Anagha, 20 years old, makes clothes for Marks & Spencer, Tesco, and Mothercare.

Environmental campaigner and sustainable fashion blogger Esther Freeman wants you to know the faces behind the world’s cheapest and most available fashions. A new east London photography exhibition, launched by Freeman’s Fashion Mob campaigning organization, features photos captured by some of the world’s leading NGOs such as Greenpeace, ActionAid, and Anti-Slavery International.

Despite the ethical and green initiatives touted by many of the UK’s major chains, human rights and environmental abuses are still the rule rather than the exception. Freeman is critical of initiatives like Marks & Spencer’s ‘shwopping’ and she doesn’t think it goes too far to call them an example of greenwashing.

Boarding house for workers who manufacture school uniforms for M&S barely make enough money to live on.

“We obviously do have a massive problem with waste in this country and M&S is a big company, so if they can reach an audience that is throwing their clothes away and reduce that, that’s really important,” Freeman said. “But these women are being kept like slaves and M&S refuse to even look at the issue; it’s quite two-faced of them to not address these other issues at the same time and just go for the easy wins.”

While she doesn’t use the approach of telling people to avoid ubiquitous fast fashion chains all together, Freeman hopes the images in the exhibition will encourage conscious consumers to be persistent in asking major chains tough questions.

Greenpeace campaigner takes a river sample for testing.

Factories in China making products for Nike, Adidas, Puma and H&M dump waste into the river in Yinzhou district, China.

“At the very least put a visible message on their Facebook page, ask them what they’re doing about sweatshops. We have so much power to change them if we just use it.”

Image: Anti-Slavery International, Michael Hughes/ActionAid, Qui Bo/Greenpeace, Qiu Bo/Greenpeace

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British retailer Marks & Spencer and charity Oxfam create a giant Union Jack from unwanted clothing as part of their new scheme to get customers “shwopping.”

It’s quite a banner year for the British—the Olympics and the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. Lots of reasons to celebrate with the Union Jack and now, thanks to a campaign by British retailer Marks & Spencer and charity Oxfam there is one more.

To raise awareness for their new shopping scheme called “Shwopping,” they have created the world’s largest Union Jack flag from unwanted clothes. Using 2,100 unwanted items of clothing that was donated to the initiative, pieced together by local volunteers and school children who put together the clothes mosaic – measuring 65’ by 33’ – in East London in under 2 hours (see video below). All the contributed garments will be recycled by Oxfam.

So what exactly is shwopping? The idea is to encourage consumers to adopt a “buy one, give one” mentality when they are shopping, rewarding customers with gifts and prizes for donating an item of clothing to charity whenever they purchase something new from the store.

Old items are dropped into “Shwop Drop” boxes located inside Marks & Spencer stores and are then directed to partners Oxfam. The clothing is then resold in one of their stores or forwarded on to those in need in the Third World, or recycled into fibers to make new material. Absolutely nothing goes to the landfill. Oxfam will use the money raised to help people around the world overcome poverty.

The initiative is part of the Marks & Spencer Plan A program that was launched in 2007 in partnership with Oxfam. Since its initial launch, Plan A has already collected over 10 million garments. Aiming to create a new retailer culture beyond throwaway fashion where reusing, recycling or reselling old clothes becomes the norm. Their goal is to become the world’s most sustainable retailer by 2015 and to recycle as many clothes as they sell, currently more than hundreds of millions of items each year.

Find out more by visiting Marks & Spencer.

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