Where is our clothing made?

From an oil rig worker on the Canadian coast to a cotton spinner in Uzbekistan, hundreds of people can be involved in producing one item of clothes. 

Where our clothing is made

The UK imports around £20 million worth of clothing from countries around the world every year. Around 25% of this is estimated to come from China, but Bangladesh, India, Turkey and other European countries such as Italy also supply significant quantities.

These figures, though, only show part of the story. While clothes always have to say where they were produced, the ‘made in’ label only covers the final stage of production, where the clothing was completed and exported from.

Clothing supply chains

In fact, clothes have complex ‘supply chains’ spanning the globe, with numerous companies and potentially hundreds of workers involved. Many different countries supply raw materials like wool or cotton, process these materials into fabric, or provide other components like buttons, zips or buckles.

India and China are the world’s biggest cotton producers, while countries including Vietnam and Malaysia also export polyester fabrics. Polyester and other synthetic fibres are made from fossil fuels, with the biggest producers of oil including the United States, Saudi Arabia and Russia. 

Why does it matter where our clothing is made?

The clothing industry is notorious for abuse, from serious violations of workers’ rights to massive greenhouse gas emissions. It is therefore important to know where our clothing is made, so we can do more to identify, remedy and ultimately prevent problems.

Issues will vary around the world. In some countries factory workers receive poverty wages. In others, companies often dump toxic chemicals into rivers or waterways.

NGOs and intergovernmental organisations, retailers and consumers can all act on risks once understood at a country or regional level. They can ensure that workers and communities have support.

For example, governments in both China and Turkmenistan sanction the use of forced labour in cotton picking. Companies have therefore been called on to identify any cotton they are sourcing from the regions involved, and take steps to exclude it from their supply chains

Unfortunately, we usually know very little about where our clothing is made. Very few companies publish information on which manufacturers they use beyond direct suppliers, let alone where the raw materials are produced. For this reason, companies rarely have to take responsibility for funding and profiting from exploitative working conditions. It is often impossible to link retailers in the UK to violations abroad.

UK versus overseas production

So is it better to buy clothing manufactured in the UK or overseas? 

Workers in the UK tend to have better protections and rights than most other countries abroad. Basic conditions are enshrined in the law, such as the minimum wage, limits on working hours and the prohibition of discrimination.

In other countries, legal protections can vary greatly, and even where they do exist can be glaringly inadequate. Sri Lanka, for example, has introduced a legal minimum wage, but it is 10,000 rupees per month – equivalent to £26.11. That’s just 13% of the actual wage needed for adequate living, according to the campaign group Labour Behind the Label. 

Some countries even have laws oppressing workers, such as China, where unionisation is heavily restricted. 

For this reason, those manufacturing clothing in the UK likely have better conditions overall. However, just because a garment is made in the UK, it does not always guarantee adequate standards. For example, fast fashion brand Boohoo has faced multiple allegations that workers in Leicester manufacturing its clothing were being paid just £3.50 an hour, and did not have adequate protection from the spread of Covid-19. The company says that it has since addressed the violations. 

It is also worth remembering that the ‘Made in the UK’ label only reflects the very last stage in the garment’s production, where the item was assembled and sown. It provides no protection for those further up the supply chain.

If you want to buy ethical clothing, your best bet is to buy secondhand or look for a company that is taking real steps on workers’ rights – rather than just relying on ‘made in the UK’ labels for assurance. (We identify clothing brands which rate better for workers' rights below.)

The journey of a simple cotton t-shirt

Here we give a hypothetical supply chain from the field to store. 

For a cotton t-shirt the supply chain begins with a farmer, in this example from India. The country is one of the world’s largest producers of cotton, estimated to produce over 25 million bales each year.

The farmer will plant their cotton seeds in the months from April and harvest the cotton several months later. Cotton is grown by a mixture of big plantations and smallholder farmers. Big plantations rely on hired workers, including additional seasonal labour at harvest time. Smallholders rely mainly on family members, but also other members of the community, occasionally hiring some extra hands but often exchanging labour instead.

Once the cotton has been grown and harvested, it is sold in wholesale markets. Next, the cotton is purchased by retailers, who will take it to a ginning and pressing mill to be processed. Here, the cotton will be removed from its pods, and turned into cotton lint for shipment overseas.

In this supply chain, cotton exporters transport it to China, where it is again sold on and processed by spinners and to weavers to be turned into fabric, the cotton is ready to be sewn into garments for wearing.

This t-shirt is going to be tailored in Bangladesh, so fabric exporters will again ship the material overseas where it will be purchased for use in factories. About 10% of the UK’s clothing is imported from Bangladesh each year.

Even these garment factories are usually not owned by the t-shirt brand itself, which will instead contract local suppliers to make different designs. Tailors will sew the garment following specifications sent by the t-shirt brand. This stage determines the ‘Made in ...’ label. In this example the t-shirt will say ‘Made in Bangladesh’. Then it is shipped for sale in the UK.

This account is a linear version of a supply chain – from cotton field to shelf – but the reality is far more complex. Big companies won’t just use a single person or supplier at each stage: multiple cotton farmers will grow the raw material that the cotton spinner turns into yarn; just as multiple spinners will provide the yarn for weaving into fabric.

In fact, the explanation given above hasn’t even considered the non-cotton elements of the t-shirt’s design: for example, the origin of the dyes or the thread that are also part of its production. It also hasn’t considered any other inputs that are used, for example, to grow the cotton, such as pesticides or fertilisers. 

It is usually more accurate to think of a supply pyramid than a chain, with multiple elements, people and locations contributing to a final product.

While the brand that we recognise is responsible for sale and design, they may not oversee any of the production themselves. Each stage can be outsourced to other companies known as their suppliers.

