never interrupt education to send fifth graders to work in the fields, but for some communities struggling with daily survival, economic opportunity comes before education or even safe working conditions. A colleague from the International Labour Organization (ILO) told me, frankly, that that ILO doesn’t advocate for shutting down bad factories, for fear of leaving operators (the industry term for factory workers) without income. Instead, the ILO—like many big brands—focuses on remediation, helping a factory make incremental improvements and allowing the workers to keep earning in the meantime.

Buyers can put serious pressure on factory owners and managers, driving down wages and limiting the time and money a manufacturer spends on improvements. Sometimes factory owners or managers focus on the bottom line to the exclusion of the employees, as if they are interchangeable widgets themselves. But well-meaning managers and factory owners can face a shortage of orders and a demand for lower prices from buyers, and be forced to decide between cutting wages and cutting employees. Either decision has bad consequences for workers. As Marsha Dickson, a professor of fashion and apparel studies at the University of Delaware, recently told the South China Morning Post, “What we have seen over many years is that a manufacturer’s ability to use sustainable methods, provide good working conditions, better pay, fewer hours, and so on is greatly affected by the relationship it has with its buyers.”

As consumers, we, too, can aggravate price pressure. We all love a bargain, but this desire for a good deal, if combined with a blind eye to working conditions, can translate into clothing that’s been manufactured and sold at a low price that is, in fact, too good to be true.

I assumed that labor exploitation was more likely in a large factory setting than in a small cooperative or business because the sheer scale of the facility would make it hard to catch. With thousands of people coming and going, often on two or even three shifts, I was certain it would be harder for managers to keep tabs on the well-being of individual workers, or even to know their exact age. However, I came to learn that small factories face challenges, too. They don’t always have the infrastructure or the capabilities to manage safety and welfare.

The fashion industry, particularly apparel manufacturing, also can put a huge strain on the environment. A garment involves many pieces and processes—growing raw materials, spinning and weaving, dying, cutting and sewing, shipping, selling, and even disposal. There are many places along this route where the process can damage the planet. Cotton, used in 40 percent of clothing, requires a huge amount of water to grow. It can take more than five thousand gallons of water to manufacture a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. Synthetic materials, meanwhile, can be huge polluters.

According to a United Nations 2017 World Water Development Report, more than 80 percent of the world’s wastewater—including that of garment factories—is released into the environment without being treated. Communities near these facilities may be drinking, cooking, and bathing in tainted water, and local marine life may be poisoned. That wastewater, if treated, could be valuable for irrigation or other purposes. In the United States, some companies have moved away from environmentally harmful production practices at all their facilities, but others have merely moved the pollution offshore. As sustainable fashion pioneer Eileen Fisher has put it, “The clothing industry is the second-largest polluter in the world . . . second only to oil. It’s a really nasty business . . . it’s a mess.”

In the United States, factory workers are largely protected by national and state regulations, as well as by the voluntary participation of companies in various certification programs. In 1970, Congress passed the national Occupational Safety and Health Act, which was then signed into law by President Nixon. This congressional act created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, charged with setting and enforcing safe working conditions and providing training, outreach, education, and assistance. This national labor reform came on the heels of the outcry against rising injuries and deaths on the job.

But these laws don’t apply in the developing world. Lack of safety regulations and/or the ability to enforce them can lead to truly heartbreaking conditions, and even the death of factory workers.

In November 2012, a fire broke out at a nine-story factory in the outskirts of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, one of the world’s largest garment producers. This was a facility where many U.S. and European companies had outsourced production. The fire caught on scrap material and spread throughout the building. It took firefighters seventeen hours to put it out. More than one hundred people died.

There was an outcry around the globe. Then, five months later, an even worse disaster struck in Bangladesh. The five-story Rana Plaza factory building in Dhaka collapsed in April 2013. As the building crumbled, more than one thousand workers were killed. Thousands more were injured. This was the worst garment factory disaster in known history. Many of the largest brands and retailers in the world outsourced garment production to workers in this factory—including plenty of popular companies we buy from in the United States.

The tragedy caused global outrage. Activists and students protested the lack of safety for workers. Media in the United States, Europe, and Asia began focusing more on factories. The Guardian newspaper in London began an online section called “Rana Plaza,” focusing on ethical fashion. (The section continues to be an active forum for issues around ethical fashion today.)

