What I learned about factory audits and certifications

Hello👋!

After scrolling through ISO standards, sustainability pages, certification schemes and Eurostat websites, I feel slightly less full of energy than last week.

I’m currently reaching out to clothing manufacturers to understand price ranges. It will make a huge difference if the production cost of my jackets are going to be 50, 100 or 150 euros, because it will determine for how much I can sell them and if my concepts are actually going to hold. 

And of course I want to I want to know how to judge whether a factory treats its employees fairly.

I did a little internet crash course and called a few people and learned quite a lot. I also made a way to lengthy 🖇️Linked-in post about it that ABSOLUTELY NODODY cared about!  

For the long version go to Linkedin but what I learned is that there are global guidelines, but that most of the working conditions like working hours, social security and vacation days are covered in national laws. And the difficult part is that minimum wages are often not living wages, which can push people into working overtime.

Luckily, there are MANY different certificates and audit systems. Some are not really certificates in the strict sense, but more like frameworks or membership systems. You participate, you pay, and you get to show that you are part of it. That does not automatically mean everything is perfect.

Others, like SA8000 and GOTS, do include independent audits and corrective action plans. So they are not magic, but they do seem more serious than just putting a nice sustainability logo on your website.

Coming from a company where we had a fridge stuffed with cold kombuchas and mental health awareness months, I found it mostly shocking that factories still need to explicitly mention that they don’t use child labour. I somehow thought that was something from the 90s. Good to get a bit outside my bubble.

Anyway! With this information in mind, I emailed factories in different countries: with and without certificates, and ranging from the Netherlands and Portugal to Bangladesh.

Curious what they come back with.

Thanks for following along! See you next week en groetjes Steef!