Fast fashion giant Boohoo ignored red flags over working conditions among suppliers and often has 'no idea where its clothes are being made,' an independent review found

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© Provided by Business Insider Boohoo founder Mahmud Kamani and business partner Carol Kane. Jerritt Clark/Getty Images for Boohooo

An independent review into fast fashion giant Boohoo's supply chain found "multiple failings" over pay and working conditions. 

Boohoo, which faced allegations of "modern slavery" in its supply chain in June, ignored red flags, the review found.

Multiple textile factory workers claimed to be paid less than the minimum wage, and around half of the suppliers and subcontractors investigated had no risk assessments.
But Boohoo did not break the law, and it didn't deliberately exploit workers, the review said.

Boohoo said the review "has identified significant and clearly unacceptable issues in our supply chain, and the steps we had taken to address them, but it is clear that we need to go further and faster to improve our governance, oversight and compliance."


Fast fashion giant Boohoo's UK supply chain has "many failings," including low pay, poor working conditions, and "inadequate" monitoring from Boohoo, an independent review has found — but the retailer did not deliberately exploit workers.

The British fast fashion giant announced the independent review in July after workers' rights group Labour Behind the Label (LBL) released a June report about factory conditions in Boohoo's supply chain. Workers at the factories in Leicester, central England, were being exploited and put at risk of catching COVID-19, the report said.

Separately, in July, The Sunday Times reported that workers in a factory making clothes for Boohoo were being paid as little as £3.50 ($4.38) an hour, far below the legal minimum wage.

The independent review, delivered to the board on Thursday, "has identified many failings in the Leicester supply chain," Boohoo said in a statement on Friday. For example, some workers had not always been properly paid for their work, the review found, and many were not fully aware of their rights.

Senior Boohoo staff knew there were "very serious issues" in its supply chain and ignored red flags, the review said.

Despite these failings, the review said there was "ample evidence" Boohoo has been taking action to address these problems for nearly a year, not just in "reaction to the negative publicity in July and August 2020." This included regular factory visits from Boohoo's compliance team to assess health and safety risk, and its supplier code of conduct, which had clauses on safe working conditions and wages.
Allegations of "lockdown breaches, exploitation, and modern slavery"

LBL said in June it had unearthed "lockdown breaches, exploitation, and modern slavery" in Boohoo's supply chain in Leicester, and said that many factories continued working at "100% capacity" throughout the pandemic because of "sustained orders" from Boohoo.

Following the report, retailers including Next, Zalando, Amazon, and ASOS delisted Boohoo products.

While the independent review found no evidence that the company had committed any crimes, it said allegations about poor working conditions and low rates of pay were "not merely well-founded but substantially true."

For example, one of Boohoo's suppliers didn't pay workers their paid statutory holiday pay, and multiple factory workers claimed to be paid less than the minimum wage, the review found.

The review also discovered that some suppliers failed to follow health and safety regulations, and had insufficient first aid kits and training, unhygienic bathrooms, and fire-safety violations. Half of the suppliers and subcontractors investigated had no risk assessments in their factories.
Boohoo "ignored" red flags

The review described Boohoo's monitoring of its supply chain as "inadequate," and said that senior Boohoo directors knew there were "very serious issues" about the treatment of factory workers since at least December 2019. The company "ignored" red flags and "did not move quickly enough," it said.

"By the time they began to take notice, it was too late."

Boohoo's rapid growth meant that its "weak corporate governance" couldn't keep up, said Alison Levitt, the senior lawyer who led the review.

In many cases, "Boohoo has simply no idea where its clothes are being made and thus has no chance of monitoring the conditions of the workers who make them," she said.

She added that "growth and profit were prioritized to the extent that the company lost sight of other issues," such as its social responsibility.

But the independent review found that Boohoo did not deliberately allow poor conditions and low pay within its supply chain, and it also did not intentionally profit from them.

The review said that "if Boohoo is willing to take a different approach to how it both views and interacts with the Leicester supply chain, it has within its power to be a tremendous force for good."
Boohoo: "We need to go further and faster to improve"

After the review was released, Boohoo explained a series of measures it would take after "extensive" consultations with stakeholders and shareholders. These include discussing supply chain compliance at every board meeting, working with more suppliers with a "track record of ethical and sustainability policies," and independently auditing more of its UK and international supply chain.

The company will also support workers' rights by establishing a Garment & Textiles Community Trust, which will provide hardship funds to workers in the local garment industry.

The company said in its statement that it regretted not taking action quickly enough.

Boohoo CEO John Lyttle said: "[The review] has identified significant and clearly unacceptable issues in our supply chain, and the steps we had taken to address them, but it is clear that we need to go further and faster to improve our governance, oversight and compliance."

He added that Boohoo has been "a major force in driving the textile industry in Leicester," and said the company wants to "reinforce [its] commitment to being a leader for positive change in the city."

Levitt commended Boohoo for "helping to democratize fashion."

She added that "Boohoo should also be congratulated for the revenue it has generated for the UK and for the fact that, unlike many of its competitors, it has continued to support UK manufacturing."