THE GOOD FACTORY GOES GLOBAL

After the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh, many fashion industry leaders took a harder look at their own supply chain, agreeing with the protesters that “no one should die for fashion.” Two groups were established with this aim: the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, which includes brands like Adidas, Abercrombie & Fitch, Vistaprint, and Inditex (owner of Zara); and the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, which includes Gap, Walmart, Target, and VF Corporation, a fashion conglomerate that owns some of the world’s most recognized brands, including Vans, the North Face, Timberland, and Wrangler. Both the Alliance and the Accord are designed to address the health and safety of workers and provide opportunities for labor unions to have some measure of bargaining power in Bangladesh.

I had the opportunity to peek behind the curtain and see how jeans are made at a Wrangler factory because I’d recently been appointed to the new Responsible Sourcing Advisory Council at VF. While not involved in the Rana Plaza disaster, VF Corporation nonetheless decided to scale up its own work on supply-chain improvements after the accident. (VF does not own any factories in Bangladesh, but it contracts with approximately ninety factories there that employ nearly 200,000 workers.) VF created the council to gain insight into ways to improve the factories it sources from, not only in Bangladesh but also in the rest of the world.

I’d been invited to an initial meeting to learn about VF in December of 2015. I walked in (wearing my black Vans), wondering what this $12 billion corporation was trying to do and what role I might play. I learned that VF was determined to avoid contracting with producers that weren’t following strict environmental and social standards. VF also wanted to help factories it works with make important improvements in terms of worker well-being, workplace safety, environmental impact, and the use and disposal of chemicals. I was honored to be asked to be on the advisory council and to help with this aim.

WHAT NOT TO WEAR

HOW TO CHECK SOURCING

How can you tell if that cute shirt or sweater was produced by a person earning a decent wage and working in a safe factory versus someone subject to dangerous and dehumanizing practices? Here are some ways to find out.

Search Sweat & Toil: This app, a comprehensive resource developed by the U.S. Department of Labor, highlights commodities in specific countries that often rely on child labor, such as cotton from Uzbekistan and seafood from Thailand. You can check categories of products you use, see where the greatest risks are, then investigate potentially offending products more deeply. You can also learn about countries’ efforts to eliminate child labor.

See What the Brand Says: You can be a virtual Sherlock Holmes by checking company websites, which increasingly share a huge amount about sourcing practices, sustainability efforts, and other corporate social responsibility programs. The Gap, for example, has made “Gap for Good” a consistent message on its homepage, advertising the company’s actions on a valuable (and expensive) e-commerce page. Publicly held companies are accountable to investors and the law, meaning they have a vested interest in making good on the actions they claim.

Browse for Benefit Corporations: You can seek suppliers making a positive impact on society and employees by looking for benefit corporations, which are for-profit companies focused on pro-social and economic goals. You can search by state and choose to buy from a benefit corporation whose products you love.

Check Sourcemap: This new technology allows companies to visually display the journey of products and their components on a map of the world. For example, a cotton tote bag made in New York may show its YKK zippers coming from a facility outside Atlanta, Georgia; the cotton coming from a producer in Punjab, India; and the cutting and sewing taking place in Brooklyn, New York. Brands can add information about each facility, stating who owns it, how big it is, and whether it has any certifications, such as fair trade.

In 2017, VF Corporation began inviting the members of the new council to tour factories. What I’ve learned from my time at VF and through my own research and travel is that not all factories are bad places to work—just as not all small producers or artisan cooperatives meet good social and environmental standards. A good factory meets the basic needs of operators, including safety, freedom of movement, adequate light and temperature control and ventilation, and decent wages. Safe conditions protect operators—and the factory. Fewer accidents mean fewer production delays, and less bad press that can drive away customers. Paying laborers a decent wage can mean healthier, happier, more loyal and more productive workers, and lower absentee and turnover rates. A company-supported health clinic means fewer days lost to illness.

The efforts by VF are great to see and are part of a larger trend toward U.S. labor reforms moving overseas. Today, many big brands have made public commitments to improve their supply chain.

Sometimes leaders in emerging economies push back against the demand for better labor laws, regulation, and environmental accountability. They may point out that successful Western economies were able to develop largely uninhibited by environmental or social constraints. It’s true that many of our biggest brands in the United States were built before today’s labor laws were put in place, and that American industries grew without interference from other countries insisting we improve our ways.

