Ethical learnings School uniforms in the spotlight
World aid organisations are gearing up to investigate how ethical school uniform suppliers are. Julie Iles reports.
Australian non-profit organisation Stop the Traffik has plans to work with Baptist World Aid to put uniform suppliers in the spotlight of future Ethical Fashion Reports.
Stop the Traffik director Carolyn Kitto, said she has contacted 46 uniform suppliers across Australia and New Zealand to get information about their supply chains, but only three had responded.
Kitto said, ‘‘Uniform suppliers are able to be relatively invisible... and once they’re invisible they’re really hard to interrogate.’’
The three businesses to respond to Stop the Traffik were not able to show any ethical codes or any supply chain information that would verify there was no exploitation in the supply chain, Kitto said.
But that doesn’t mean of course that there is any problem, but Kitto is keen to investigate.
‘‘The whole concept of sending children to school in uniforms where other children have been exploited to make them, I just don’t think that sits very well and I think uniform suppliers are going to have to find a way through this.’’
Kitto said uniforms would be the easiest clothing to make ethical because they do not tend to change, and the move would not have to come with higher prices.
Australian fair trade uniform and sporting company RREPP founder Scott Goddard, said his standard polo sold for less than the average polo at a uniform shop, but that was partly due to school fundraising mark ups.
Moana Clothing is a whole-sale uniform supplier in New Zealand that provided anything from single items to entire kits for around 100 schools across New Zealand.
Managing director Paul Frampton said both his factories and fabric mills complied with international standards.
He regularly visited the factories making the garments in Indonesia, but had a New Zealand agent that checked on his fabric mills in India. He said because everything he made often has to be a particular colour, he needed to have a more consistent supply chain and used a limited number of factories.
‘‘Every time you do a different dye batch you can guarantee that it will be a slightly different colour from the last time you did it.’’
Frampton said though he is often asked by schools about his manufacturing process, he had never been asked by his clients where his raw materials came from, and it’s a question he would not be able to answer.
The recent Ethical Fashion Report commissioned by Baptist World Aid, found that only 7 per cent of the 330 businesses surveyed traced their raw materials.
Kapiti College principal Tony Kane is no stranger to progressive uniform policy, having introduced gender neutral uniforms to the kit.
But when it comes to thinking about ethically sourced uniforms, Kane said it was an issue that had not been brought up by parents, or considered.
‘‘We wouldn’t really have the resources to know how ethical or
Uniforms would be the easiest clothing to make ethical because they do not tend to change. Director of Stop the Traffik Carolyn Kitto
unethical our uniform are really,’’ said Kane.
Kane said he would be open to giving students the choice of fair trade if there was a supplier.
New Zealand start-up garment company Little Yellow Bird was founded by Samantha Jones who said she saw a gap in the market for fair trade corporate uniform items.
Jones said reports got consumers thinking about the topic of traceability, but it was important they did their own research. suppliers