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Individuals Can’t Heal The Climate When Capitalism Is The Virus

Whizy Kim


We need to talk about our carbon footprint. Not how much of it comes from driving versus eating meat, but the popular concept of dividing up all the greenhouse gases polluting the atmosphere into the fraction that you personally own. Today we have an abundance of handy online calculators and apps that estimate your individual footprint for you. Everyone’s getting involved in the effort; one newly released app called VYVE is even backed by oil giant BP. The app’s home page succinctly captures the motivation behind calculating your footprint: “Take responsibility for your carbon impact.”

To be sure, we should take responsibility. A carbon footprint calculator can help bring an overwhelming global crisis into your backyard. You can compare the average carbon footprint of an American (around 16 metric tons CO2e) to that of neighboring Mexico (about 4 metric tons) and grasp that a high-consumption American lifestyle has a much heavier impact on the environment than others do. It can also be a good jumping-off point for those who want to take action but are unsure of what changes they can make in their lives.

But we also need to admit that the obsession around personal carbon footprints has been harmful. For too long, the dominant call to action has been encouraging the public to opt-in to a set of different lifestyle habits, through carbon footprint quizzes and by invoking the duty to take charge of your personal contribution. Despite this messaging, 88% of Americans still owned a car in 2015 and car ownership has continued to rise. U.S. airlines carried a record number of passengers in 2019. Even though there’s recently been a lot of coverage on the role of animal products in climate change, as of 2018, only 3% of Americans said they were vegan. In 2018, the U.S. also hit record-high energy consumption.

It’s not that shrinking your own carbon footprint isn’t necessary to avoiding climate catastrophe. It is. It’s that, given the state of things, dedicating so much space to the concept clearly hasn’t worked on a wide enough scale. We don’t just need to shave emissions here and there; we need to make them disappear at incredible speed. But according to a Washington Post poll from 2019, most Americans still believe small personal sacrifices will be enough. We have until 2030 before much of the climate damage becomes irreversible due to the triggering of tipping points that can collapse entire ecosystems. The damage is already enormous; more people are being harmed by the climate crisis every year. We’re not on track to keep temperature rise below 2°C of the pre-industrial era, the target set by the Paris Agreement in 2015. More likely, we’ll see a global rise of at least 3°C. Affluent countries like the U.S. need a revolution in the way we live, and that requires systems, not just individual lifestyles, to transform.

Even the most commonly recommended lifestyle changes often require people to swim against strong currents. The fact that most Americans rely on personal vehicles over public transportation might lead you to write us off as hopelessly obsessed with gas-guzzling cars — but cultural fixations don’t arise from nowhere. The post-WWII era was dizzy with incentives, policies, and mass infrastructure projects that made owning a car much more feasible and attractive than in other nations. To this day, a stunning variety of laws help maintain a landscape where having your own car is either the safer, cheaper option, or the only option. U.S. cities with well-connected, affordable public transportation remain extremely rare, partly because public works in general are underfunded, but also because groups that have a stake in the auto or fossil fuel industry use their piles of money to help ensure they don’t get built.

Even when it comes to reducing energy use in your home, there are larger factors at play that can outweigh the good you’re trying to do. A recent University of Michigan study found that in some states, the climate benefit from households consuming less energy than the national average was erased by their grid’s method of producing electricity being carbon-intensive. In Florida, for example, there’s less need to heat homes in winter, leading to energy savings, but its electricity production is more intensive in producing greenhouse gases than average. Power companies in Florida, as in many other places, have also been fighting wider adoption of renewable energy. The sunshine state only generated 1% of its electricity from solar energy last year.

Or take recycling. Americans recycle or compost about 35% of waste. Is the rate so low because of laziness? Maybe partly. But considering that over 90% of the plastic we were told to recycle wasn’t actually recycled — which Pepsi, Coca Cola, Nestle, and others are being sued for right now — it’s not fair to blame individuals.

Obsessing about reducing our individual footprints, then, is an exercise in missing the burning forest for the trees. It’s based on the hope that, by pointing it out, an enormous wave of people will be swayed to live differently — and that massive systems and corporations will also support that goal. Maybe this messaging convinces you to shrink your footprint down from 16 metric tons CO2e to 5 metric tons. Annual global greenhouse gas emissions are around 50 billion tons CO2e; only 49,999,999,989 to go. The climate crisis is a problem of mind-breaking scale.

And this discourse didn’t come about by accident. Even though scientists began loudly calling for climate action back in 1988, “carbon footprint” wasn’t a well-known concept until BP helped popularize it in the mid-2000s. The premise of a carbon footprint is that we’re all contributing to the emergency — so deal with your share. But what if we aren’t all equally to blame? What would the solution look like then?


The fact is, climate crisis denial is thriving. Attacks on the science of it may not be as fashionable as they once were, but the footprint of disinformation remains: many Americans are still fuzzy on whether scientists have formed a consensus (there never wasn’t a consensus), and whether climate change is mainly caused by human activity (it is). In 2015, an investigative report by InsideClimate News uncovered evidence that ExxonMobil knew about the climate crisis as early as the late 1970s, thanks to research conducted by its own scientists. Oil companies then spent decades spilling money into the effort of confusing the public. They didn’t need to provide air-tight proof that temperatures weren’t rising, or that it wouldn’t impact the Earth very much. All they had to do was nudge some doubt into the discussion.