How much does a t-shirt cost to make?

The distribution of profit throughout this supply chain is extremely unequal, with garment workers receiving just a tiny share, as this graphic below from Clean Clothes Campaign shows.

Nearly 60% of the cost of t-shirt usually goes to the retailer. The worker may receive less than 1% of the price of a t-shirt.

Other beneficiaries and costs include: brand (12%), materials cost (12%), transport costs (8%), intermediaries (4%), factory (4%), and overheads (1%). 

This graphic was created in 2012, but Christie Miedema from Clean Clothes Campaign, told us that "despite a growing amount of living wage promise on many brands' websites, very little has changed".

What is supply chain management?

The oversight that companies themselves have in terms of their supply chain will vary greatly. Some will have spoken to every supplier involved. Others will just receive the finished garment from the contracted factory, never knowing where the fabric, let alone the cotton came from.

Due diligence is possible and there are lots of measures that companies can put in place to monitor their suppliers. This monitoring of supply chains is known as ‘supply chain management’. 

For example, companies can state in their contracts with suppliers that they require a range of specific conditions about the fair treatment of workers to be met. They can build mechanisms to make it easier for workers in their supply chains to complain if they are treated poorly. They can work with a multitude of unions and NGOs to develop policies and practices that have been shown to create safer working conditions and make sure that this is monitored in the factories and workplaces that they rely on. 

Ethical Consumer’s rating for clothing supply chains

Ethical Consumer rates all clothing companies on their approach to workers’ rights in their supply chains. We look at a company’s: 

• Supply chain policy – we check what workers’ rights conditions a company includes in its policies for suppliers. Do these cover basic criteria like prohibition of child and forced labour and respect for freedom of association? And do these conditions apply only to suppliers producing the final garments, or also to those producing the fabrics and fibres?
• Supply chain transparency – we look at whether a company publishes a list of its suppliers and how in-depth this is. This is a valuable step towards enabling workers’ rights organisations and trade unions to alert a brand to issues and hold it to account.
• Approach to difficult issues – some problems are particularly difficult to address, so we consider whether a company is taking specific steps to tackle these. For example, how is it trying to ensure that living wages are paid in its supply chain? Does it collaborate closely with trade unions?
• Purchasing practices – many companies actively exacerbate problems in their supply chains by imposing unfair purchasing conditions on suppliers. They may constantly ask suppliers to cut costs, pay them late or cancel orders at the last minute. These kinds of practices make it difficult for companies to pay fair wages or offer stable employment. We expect companies to acknowledge this and have positive policies tackling such practices. 

We also look for news reports, complaints by NGOs or allegations by trade unions identifying major abuses in companies’ supply chains. For example, in 2021, human rights organisation Public Eye investigated the Chinese supply chains of fast fashion brand Shein, and found that workers were doing 75 hour weeks, in unsafe conditions, and being paid per item produced.

The investigation found, “Shein systematically takes advantage of the fact that these employees are prepared to forgo even a minimum degree of safety, free time and quality of life, because they feel that they don’t really have an alternative.” 

Shein told Public Eye, “We take all supply chain matters seriously”. It lost 50 points under Ethical Consumer’s workers rating for multiple third-party criticisms. 

Smaller companies (with turnovers below £50 million a year) are assessed against very similar criteria, but slightly less is expected of them to get a good mark because they have fewer resources than large companies to develop strong policies. If small or medium-sized companies have some clear measures in place which show they are offering better-than-average conditions for workers – for example if all products carry the Fairtrade or organic label, or whose suppliers are in countries known to be of lower risk for workers’ rights – they also receive better ratings. 

What are the benefits of an ethical supply chain?

Large companies can wield a huge amount of power. If their purchasing practices put pressure on suppliers to speed up production and lower the costs, this routinely leads to worse conditions for workers and the environment. 

But if companies support and reward suppliers who are pursuing good practice, conditions can improve. 

Benefits of an ethical supply chain for workers

In many countries, national laws protecting workers’ rights are very weak: much weaker than international human rights laws or conventions demand. Child labour from the age of 14 is in some places permitted, unionisation banned, or certain forms of bonded labour allowed. Even when suppliers are actually breaking the law, many governments lack either resources or the impetus to enforce penalties.

For workers, then, ethical supply chains are not just beneficial but vital. At the very minimum, they protect human rights. At their most effective, they incentivise suppliers to go beyond the baseline: for example providing child care, paying a decent wage, or giving education and training.

Benefits of an ethical supply chain for the environment

The same principle applies in terms of the environment. Many practices that cause serious environmental harm are legal or the authorities will turn a blind eye. But ethical supply chains alter the economic incentives. 

They make environmentally unsustainable practice economically unsustainable too. For example: if companies with ethical supply chains all selected green energy suppliers, coal and oil companies would increasingly lose out. The fossil fuel industry would become less viable.

More effective ethical supply chains will again go above and beyond this. They will disincentivise processes that put a long-term strain on the natural world, such as the ongoing use of agrochemicals.

This pressure can have a ripple effect: if companies require suppliers to have ethical supply chains too, respect for workers’ rights and the environment will spread through the pyramid as a whole.

How companies benefit from an ethical supply chain

But it is not only the environment and workers that win. Aside from the ethical obligation not to profit from abuses, companies themselves can benefit.

It is increasingly normal for companies to consider ethical and reputational ‘risk’ in financial projections for the following year. This shows that abuses in a supply chain come with a real financial cost.

If NGOs or national press discover problems in a company’s supply chain, that company can take a real hit. Ethical supply chains protect companies from losing their reputation in this way, and all of the customers and profit that go with it.