Environmental degradation

Juliet Schor believes people tend not to connect clothing with environmental degradation.

But there are a variety of degrading effects of apparel production, such as pesticide-intensive cotton cultivation or the synthetic/toxic dyes used in almost all apparel production.

Leather is another example of a good which has gone from a luxury to a mass consumer good available at very low prices. Leather tanning is extraordinarily toxic and has enormous health impacts on tannery workers as well as the people dependent on the local water supplies which are polluted by the toxic chemicals used in tanning.