These days, more of us accept that global warming is happening than in the past. Oil companies have changed their tack too, taking a public stance on how they intend to fight climate change. Instead of poking holes in the science, denial today increasingly takes the form of greenwashing — crafting an image that makes corporations seem more environmentally conscious than their business practices would indicate. But this kind of denial still works by spreading confusion; confusion over the best strategy to combat climate change, confusion over the degree of fossil fuel culpability, confusion over what “environmentally conscious” even means in our late-stage capitalist world.

In 2020, you can hardly find a company that hasn’t made a commitment to social and environmental responsibility, whether it’s by partnering with environmental groups across the globe or helping developing nations grow their economy sustainably. Keywords like “innovation” and “growth” get thrown around a lot. In 2000, BP unveiled the slogan “beyond petroleum” and soon launched an ad campaign around the theme that included TV commercials asking people about their carbon footprint and portraying the company as a beacon of progress. But do these amount to real efforts to address the climate crisis?

The answer is no, at least according to a recent analysis on the activities of ten major oil companies between 2008 to 2019, including U.S.-owned Chevron and ExxonMobil. The researchers found that none have been moving away from fossil fuels. At best, companies increased their share of natural gas production, which has been extolled as a temporary “bridge” to carbon-free energy because it emits 50% less CO2 than coal. But natural gas is not clean energy. It’s mostly made up of methane, a greenhouse gas that traps heat 86 times more effectively than CO2. Scientists now believe the amount of methane released by extracting natural gas has been underestimated by up to 40%. Currently, millions of abandoned, uncapped gas wells are leaking methane.

The 2008-2019 analysis found that “not a single major oil and gas firm has invested more than 0.1% of revenues into renewable energy” during this period. In 2011, BP sold off its solar assets, facing financial difficulties in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It recently announced a commitment to more renewables investment — but whether it pans out remains to be seen.

Oil companies haven’t just continued to extract fossil fuels; they’ve been busy constructing new pipelines and developments, which has major implications for future carbon emissions — once a new development is built, it’s likely to be extracting for at least the time it takes to recoup the cost of building it. All ten companies analyzed by researchers “are planning significant expansion of oil and gas assets, totalling some USD$1.4 trillion in the period 2020-2024.”

The podcast Drilled, which describes itself as “a true-crime podcast about climate change,” lays out how the deception of the fossil fuel industry is an obstacle to the systemic change we need. In its first season, it references a 2018 issue of the New York Times Magazine that was wholly dedicated to climate change as a case study in diffusing blame. “The story makes the problem of climate change global,” notes Drilled host and producer Amy Westervelt. “We all failed to act, not just the handful of men in power. The solution, or lack thereof? Individual. It’s human nature. We make short-sighted decisions and there’s nothing we can do to change that.”

The fact is that since 1988, just 100 fossil fuel companies have produced roughly 70% of industrial greenhouse gas emissions. We know that burning fossil fuels is pretty much incompatible with having a future. Yet today, about 80% of energy demand in the U.S. is still met through fossil fuels. To be fair, it’s not solely the fault of oil companies. In 2015 alone, the U.S. government gave the industry $649 billion in subsidies. In 2018, we got the dubious honor of becoming the largest producer of crude oil in the world, thanks to the modern fracking boom. At least 82,000 fracking wells have popped up across the country since 2005.

And yet too often, we nod along with blaming the climate crisis vaguely on “human nature.” This fatalistic view isn’t just a dead end, it suggests we apologize for existing at all, especially when coupled with the myth that overpopulation is a leading cause of rising temperatures. Man-made climate change is a modern emergency representing a sliver of the 6,000 years human civilizations have existed. The start of man-made warming coincides with the explosion of industrial capitalism in just a handful of wealthy countries — whose incredible riches were accumulated through the systematic looting of labor and resources from around the world. While we all have to act, the idea that we all shoulder the blame for a crisis spurred by deregulated capitalism doesn’t create solidarity. It’s not showing humility or personal integrity. It only upholds the people and systems that have perpetuated climate change, and creates fog around those who have been most violated by it.
DashDividers_1_500x100

By seeing climate as a human rights problem, not just an environmental one, a clearer path opens up. For environmental group 350.org, the goal is simple: no more fossil fuels. “The climate change is a systemic crisis, so we need systemic solutions,” says Thanu Yakupitiyage, head of U.S. communications at 350.org.

“Ultimately we’re talking about capitalism, right?” she says. “When we talk about consumption, we’re talking about the level at which we consume and the level at which we’re engaged in these capitalist forces.” It’s another reason why corporate greenwashing is dangerous; promoting your product as being “greener” than another one perpetuates the idea that the solution is to consume differently, not consume less.