But the developing world is running factories in a new era, one with a far greater focus on human rights and environmental sustainability. Today, good working conditions and a minimal environmental footprint are increasingly essential to doing business, in part because today’s growing supply-chain transparency means that bad behavior will be seen and punished by consumers and buyers who have a choice. Many companies will pull out of a country with rampant, unaddressed child labor or other exploitative practices. They might leave because their own corporate commitment to human rights clashes with the labor practices of a particular country or factory. Most major brands won’t buy cotton from Uzbekistan, for example, because the risk of having child labor in the supply chain is too high. New regulations also make old-style labor exploitation increasingly risky for the factory owners from a legal standpoint.

At To the Market, we always want to partner with organizations that ensure workers have freedom of movement, fair payment, and safe working conditions, and that abide by legal age restrictions. When assessing a potential new producer, we look at who referred us and evaluate whether that person can act as a good reference. Then we ask the potential producer questions about the operation, and we go visit it ourselves, have someone else visit, or look at previous audit reports completed by brands we trust. We’ve had unfortunate instances of discovering that a cooperative is outsourcing part of its production to a factory with questionable working conditions or one that doesn’t fit our mission of employing vulnerable communities. In these cases, we have to decline the chance to work with that producer.

Co-ops, for all the great work they do, generally can’t employ the same large numbers of people as factories can—and people need jobs around the world. When factories treat workers well, pay attention to their environmental impact, and contribute to their communities, they provide regular employment and products we can feel good about buying. A nation absolutely can develop economically while respecting human rights. It’s not only possible, but also increasingly necessary to remain competitive. Fair and just economic development is more humane and more sustainable than a system built on exploitation. When factories act as “good citizens,” they are important, positive drivers of economic and social development.

ON THE GROUND IN A GOOD FACTORY

The New Hampshire–based footwear manufacturer Timberland is a classic American success story. In the late 1920s, a Ukrainian immigrant named Nathan Swartz began working as a shoe stitcher in his new hometown of Boston. By the 1950s, he’d managed to buy his own shoe store, and a few years later, he brought in his two sons to help. In the mid-sixties, this shoe-focused family introduced injection-molding technology, great for making waterproof footwear. This led to the introduction of the now-iconic waterproof yellow leather boot called Timberland. The boot was such a hit among New Englanders that the Swartz family changed the company’s name to the Timberland Company and went on to add other styles.

Today, Timberland produces footwear in factories around the world, including a sixteen-building facility in the Dominican Republic. In 2011, the VF Corporation bought the Timberland Company, including the D.R. factory, which has been turning out boots for thirty-five years. Timberland D.R. is an example of a good factory, the kind of place where workers profess their loyalty, speak about the products with pride, and wear them. The acquisition by VF brought more resources to a factory that already had a focus on being a good citizen. “There’s been a shift toward sustainability and employee well-being, a big thing for VF,” says general manager Fernando Schneider, who was recruited from Brazil four years ago by VF to head up operations in the D.R. Schneider, who has forty years’ experience in footwear, says that while it was a growing industry in Brazil, rising labor costs and a strong real, the Brazilian unit of currency, drove many factories to Asia. Working in the D.R. offered him the chance to take a good factory and make it even better, in part by including employees in the CSR aims.

The Timberland production facility in the D.R. sits in a cheery industrial park in Santiago, the second-largest city in this lush, hilly Caribbean country that shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti. The Timberland campus resembles a factory outlet mall in the United States—long buildings branching off from paved roadways with grassy areas between. This park, however, contains actual factories (and no shoppers rushing around with their bags). The 3,300 workers currently employed here turn out 18,000 pairs of boots a day, or four million a year.

The office is in a two-story building with frosted-glass double doors, shiny tile floors, and a display of vintage sewing machines and shoe forms painted blue, aqua, yellow, and white. The air-conditioned reception area feels hip and on-brand; the receptionist is wearing a knit Timberland hat with snowflakes stitched around the perimeter (despite the palm trees and humid, eighty-plus-degree weather outside).

ALTERNATIVE FABRICS

OLD AND NEW ECO OPTIONS

Factories increasingly make clothing and accessories from a new breed of sustainable fabrics, many developed in response to the increasing consumer demand for eco-friendly materials. Check labels for these textile types:

Hemp: The plant is renewable, easy to harvest, and requires little to no pesticides to grow. Versatile hemp fabric can be used for soft goods like T-shirts and more structured items like bags. The manufacturing process doesn’t require heavy chemicals, making it a favorite of brands including Patagonia, Eileen Fisher, AG Adriano Goldschmied, The Lost Explorer, and Duluth Trading Company.

