cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/676153
Textile waste is an urgent global problem, with only 12 per cent recycled worldwide, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Even less - only 1 per cent - of castoff clothes are recycled into new garments; the majority is used for low value items like insulation or mattress stuffing.
Nowhere is the problem more pressing than in China, the world’s largest textile producer and consumer, where more than 26 million tons of clothes are thrown away every year year, according to government statistics. Most of it ends up in landfills.
And factories like this one are barely making a dent in a country whose clothing industry is dominated by fast fashion - cheap clothes made from unrecyclable synthetics, not cotton. Produced from petrochemicals that contribute to climate change, air and water pollution, synthetics account for 70 per cent of domestic clothing sales in China.
China’s footprint is worldwide: E-commerce juggernaut brands Shein and Temu make the country one of the world’s largest producers of cheap fashion, selling in more than 150 countries.
I hate these companies so much. Last year, we fostered an 11-year-old girl who was essentially raised by YouTube. She was obsessed with fast fashion, wanted to have the hair of the Asian influencers she watched (she’s black with t 13 [I think] textured hair), and wanted all sorts of shit from Temu, Shein and AliExpress. It was so bad, she got annoyed at my ad blockers, as she had a fear of missing out of the “latest sales.”
These companies, and the advertising itself, have made her obsessed with instant endorphin fixes, and the moment she gets a credit card, she will completely ruin her financial future with it.
Are children in foster care allowed to spend their own money freely? Do they get an allowance (for you, or the government)?
We gave her an allowance at our own discretion, though I forbade Shein and Temu due to their tracking software.
Most of her addiction to shopping started before she was put in the foster system. Since no one wanted to raise her, she was often just handed a tablet and told to keep quiet.
To get to the core of your question, in just about every day to day occurrence, we were her parents and had the final say. The way to look at it is: we were essentially in a three parent partnership with the foster care program being the third parent that could veto us at any time, though they would only do so in the case of safety.