Week 2 - Be Green Challenge #2

Alyssa Vang - ASA 141 - Week 2 - Be Green Challenge #2

From the first week I thought that this challenge would be an easy thing to do because I haven't gone shopping in a long time. The only time I ever really need to shop for clothes is when I need it for special events. During the second week it was pretty easy for me, I tried to stay green also about other things also until I caught myself online shopping. Like I said before I usually only buy clothes when there is a special event that is going on (if I don't have anything for it) and in two weeks I'm going to Vegas for my birthday and I found myself online shopping. I was searching on the website not even thinking about the whole be green challenge because I was thinking "I need this" when I go but when I realized I loaded everything in my cart my mind was like "Omg, I'm shopping...I almost broke the challenge" and thank goodness that I was able to stop myself. Save me some money also. I immediately didn't think that I was shopping because when I shop I don't usually go online, most of the time I don't trust online shopping because my size is different and I have seen a lot of posts where people buy clothes online and it doesn't fit them. Knowing me if I were to have something like that I wouldn't even had return it because I wouldn't want to go through the whole process so I would end up buying a new one (hence why I don't do online shopping). I enjoy shopping in real life more just because I trust it and it's already with me. 

After a few years into college I started becoming more green then usual. As a designer I feel like you don't realize these issues and problems until you are exposed to them and in high school they don't really teach you these things of being green. Not even school but anybody in general should be exposed to these large industries that are mass producing fast fashion. Not everybody is aware that sweatshops are being created because of fast fashion. Since fast fashion has become the new thing that everybody is grabbing, most of them don't even know it's also called "fast fashion" they just believe that these clothing are made cheap and hopefully will last (I know because I use to be that person also). This consumerism is leading industries to continuously produce more items which leads to pollution on earth. Pollution is not the only issue on earth but conditions of workers are still low because companies that have these clothes don't know what they are going through like the films we watched in class "The Trust Cost" and "Made in L.A." their working conditions were the worst. In Holstiens article Santa's Sweatshop it talks about the issues of the sweatshop industry and how Nike is one of the largest sweatshops, and other large brand names like Guess. Even children are playing apart of these sweatshops. I wonder if people ever think about who hands were on their shoes and clothes? What would people do if they knew the process of who and how their clothes are made, just like how people buy organic foods because people are afraid of pesticides or other things that get put into their food? These working conditions are bad but because workers need money they proceed to stay and hope change will happen and because they don't want to lose time on working they also take their work to home. What are the impacts on these workers family when they see them bringing home work?