Organic Cotton: Organic cotton is grown without pesticides, insecticides, or GMOs, making it good for the environment and for the farmers growing and picking it. Another safe bet for fairly farmed cotton is to buy fair trade certified or from a producer participating in the Better Cotton Initiative, a nonprofit focused on improving the environmental and labor standards of cotton harvesting. Levi’s, Gap Inc., and VF Corporation all lead on sourcing cotton through the Better Cotton Initiative.

Pineapple Leather: Piñatex, a vegan leather alternative made of pineapple leaf fiber, is the brainchild of Dr. Carmen Hijosa, who pursued a PhD in her late fifties at the Royal College of Art in the UK. Pineapple leather is a natural, sustainable alternative that can be used in products ranging from automobiles to clothing to accessories.

Tencel: Tencel is a super-soft, biodegradable, rayon-like fabric made from the pulp of sustainable eucalyptus trees. You can find Tencel in pants, shirts, dresses, and more at the Gap.

The D.R. has seen huge economic development since the 1960s, after the cruel dictator, Rafael Trujillo, was assassinated in 1961. While the economy of neighboring Haiti continues to languish, the Dominican Republic grew throughout the latter half of the twentieth century and has experienced an almost meteoric rise in GDP since 2000. The D.R.’s GDP, a number that describes the economic value of all the goods and services produced within a country, is more than ten times that of Haiti. Today, this nation of ten million has the largest economy in the Caribbean and the ninth largest in Latin America. I attribute this development to free and open trade policies that encourage foreign investment in factories—as well as to booming tourism, agriculture, and mining industries, and remittances from Dominicans in the United States.

The prosperity of the D.R. is a great example of the value of private sector participation in development, and of government policies that create good business conditions. If you look at the World Bank’s development indicators for the D.R., you see a correlate rise in human well-being, including an increase in average life span and school enrollment and a decrease in poverty. The country has also experienced progress in the form of investment in environmental sustainability. As a visitor, you see development in obvious ways, such as smooth, paved roads all over the island, cell phones, high-tech stop lights, motor scooters, and cars. Santo Domingo has modern shopping malls and even a Bentley and Maserati dealer. Business investment is a good safeguard for the continuation of these developments.

The apparel industry has both contributed to and benefited from this growth. Since buying Timberland, VF has invested $23 million in health and safety initiatives and machine upgrades at the D.R. facility, and in social responsibility programs that impact the larger community. At the factory, you see safety measures such as sewing needle disposal boxes, first aid kits, and fire extinguishers. The workers, dressed in jeans and Timberland T-shirts of different colors, wear earplugs and safety glasses. (You have to don safety glasses and earplugs to tour the facility, too.) Some workers also wear gloves, finger protectors, and/or safety boots. Each machine has a little sign on it listing the safety equipment required to use it. There is a health clinic, as well as two full-time doctors on-site at Timberland, to help with everything from prenatal education to general health. Improving worker comfort can also involve a lot of little tweaks, such as adding a white lining to the high ceiling of a warehouse to reduce interior heat.

The spread of certification programs is one step toward improving factories worldwide, and Timberland D.R. operates in accordance with a handful of them, including the Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production program (WRAP). WRAP is based on workplace standards aligned with the International Labour Organization’s conventions and it sets guidelines for hours, pay, benefits, and the health and safety of employees. WRAP certification prohibits child or forced labor, and requires compliance with local laws and international importing and exporting rules. A WRAP-certified factory also voluntarily commits to passing along these expectations to suppliers and contractors. Auditors come in for three- to four-day-long visits to check compliance.

The Timberland factory is also ISO 14000 certified, another audit-based program related to environmental management and reducing negative environmental impact. Finally, VF’s own auditors can also drop in unannounced. All this oversight means that pretty much everyone at the factory is trying to live up to the highest standards every day. Maintaining all these certifications may sound like a lot of extra work, but certifications help businesses establish and maintain good protocols that benefit employees, the environment, and ultimately, the bottom line. As Schneider puts it, “They keep you on track.”

Boots start with leather, which arrives at the factory pre-dyed from tanneries in the United States or Europe that meet the company’s sustainability requirements. Skins of yellow, blue, black, and pink leather are stacked high in the sorting area, which resembles the self-service section of IKEA with its high ceilings hung with rows of fluorescent lights, its industrial-strength fans, and orange metal shelving units filled with bags and boxes of matching items. A big sign that reads “Sorting” in block letters hangs from the ceiling.