The climate justice movement isn’t new, but it has gained more attention in the past few years. It points to the perpetrators of the crisis, and also demands restitution. At the 2009 U.N. climate change conference, several nations in Latin America and the Caribbean began calling for wealthy nations like the U.S. to pay their climate debt. The logic is that the economic growth of the U.S. has been achieved at the expense of global wellbeing. When we say modern climate change is caused by human activity, we mean economic activity. In its rush to grow fast and never stop growing, the U.S. has single-handedly released a quarter of all the greenhouse gas pollution since 1750. “350 really believes in climate reparations,” says Yakupitiyage. “The fossil fuel industry must pay for the damage they’ve caused to our communities and climate.”

Climate change is also entangled with racism and structural violence. In the U.S., people of color are more likely to live in polluted places. An area along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, which has a majority Black population, is known as “Cancer Alley” due to soaring cancer rates connected to the abundance of petrochemical factories. In order to extract resources to be consumed by wealthy economies, indigenous homes and livelihoods are ripped apart. Later, they are often among the earliest to face the consequences of global warming.

Then there’s the violence that comes from resistance. According to environmental rights NGO Global Witness, at least 212 environmental activists were killed around the world last year, a vast proportion of them indigenous people defending their land. One of the most infamous acts of environmental violence was committed against the Ogoni Nine in 1995. The nine men were members of the Ogoni ethnic group in southeastern Nigeria and involved in the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), which demanded reparations from the oil industry for polluting their community until they could no longer farm or fish. The government brutally cracked down on protestors, allegedly encouraged by Shell. When four local Ogoni chiefs were killed by a mob, the nine activists, including MOSOP leader Ken Saro-Wiwa, were put on trial and executed by the Nigerian government. Shell has been accused by Amnesty International of helping frame the activists, and according to the testimony of their widows, prosecution witnesses later admitted they had been bribed with money and job offers at Shell.

“We really must see the climate crisis as inherently linked to all forms of injustice, from racism to anti-immigrant sentiment,” says Yakupitiyage. Immigration is a lens that Yakupitiyage has particular expertise in. Before she became involved in the climate justice movement around the time of the 2014 People’s Climate March, she was working in immigrant rights. “It’s really important that the climate movement is both calling for the protection and safety of people, and also advocating for people’s right to migrate,” she says. “You see within nations like Bangladesh or India, in places in South America, people moving because of drought or because of floods. It’s estimated that up to 1 billion people will be displaced because of climate change by the year 2050.”

Anti-immigration policies deny the reality that a great climate migration has already begun, as well as the cause of it. “Why is it that people are moving in the first place? They’re moving because of the fossil fuel industry and companies in the Global North who’ve made conditions in the Global South even worse,” says Yakupitiyage.

Of course, transforming political ideology and holding corporate power accountable isn’t easy. In 1993, 30,000 locals of Lago Agrio, Ecuador filed a landmark class-action suit against Chevron, accusing the company of dumping 18 billion gallons of wastewater and 17 billion gallons of oil into their community. An Ecuadorian court ordered Chevron to pay $18 billion to the plaintiffs in 2011, later reduced to $9.5 billion. That same year, Chevron filed a fraud case against Steven Donziger, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs, claiming he had bribed the judge. According to documents obtained by The Intercept, Chevron sought to demonize Donziger. He was found guilty, disbarred, his bank accounts have been frozen, and he was put under house arrest in August 2019. Since the class-action suit, Chevron has withdrawn all its business from Ecuador, which has made it difficult for the plaintiffs to collect on the $9.5 billion.

Saving the planet will clearly be a herculean effort, but it’s the fight of our lifetime. That’s exactly why the climate justice movement has to grow. The best way to lower your carbon footprint is to stop being an individual and become a part of a movement. It requires demanding more from elected leaders — refusing to settle for “at least it’s better than nothing” — and ensuring that, at the very least, the Green New Deal passes. It means clashing with institutions, recognizing that reducing your individual consumption is important but not the same thing as justice.

“It can be intimidating to take on these huge industries,” Yakupitiyage says. “But I think where I found security is in being part of a movement. A movement that has each other’s backs.” When she feels defeated, she finds strength in activists who’ve helped pave the way for a more equitable society, against incredible odds. “Folks like Assata Shakur, Angela Davis, Audre Lorde,” she says. “I look at their teachings in terms of what it means to be intimidated, and to be jailed, and to be told that you’re crazy.”

When asked whether the fossil fuel industry is intimidated by the climate justice movement, Yakupitiyage’s answer is immediate. “Absolutely.”

‘We Work Until We Are Dying’: Palm Oil Labour Abuses Linked To Top Brands

Workers claim they've been cheated, threatened and forced to work off insurmountable debts despite some only making $2 per day.

• Margie Mason and Robin McDowellAssociated Press via CP

ORE HUIYING/AP VIA CP

An Indonesian migrant worker rests after working on a palm oil plantation run by the government-owned Felda in Malaysia in early 2020.

PENINSULAR, Malaysia — An invisible workforce of millions of labourers from some of the poorest corners of Asia toil in the palm oil industry, many of them enduring various forms of exploitation, with the most serious abuses including child labour, outright slavery and allegations of rape, an Associated Press investigation has found.

In Malaysia and Indonesia, these workers tend the heavy reddish-orange palm oil fruit that makes its way into the supply chains of many iconic food and cosmetics companies like Unilever, L’Oreal, Nestle and Procter & Gamble.

