Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/610464
Directed by Andrew Morgan W orkers unions in the United States have lost a lot of the muscle they struggled so hard to acquire in the last century, and watching The True Cost makes it very clear what a slippery slope that is. It also makes clear how complicit the American public is, albeit unknowingly, in the exploitation that makes "fast fashion" so affordable. In the 1960s, 95 percent of the clothing sold in the U.S. was still made here. Now it's dropped to only 3 percent. Sure, clothing is cheap, but the cost is horrifi c. We've lost thousands of American jobs, and the $3 trillion fashion industry has made enormous profi ts by hiring cheap labor and getting unprecedented tax breaks. Cheap fashion rides on the back of workers—predominantly woman and often children—in countries such as Bangladesh and India who earn less than $3 a day and live with toxic byproducts of manufacturing. Cancer and birth defects are rampant; in just one village in Punjab, there are 70 to 80 mentally retarded children as a result of toxic waste, and there's no money to care for them. Add to that 250,000 reported farmer suicides in India due to problems caused by chemical companies such as Monsanto and you start to see the extent of the negative impact of our consumption on just one country. Our media bombards us with the message that, "The way to solve the problems in your life is consumption," notes renowned environmentalist Vandana Shiva. We can't all afford the big-ticket items, so we buy a total of 80 billion items of new clothing a year. Many more grim stories and alarming statistics are in this fi lm, but you owe it to yourself to watch it, especially if you have a fast-fashion habit. Your bank account and the environment will be grateful, and chances are you'll spend less time at the mall. (Bullfrog Films) —Abigail Lewis The True Cost FILM art & soul W hen Jon Whelan lost his wife, Heather, to breast can- cer, he became extremely conscientious about their two young daughters, who were now his sole respon- sibility. After noticing a noxious stink in their brand-new Christ- mas pajamas, he set out to discover what it was. The manufactur- er refused to respond to his questions, so he sent the pj's to a lab for chemical analysis. The fi ndings? They contained two phthal- ates—endocrine disruptors that have a known link to breast can- cer. Coincidentally or not, the lifetime risk of breast cancer has risen from 1 in 20 in the 1970s to now 1 in 8. Determined to discover how these toxic ingredients could possibly be legal in a children's product, Jon undertook a re- search project that led to a dirty little secret of the manufacturing industry: If a company categorizes a toxic chemical as part of its "perfume" or "fragrance" formula, it doesn't have to disclose that ingredient on the product's label. The chemicals in fragrance are known to cause infertility, birth defects, diabetes, learning disabilities and cancer, and can mu- tate DNA. Yet because of the fragrance loophole, the manufac- turers can completely hide these ingredients. There are 17,000 unregulated chemicals in use in the U.S. today. In cosmetics alone, 10 ingredients have been banned, whereas in the European Union, where corporations and lobbyists don't have a stranglehold on government, more than 1200 have been banned. And surprise, surprise. The American Chemistry Council spent more than $51 million from 2010 to 2014 lobbying Capitol Hill to block action on reform of the Toxic Substances Control Act. Ironically, even "Promise Me," the fragrance designed by the Susan G. Komen organization to raise money for its efforts, con- tains toxic chemicals that increase the risk of breast cancer. Stink! Is an important fi lm with an urgent message, but how could someone who is so concerned about toxins and health encourage his children to release plastic balloons, on which they write with marker pens, into the environment? Maybe Whelan's next fi lm will document plastics in the ocean, where most bal- loons end up in the bellies of marine life. (Net Return, Inc.) —AL Directed and Narrated by Jon Whelan Stink! FILM 34 wholelifetimes.com