After the leather is sorted, it goes to the cutting room. Big, flat, metal cutting dies—each shaped like the front toe of a boot and labeled by shoe size—hang on the wall. You can hear the buzz of machines all around. Operators with yellow earplugs and purple T-shirts load the dies into the machines, lay the leather underneath, and then swing the press over the leather, pushing down to cut the shapes. They then stack together the cut pieces and send them on their way.

In the Stitching section (also identified by an overhead sign), operators sit on high stools with padded backs and metal footrests, facing pedal-operated sewing machines. The atmosphere is focused and calm. They wear earplugs and safety glasses as they carefully guide the leather. It’s hard work (as I discovered at Wrangler and also while visiting a nearby Vans factory), but the setting is quite different from a sweatshop-style cut-and-sew facility. In a sweatshop, workers sit hunched over machines, crammed into an airless room, squinting in inadequate lighting. Here, there is plenty of air and light, and workers looks healthy, occupied, and dignified.

In another section, a different group of workers, wearing red smocks over T-shirts, apply white glue with paintbrushes to what will become the upper section of the boot. They then clip the glued uppers to a conveyor belt that hangs overhead and loops around, like a crazy freeway system, or like a chairlift for boots. The uppers ride to another section, where they are clipped to a rack to await insulation. Here, operators pair thick pieces of insulation with the leather, squeeze them together, and run the “sandwich” through yet another sewing machine. (There’s no way I could get this material through one of those sewing machines!)

After insulation comes attaching the soles, a huge event in itself. It is unbelievable how much work goes into these boots! The classic waterproof yellow boot retails for just under $200 on the Timberland website. Even if you’re not someone who ordinarily spends nearly $200 on a pair of shoes, when you see the work that goes into making a pair of boots, this price seems totally reasonable. It’s definitely humbling to realize how much effort, material, and ingenuity goes into a pair of shoes we might easily buy for one season, then bury under other, newer purchases.

The room for making moccasins—the name Timberland gives its boat shoes—feels a little like a soccer match. It’s all men in this section, and they’re shouting to each other, arms flying through the air as they plunge two needles at a time through the leather. More than a hundred men are here, standing in long rows facing each other, each with a moccasin-in-progress on a metal form before him. The men shove the needles into the leather, pull the threads through the hole, spread their arms wide, and snap them tight. The moccasin workers are paid by the piece, a fact that adds to the energy and rush.

Like so many companies today, Timberland has a custom option, a way for customers to choose their own color combinations and logo applications. These boots are made in a separate section, and some of the combinations are really pretty. There’s a navy and gray pair; a navy and white pair with a gold Timberland logo; black leather with red trim; and a very flashy red and tan pair.

In another building comes the end of the line, literally, for these boots: the testing room. This small, air-conditioned space feels like a science lab. Here, a selection of boots from each lot is tested. In one test, two pairs of boots are clamped at the toes, while a machine moves their heels up and down again and again to assess the durability of the sole. In another room, a pair of classic yellow boots, their tops covered by a plastic bag, are dipped up and down in a tub of water to test for leaks.

VF is in the process of replacing old buildings with new, air-conditioned ones (as opposed to using tons of fans) and upgrading old machines. In one of these new buildings, two operators pore over each piece of leather, marking imperfections. Then the leather is laid on a new, super-high-tech machine, and a laser beam cuts out the pieces around the marks. It calculates how to get the most pieces and the least amount of scrap (the way you might position cookie cutters on dough to cut the most cookies without having to reroll).

This machine will replace the hand-cutting. We worry about mechanization replacing human workers, as if “factory made” and “handmade” are on opposite ends of the spectrum, both from a process and from an ethical standpoint. But in this case, technology will mean less fabric waste, and the growing demand for Timberland products, at least for now, means cutters here can be retrained for another section. The United States was once the main buyer of Timberland boots, but now Asia and Europe account for 40 percent of the boots and shoes made here, and demand in these parts of the world shows little sign of letting up. In the emerging-economy nations of Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and Russia, apparel sales grew eight times faster in the past decade than they did in the United States, Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

When it comes to mechanization, we can’t blindly cling to the processes of the past any more than we can automatically assume all factories are demeaning or that every innovation is for the better. We have to assess and adjust and take into account the sustainability of changes.

A FACTORY AS A GOOD CITIZEN

It takes a lot of energy to run the sewing machines and the heavy sole-gluing equipment used in mass production of boots. Timberland plants trees in Santiago to mitigate its environmental footprint and works to reduce waste by recycling the cardboard and paper used at the factory and selling other waste products. Profits from these sales partially help fund additional social programs.

