Sweatshops

For a while, I've been wondering where I could find ordinary, casual clothing that wasn't produced in sweatshops. I can't just look for a "Made in Canada" label anymore because those are so hard to find (not that I did look for those labels when they were easier to find).

Recently, I got an email from Mountain Equipment Co-op saying they'd released their 2007 Accountability Report. I knew they try to get their products from ethical sources, so I decided to learn more by reading Chapter 3: Manufacturing MEC-Brand Products. The report comes across as an honest assessment. There are problems in many of the factories where they get their products, but they're working to improve things. And the Ethical Trading Action Group ranked MEC 2nd out of clothing brands in North America. Not too shabby.

Which company was in first place, you may wonder? Reebok. I was kind of surprised to see that. I expected MEC to have a high ranking because it's a co-op that isn't so profit-focused, but Reebok seemed like a pretty ordinary company with no big efforts to promote its ethical standards. I think I'll be a bit more likely to buy Reebok clothing in the future.

I ended up visiting the website where this ranking came from and I searched for "Reebok". In my brief search, I didn't find the full rankings, but I did see that Nike and The Gap ranked high too. I thought these were some of the worst offenders. Apparently they got decent marks because they are starting to report on problems at their factories and they're making efforts to improve things. I wonder if Reebok is in a similar boat.