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Comment by anu7df | Hacker News Reader

I understand the economic reality (aka greed) that led to this. But if production was made local again, how does one handle the environmental impact? Or is there no way to make a durable good pair of jeans without destroying the environment?

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There is always a way. However, taking care of the environment would add expenses to the production process and, as a result, the cost of the pair of jean would have to increase, as would the price. Once that happens, we would then skip that environment-conscious product for one that did not have that cost embedded.

I was reading an article about the price competition in airlines. People would spend 30 minutes looking for a better deal, to get a flight that would be $5 cheaper.

If we do that for a product that basically flies you through space, imagine what you would do with a product that is disposable.

I guess the hypocrisy is that we don't want to talk about that issue. We would rather not have immigrants picking tomatoes, or sewing jeans. We can always just transfer that production to China, where the environmental and human effects are invisible to us.

I agree to what you are saying, to an extent. Yes I comparison shop when buying air tickets and buy the cheapest, because I am not aware of the environmental impact differences between airlines. While shopping for grocery on the other hand I try to buy from local farmers even at higher costs, though i am gaining much more here as the local products tastes so much better. When it comes to clothes though, it looks like it is made in china or nothing. If clothes were made profitably in the US till 70's and real wages haven't gone up since then, why is it impossible to make clothes here without the astronomical price tags? The raw materials (cotton for example), as the article says, already comes from here.

My gut says that it's because the brands have gotten used to a fatter margin/profits, but then I'm no expert.

I think the market has changed as Americans have more disposable income and attitudes towards fashion have changed.

In the past, our grandparents used to buy those jeans you could buy at the hardware store. Remember those?

But now, do you think anybody who is seeking to increase the number of likes in Facebook or Instagram is going to be caught dead on those jeans? No. You want the latest "trendy" jean. But trends are fleeting. So it is a risky proposition for the jean maker. A lot of the expenses are not on making the jeans, but on brand development and marketing. Also, [insert your favorite TV reality show starlet here] will command a few millions just to appear on the show wearing those jeans. Where do you think the money comes from?

So I think it is a combination of a) the market has more disposable income but b) refuses to spend it on things that don't benefit "me and my appearance" and c) the market became riskier due to the branding risk and therefore is pushed to cut costs to maintain a reasonable return. And if Americans don't TRULY care about perpetuating Slavery in China or killing the environment over there ("hey, I do, really, really, but I don't want to know about it while taking a sip of my latte;" - checks iPhone for messages just in case someone texted me while you took me to some horrible place where there are what slaves - "no they are not slaves, my $50 gives them jobs okay?" sips latte again), then why would a brand increase their risk by increasing the cost profile?

So we see the enemy every time we look at ourselves in the mirror.

(Back to sipping my own latte)

It isn't clear to me that there is a significant environmental impact from producing jeans.

The article itself says almost nothing. It quotes a Greenpeace report, from 2010, that says that there is blue dust in the streets (oh no!), that dye is released into rivers (oh no?), and that producing one pair of jeans uses 3625 liters of water.

(For comparison, producing a pound of beef takes 7000 liters of water, and a pound of almonds 4000 liters. [1])

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/13/food-water-footprin...

The water usage might be a difficult one, but much of the impact in China is probably apathy instead of technical difficulty. They simply aren't making any effort to give people masks, reduce dust, and so on.

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