Together, the two countries produce about 85 per cent of the world’s estimated $87 billion (US$65 billion) palm oil supply.

Palm oil is virtually impossible to avoid. Often disguised on labels as an ingredient listed by more than 200 names, it can be found in roughly half the products on supermarket shelves and in most cosmetic brands. It’s contained in paints, plywood, pesticides and pills. It’s also present in animal feed, biofuels and even hand sanitizer.

The AP interviewed nearly 130 current and former workers from two dozen palm oil companies who came from eight countries and laboured on plantations across wide swaths of Malaysia and Indonesia. Almost all had complaints against their treatment, with some saying they were cheated, threatened, held against their will or forced to work off unsurmountable debts. Others said they were regularly harassed by authorities, swept up in raids and detained in crowded government facilities.

They included members of Myanmar’s long-persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority, who fled ethnic cleansing in their homeland only to be sold into the palm oil industry. Fishermen who escaped years of slavery on boats also described coming ashore in search of help, only to be trafficked onto plantations ― sometimes with police involvement. They said they worked for little or no pay and were trapped for years.

This has been the industry’s hidden secret for decades.Gemma Tillack, Rainforest Action Network

The AP used the most recently published data from producers, traders and buyers of the world’s most-consumed vegetable oil, as well as U.S. Customs records, to link the labourers’ palm oil and its derivatives from the mills that process it to the supply chains of top Western companies like the makers of Oreo cookies, Lysol cleaners and some of Hershey’s chocolatey treats.

AP reporters witnessed some abuses firsthand and reviewed police reports, complaints made to labour unions, videos and photos smuggled out of plantations and local media stories to corroborate accounts wherever possible. In some cases, reporters tracked down people who helped enslaved workers escape. More than a hundred rights advocates, academics, clergy members, activists and government officials also were interviewed. 

Though labour issues have largely been ignored, the punishing effects of palm oil on the environment have been decried for years. Still, giant Western financial institutions like JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank and the Vanguard Group have continued to help fuel a crop that has exploded globally, soaring from just five million tons in 1999 to 72 million tons today, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Sometimes they invest directly but, increasingly, third parties are used like Malaysia-based Malayan Banking Berhad, or Maybank, one of the world’s biggest palm oil financiers. It not only provides capital to growers but, in some cases, processes the plantations’ payrolls, with arbitrary and inconsistent wage deductions that are considered indicators of forced labour.

ORE HUIYING/AP VIA CP    

A worker bathes at a palm oil plantation run by government-owned Felda in peninsular Malaysia in early 2020. 

“This has been the industry’s hidden secret for decades,” said Gemma Tillack of the U.S.-based Rainforest Action Network, which has exposed labour abuses on palm oil plantations. “The buck stops with the banks. It is their funding that makes this system of exploitation possible.”

The AP found widespread labour abuses on plantations big and small, including some that meet certification standards set by the global Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), an association that promotes ethical production ― including labour practices ― and whose members include growers, buyers, traders and environmental watchdogs.

Some of the same companies that display the RSPO’s green palm logo signifying its seal of approval have been accused of continuing to grab land from Indigenous people and destroying virgin rainforests that are home to orangutans and other critically endangered species.

As global demand for palm oil surges, plantations are struggling to find enough labourers, frequently relying on brokers who prey on the most at-risk people. Many foreign workers end up fleeced by a syndicate of recruiters and corrupt officials and often are unable to speak the local language, rendering them especially susceptible to trafficking and other abuses.

They sometimes pay up to $6,700 (US$5,000) just to get their jobs ― an amount that could take years to earn in their home countries ― often showing up for work already crushed by debt. Many have their passports seized by company officials to keep them from running away, which the United Nations recognizes as a potential flag of forced labour.

Countless others remain off the books, including migrants working without documentation and children who AP reporters witnessed squatting in the fields like crabs, picking up loose fruit alongside their parents. Many women also work for free or on a day-to-day basis, earning the equivalent of as little as $2 a day, sometimes for decades.

‘It makes us very sad’

The AP talked to some female workers who said they were sexually harassed and even raped in the fields, including some minors.

The workers AP interviewed came from Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, the Philippines and Cambodia, along with Myanmar, which represents the newest army of exploited labourers. The AP is not fully identifying them or their plantations to protect their safety.

“We work until we are dying,” said one worker sitting in a room with two other colleagues at a Malaysian plantation run by Felda, a government-owned company. Their eyes filled with tears after learning Felda was one of the world’s largest palm oil producers.

“They use this palm oil to make all these products,” he said. “It makes us very sad.”

The Malaysian government was contacted by the AP repeatedly over the course of a week, but issued no comment. Felda also did not respond, but its commercial arm, FGV Holdings Berhad, said it had been working to address workers’ complaints, including making improvements in recruitment practices and ensuring that foreign labourers have access to their passports.

Nageeb Wahab, head of the Malaysian Palm Oil Association, a government-supported umbrella group, called the allegations against the industry unwarranted: “All of them are not true,” he said.