Timberland has a long tradition of community involvement in Santiago, which the acquisition by VF has expanded. Involving employees publicly helps them feel proud of the company and of themselves, starting a cycle of goodwill, says Schneider. “It’s better for us if workers can see that we’re helping the community and if we get all the employees involved in community service,” he says. “We also try to help out in Haiti.”

Pedro Jimenez, the manager of Projects, Sustainability, and Corporate Social Responsibility at Timberland D.R., has worked at this factory for more than two decades. He’s excited about the increased focus on responsibility. “A big company can really transform how factories work in this nation. Everyone wants to do business with VF, so it’s an amazing opportunity to share these practices. We have a big name and reputation, which helps us get others involved.”

One such effort is the company’s Global Stewards program. Through this program, employees volunteer for two-year terms to help drive Timberland’s corporate social responsibility agenda at their specific location. A big wooden sign praising the Global Stewards hangs on the wall in the main office in the D.R. facility.

Involving employees in the broader social mission is part of creating a quality culture, says Jimenez, who talks excitedly about the CSR objectives and nonprofit partnerships. Jimenez highlights a handful of other programs that the company and its employees are involved in: painting and refurbishing a school for the deaf and teaching its students about environmental awareness; planting a garden and painting a local public elementary school attended by the kids of many workers; adding a water tower and filtration system at a school where bad water (not caused by the factory) was creating stomach problems for the kids; and building a plant nursery program at a new park in town, where employees help nurture 500,000 trees that will be donated to the community.

The new park is located directly across from a huge public high school, and kids cut through it after school on their way home, leaving behind the car fumes and honking horns of Santiago as they stroll on a stone walkway that winds through new-growth, indigenous trees forming a thick canopy overhead.

The company is also involved in all sorts of local projects with NGOs. One such group, Kites of Hope, has worked for a decade to stop impoverished children from working in landfills, where they would ferret out potentially valuable trash to sell. Kites of Hope helps these children get back into school. Jimenez talks proudly of one child from a desperately poor family who had been working in the landfill, finally returned to school through the help of Kites of Hope, went on to college, and is currently pursuing a master’s degree at a university in Spain.

Timberland also has a long relationship with a day center for homeless kids in Santiago called Acción Callejera. Since 1989, Acción Callejera has been providing a safe place for kids to shower, eat, learn, and get social services. It’s currently housed in a former private social club painted a cheery yellow, with ornate moldings, high ceilings, and a grand staircase. It’s a quiet, airy, special-feeling place. Acción Callejera also offers skill development through games and creative projects, as well as therapy, medical and dental assistance, and reading and writing instruction to help kids catch up on what they’ve missed in school by being on the streets.

When kids come in, they can leave their tools in a front locker; many of the kids have shoe-shining kits or other supplies for scraping out a living. Acción Callejera also works with parents, when possible, to help curb family violence or provide food. Many of the forty or fifty homeless children and teens who use the center today are Haitians, youth who were trafficked or perhaps sent by their parents, or who paid to cross the border into the Dominican Republic in hopes of a better life. The center often tries to reconnect these kids, aged seven to seventeen, with their families back in Haiti. It also offers services to another four hundred or so at-risk kids in the local communities.

Over the years, Timberland has donated supplies, furniture, and shoes to the center. Timberland is currently involved in supporting a microenterprise here that will combine the company’s own waste reduction goals with generating income for the center. A volunteer from the Japanese governmental aid agency Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) is designing key chains to be fashioned from leather—super-cute cats and other animals made from the many colors of boot scrap. The plan is for men in the local prison’s leather craft program to teach volunteers and some employees how to work the leather. (Kids over the age of seventeen can legally work, as can the parents of kids in the community.) Acción Callejera hopes to sell the key chains on site and through retail partners such as the local grocery store, and to use these funds to help pay for their services.

I’m excited about this key-chain project; small- and medium-batch makers like this are important. I love them so much that I’ve built a business around them! But they don’t provide every single thing we want or need, nor does small or artisanal necessarily mean ethical, as I’ve learned. My own personal style relies on the talents of so many people, both those working at factories for brands like Timberland or Gap, and those working in cottage industries.

Mass production is responsible for so many of the things we wear, use, and drive. I can’t imagine living without jeans (which I clearly can’t make). If I had to sew my own clothes, I’d be reduced to walking around in a blanket with a hole cut in the middle for my head. We need to move past black-and-white definitions of “good and bad actors” to buy the change we want to see—and to get dressed in the morning.