Made in the U.S.A., except not really.

As crazy as it sounds, I’d never given much thought to where my clothes were coming from until just recently after I’d taken a shower, and coincidentally scanned the tag on my towel. The words, Made in Israel, caught my eye quite instantly as a thought crossed my mind as to how many different countries my clothes came from. Of course, my new idea had to be taken into action immediately or else it would become a nagging voice in the back of my mind for days to come.

In any case, I began my adventure as I sorted through my supply of clothing with pen and paper in hand, tallying down every country my eager eyes could distinguish. Unfortunately, not all of my clothing had their tags, and so left me with a few items placed under the "Anonymous" category of my list, and therefore skewing my results by a bit. I made sure to separate my data according to "Pants" versus "Shirts" as I jotted down notes stating my observations on each experiment. (Science nerd, much? :P)

Beginning with the "Shirts" section, it turned out that a majority of my tops came from El Salvador, yet I realized that such shirts were the Cotton ones that I had accumulated from high school-related functions like homecoming, track&field, and basketball. These shirts were kept more as memorabilia rather than for the actual purpose of clothing me. After acknowledging that these T-shirts that had traveled so far and produced so much Carbon Dioxide were just sitting in the back of my closet, I jumped on the bandwagon and donated the T-shirts I decided I wouldn't ever find myself wearing nowadays. Gotta love good ol', Goodwill.

What also interested me about the results from the "Shirts" category was that only four of my shirts were made in the U.S.A. In case you were wondering, I own 57 shirts from 20 different countries, and if I did the math right, this means only about 7% of my shirts were made in the United States. (Math nerd, too?) This, of course, brought me back to my Environmental Science class during my senior year of high school('08!!) when my teacher informed us that the leading reason for the environmental issues of the world is poverty.

Now let me clarify where I'm going with this. The T-shirts I own that were made in the U.S.A. were considerably more expensive than the ones that were produced in say, China or India, because in those countries, large, corporate companies pay their workers less than they would have to if those companies had produced the clothing in America seeing as how the minimum wages in those countries differ greatly than they do here. Therefore the companies don't have to make up for the money they spend on workers by boosting up the prices like they would have to in America, and thus resulting in less business because of the high cost. And we can't forget the most important issue with generating goods from far away, they cause more carbon dioxide to be omitted into the air due to the long travel. Hopefully, I made some sense there. It's crazy, right?

Unfortunately, there wasn't anything interesting about the results I came up with in the "Pants" category. Mainly because I covered it all in the "Shirts" department, haha. However, in case you guys were curious, here are how many different countries my 23 pairs of pants came from: 16. Regrettably, only 2 of my pants were developed in the U.S.A. while the majority of my bottoms were imported from El Salvador (Once again!). Oy.

For those wondering, stores like American Apparel thrive on the fact that their clothes are made in America. The only problem is that they're rather expensive which is what links back to the "poverty" issue. I'm not trying to say that you have to be absolutely poor to not give a darn about the environment, but not everyone can throw down $100 for a pair of jeans that were made in America, when they could simply pitch in $30 on ones made in Taiwan. It's why America is the #1 country to sell foreign goods to; because of our mass consumption. Even if it means hurting the environment in the process. With all this in mind, try checking out your local garage sales, second-hand stores, and even swapping clothes with friends as a clever alternative to wasting the pollution and money necessary to purchase something brand, spanking new. It's all just WANT over NEED.

Remember not to go into the whole "Well, if I don't buy it, someone else will anyways" mindset because the way I see it is that if I don't contribute to buying that one pair of $100 jeans that was imported from Bangladesh, then the company that's producing that clothing will have one less pair of jeans to manufacture in order to make up for the one that I would have bought. Get it? Got it? No? Sorry, can't help you there, but if you do understand, then thank you!! Hopefully my article made some of you think before you buy, even if it's in a small way. Maybe to feel personally impacted by what I'm trying to say, go and tally up the different countries that make up your closet and post back!! We'd love to hear your results.

Peace&Love, Everyone.
-Dr. Green T