The Indonesian Palm Oil Association said it has been striving to improve labour conditions for the last five years. Soes Hindharno, spokesman for the country’s Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration, said any company violating government rules and regulations on serious issues like child labour and not paying women workers could face sanctions, including having their operations shut down.

Unilever, L’Oreal, Nestle and Procter & Gamble all said they do not tolerate human rights abuses and investigate allegations raised about companies that feed into their supply chains, taking appropriate action when warranted, which can include working with suppliers to improve conditions or suspending relationships when grievances are not properly addressed.

Deutsche Bank reiterated its support of human rights, Vanguard said it monitors companies in its portfolio for abuses, and JPMorgan Chase declined comment.

Maybank expressed surprise at the criticism of its standards, saying that “we reject any insinuation that Maybank may be involved in any unethical behaviour.”

This story was funded in part by the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at CUNY’s Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.

With files from Sopheng Cheang and Gemunu Amarasinghe.

Gen Z’s Radical, Virtual Quest To Save The Planet

Molly Longman

It’s time to wake up. On Global Day of Climate Action, VICE Media Group is solely telling stories about our current climate crisis. Click here to meet young climate leaders from around the globe and learn how you can take action.

Many people first started paying attention to the youth climate movement in 2018, when now-17-year-old Greta Thunberg began protesting outside Swedish Parliament in her home country. Her small act of civil disobedience had a ripple effect. Students across the globe began striking by refusing to attend classes, which eventually turned into the “Fridays For Future” movement.

It may sound like a ploy to get out of chemistry, but it’s not. Gen Z ranks climate change as the most important issue of our time, according to last year’s Amnesty International survey of more than 10,000 members of 18- to 25-year-olds. “Older generations were not out there protesting in the streets on this issue the way Gen Z is,” asserts Rebecca Bromley-Trujillo, PhD, who teaches political science and environmental policy at Christopher Newport University. These under-25 activists have formed organizations like Fridays For Future and Zero Hour, a movement that focuses on helping young people take action. Others have sued their state or even the United Nations. They’ve staged hunger strikes. They’ve performed spoken word poetry.

These kids care. A lot.

“Younger people see the total mess that Boomers and, to a lesser extent, millennials have left, and they have to figure out how to fix it,” says Jessica Green, PhD, an associate professor focused on climate governance at the University of Toronto. That’s a heavy burden to bear. Many self-report feeling eco-anxiety, or “a chronic fear of environmental doom,” according to the American Psychological Association.

“For some Gen Z folks with whom I work, their eco-anxiety is related to a continuation of generations’ worth of oppression,” notes Kristi E. White, PhD, a clinical health psychologist with a focus on how climate change affects well-being. She’s referring specifically to BIPOC communities, which “have always been the most severely impacted by sustainability failures.” Others are confronting the more recent realization that they’re “inheriting many generations’ worth of avoidance and poor stewardship,” she says.

While not every young adult is channeling their energy into activism, the post-millennials who are seem particularly ardent. Their attitude is: “The world is falling apart right now, and if you think it’s okay, what’s wrong with you?” Green says.

We talked to leading climate activists in the U.S. — most of whom still can’t buy a legal drink — about how they got their start, what their activism looks like mid-pandemic, and why they think the youth are such incredible change-makers.

 

© Provided by Refinery29
Alexandria Villaseñor

Age: 15

Location: New York City, NY

Activism History: Founder of Earth Uprising; co-founder of the US Youth Climate Strike, a part of the Fridays for Future movement; filed a complaint against the United Nations, along with Greta Thunberg and 15 other climate activists.

On getting her start in activism

“When I was young, 5 or 6, I wanted to be a writer. I never would have expected that I’d end up being a climate activist at 15. But in 2018, I started striking at the end of the week as part of Fridays for Future. People called me alarmist and dramatic. I would tell them that, in the future, school wouldn’t matter anymore because we’d be running from multiple crises. And here we are. That future is now. Even if COVID didn’t exist, the entire West Coast couldn’t go because of the air quality. It would be so unsafe. And other places are beginning to see catastrophic events because of climate change.

“The fires show us just how quickly we need to take action. I have a lot of family out in California. I was actually there over the last few months, very close to the LNU Lighting Complex fire. I’m very lucky to have been able to leave a few weeks ago. But as an asthma sufferer, I’m still recovering from the smoke inhalation. The scientists are warning us about the future and that it will get so much worse. We should listen to them.”

On channeling fear for the future into action

“I feel a sense of eco-grief. For me, that means a feeling of sadness and loss. I’m seeing the collapse of our biodiversity. I recently wrote a chapter in the book All We Can Save, and doing that reminded me of the Monarch butterflies in California. When I was growing up every year in the springtime, we’d get just so many butterflies. I’d see them on the playground, and in the fields, and it was always so exciting. But the population has declined drastically in the past couple of years. And so it’s just extremely upsetting to see those things that were very personal, and know that future young people won’t be able to experience them.

“One thing that helps my eco-grief is taking direct action. Going out and protesting.”

On why younger generations make great activists

“Young people are forces when it comes to climate change because we speak very directly and bluntly. We have resources such as technology and social media and use them to our advantage when it comes to organizing and connecting with each other. Especially during the pandemic, we’ve been using social media to our advantage. Doing initiatives and campaigns, and putting pressure on politicians and those in power.

“Youth activists think more outside the box, and don’t think just in terms of what’s ‘politically possible.’ It’s not only that we’ll be using the planet the longest — although things will get worse in our lifetime. We’ll see the worst consequences of climate change.

“The youth climate movement has also seen how our movement needed to grow and be more intersectional, that it needs to have more people of color and people being affected directly by the climate crisis at the front lines. Because of that, I think that we’ll come out of this pandemic even stronger.”
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Sophia Kianni

Age: 18

Location: McLean, Virginia

School: Indiana University, public policy analysis major

Activism History: Founder of Climate Cardinals; Youngest member of the United Nations Secretary-General’s Youth Advisory Group On Climate Change

On getting her start in activism

“I first got into climate activism in sixth grade. My dad and I have a tradition of stargazing together. He’s super into astronomy, and we’d go out every night when I was little and he’d talk to me about the different constellations. But when I was visiting my grandmother’s house in the capital of Iran, Tehran, I went out and couldn’t see the stars because of the air quality. I thought, That’s so sad.

“The climate crisis is affecting the Middle East, with temperatures rising more than twice the global average. I was struck by the fact that my relatives weren’t really aware of what was happening and didn’t know about climate change. And so for the past, like, six years, I’ve been translating climate information to help educate them.

“And it’s not just my relatives. I found a study that showed only 5% of Iranian university students could properly explain the greenhouse gas effect. I saw there was clearly an issue, and I couldn’t find much climate change education that was available in Farsi, the language they speak. So, I founded Climate Cardinals, where I work with volunteers to translate climate information into 109 different languages. Recently we partnered with the UN’s environmental program to translate their Youth #ForNature Manifesto that they’re going to be releasing soon in different languages.”

On why younger generations make great activists

“I think it’s because we have more to lose. We’re going to be around much longer than the politicians who are in their 60s and 70s who haven’t taken action on the climate crises. They just don’t have as much as stake. Hopefully the rest of us have many years left on this planet, and we don’t want to continue to live knowing it’s getting worse every year.”

On going to extremes to raise awareness

“Last year, at 17, I got up at 5 a.m. and took an Uber by myself to DC instead of going to school. I was the youngest person and one of the only women to join a week-long hunger strike at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. I was demanding that she take action, and wanted an on camera, hour-long meeting with her to discuss the climate emergency. She was calling the Green New Deal ‘The Green Dream, or whatever.’ I could only join in DC the first day because I couldn’t skip more school, but I continued the hunger strike. I had such a horrible headache by the time I stopped. The first thing I finally had was a strawberry and almond milk smoothie because I didn’t want to overwhelm my body.

“Sometimes you have to escalate things to raise awareness, to get people and press to pay attention. And the climate crisis is being escalated every year, so.”

On inciting change during a pandemic

“There’s no substitute for nonviolent, civil disobedience like the way Fridays for Future was doing with their weekly protests. But there are a lot of ways to continue activism virtually, during COVID. I’ve been very much focused on continuing to grow Climate Cardinals during this time, and our transcriptions can be done from the safety of your home. Anyone who cares about climate change should know there are still ways to get involved, and I’d urge them to take the first step and put themselves out there.”
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Meghna Shankar

Age: 19

Location: Redmond, Washington

School: University of Washington, physics and computer science major

Activism History: Organizer at Fridays For Future Seattle; Member of Sunrise UW

On getting her start in activism

“In fifth grade, I read Al Gore’s book on climate change, Our Choice. The book was a gift from my dad. It got me interested in the cause. Then in high school, I heard about Greta Thunberg’s strike for global action on March 15, 2019, so I started organizing a protest. We walked out, went to our city hall, and spoke to our mayor and our city council president about our concerns about climate change. I believe students in [112 countries] also walked out in solidarity with the movement that day. I think it really shows that many young people are willing to put their education at stake for the sake of their future.

“I was so nervous that day because I had never done something like that before. I honestly was known for being a more quiet student, and following the rules. So for me, it was a big deal. I kept striking on some Fridays after that. I remember I would talk to my friends, and some of them would say, ‘Oh, I don’t see why this is such a big issue. I don’t want to skip lunch to come to your protest.’ In high school, there tends to be a lot of apathy coming from students because they don’t want to stand out. You know, they wanted to look cool. But climate change is something you can’t really opt out of.”

On inciting change during a pandemic

“Since the COVID pandemic, we haven’t been able to strike in person, but Friday For Future has been doing digital campaigns. We’ll do Twitter storms, and create informational graphics for the Global Day Of Action.

“But it’s not the same. I think if you don’t see the protests every day, you feel detached after a while. With Fridays For Future, we were able to engage young people in the community who weren’t necessarily able to do more intensive actions like going to policy makers offices or writing letters. Very young children would go to our strikes, and they would just hold up a sign. Anyone could get involved. Now we have to resort to posting photos on our Instagrams every Friday, which isn’t the same as standing outside for an hour. It feels a bit sad, but there are a lot of other youth-led organizations that are filling the gap virtually.”

On channeling fear for the future into action

“In the back of my head, I’m always thinking about climate change. Because of the fires on the West Coast, I’m looking out my window right now and I can maybe see half a mile away, I can’t really see the mountains.

“It’s scary because even adults who claim to support you aren’t doing enough to make change. Mayors, senators — they say ‘oh we’re so proud of what you’re doing, and we support you.’ And they’re happy to take a picture with us, but they don’t really do anything. Or they’ll approve things that increase carbon emissions. They say they’re for climate justice and the next week approve a new cruise ship terminal Seattle. And, right now, that gives me more anxiety than not being able to protest in the streets. It feels like adults are seeing the changes happening around us but nobody cares enough to do something about it. That’s why we have to act.”
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Zanagee Artis

Age: 20

Location: Clinton, Connecticut

School: Brown University, environmental studies and political science

Activism History: Co-founder and deputy director of policy at Zero Hour; Fellow for Joe Biden’s campaign

On getting a start in activism

“When I was a kid, I loved the beluga whale at the Mystic aquarium in Connecticut. I have a picture of me standing in front of the giant tank with huge whales. I look so tiny. Going to the aquarium back then got me interested in environmental activism. I learned about pollution, and thought, Look at all these amazing sea creatures that are being impacted by plastic in the ocean.”

On why younger generations make great activists

“The youth climate movement is really about taking our futures into our own hands, but also fighting for people who are facing climate change in the present. Environmental actions of the past were not as radical in calling for systemic overhaul as we are today. But we know that without dismantling the systems at the root of climate change — the patriarchy, colonialism, capitalism, and racism — we’ll never be able to have climate justice and have a transition to sustainable energy for the future.

“We started Zero Hour to emphasize that we have run out of time to address climate change. You can see rising temperatures in the Arctic, for indigenous communities their lifestyles and livelihoods are changing, you can see desertification, and deforestation happening in the Amazon. We know that this has been happening for at least the past few years now, and that climate change has been a stressor on communities around the world. And so we need to act right now.”

On channeling fear for the future into action

“I think a worst case scenario for the planet is something that most people are incapable of comprehending. The amount of change to the natural environment that will happen if we don’t act is terrifying. It could look like elongated hurricane and tornado seasons. Or like wildfire spreading from the West coast all throughout the country. We don’t really know for sure, although the climate scientists know a lot. It could look like the apocalypse. That’s why we’re fighting every day.

“After I finish at Brown, I’m planning to go to law school, and I’m interested in studying environmental or constitutional law. I want to do this to enhance my powers as an activist. I want to advocate for young people, especially those who are unable to vote, and anyone who I believe is being disproportionately harmed by a system that was not designed to protect them. And I’d like to someday eventually run for elected office.”
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Delaney Reynolds

Age: 21

Location: Miami, Florida

School: University of Miami, marine science and geology major

Activism history: Founder of The Sink or Swim Project; member of the Youth Leadership Council of EarthEcho International; Suing the state of Florida; Member of the CLEO Institute’s Leadership Council

On getting a start in activism

“I grew up in and around the water, learning about sustainability. And because of that, I’ve always had a vast love for the ocean. When I was 8 years old, I actually wrote my first children’s book about ecology based on No Name Key, a super-small island in the Florida Keys where I grew up part-time. As I was researching for that, I began to learn about climate change and how it’d affect the habitat that I love so dearly. I started to become extremely concerned because of how dire the situation seemed to be. I went on to found The Sink or Swim Project, a nonprofit advocacy organization focused on sea level rise and other environmental topics.

“It’s sad; my family has lived in Florida for generations, but recently, we’ve started having really bad flooding days every October. They have to close down the park where both my father and I learned how to swim. I hate it, because I want my future kids to follow in my dad and my footsteps and learn to swim there too.”

On going to extremes to raise awareness

“I’m the lead plaintiff in the Reynolds vs. The State of Florida climate change lawsuit. Seven of my friends and I are suing our state for not upholding duties outlined in the Florida constitution and something called the Public Trust Doctrine. That doctrine says the state has the responsibility to protect our land, the water, and, we believe, also the atmosphere. We’re asking the state to implement laws to help cut back carbon emissions so that we can help protect our atmosphere, because we know that burning fossil fuels and emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is what’s causing the crisis. So we’re basically asking the judge to require that the state do their job.

“I have to say, I never expected to sue anyone at the age of 18. Now I’m 21, and we just had our first hearing in June. But we’ve kept pushing on it. It’s been daunting at times, but it’s also really important. We’re seeing the effects of sea level rise, and it’s hurting the coral reefs, the land, and us.”

On channeling fear for the future into action

“Our family just finished recovering and renovating from Hurricane Irma, which made landfall in 2017 at our home in the Keys. Then we recently had another hurricane, Sally. When she went over the panhandle last week, all we had was some light rain, luckily. But hurricane season is extremely stressful. With a record number of storms forming in the Atlantic, it is a constant reminder of climate change. Warm ocean water is what fuels these hurricanes, so as we continue to warm our planet, these storms will become increasingly more frequent and stronger. That’s scary, and that’s why we have to keep fighting.” 

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