THE JOURNEY OF A T-SHIRT
NPR’s Planet Money podcast reported on one of the most eye opening realities of the journey that most of our t shirts go through before they ever get to us. This is one of our favorite pieces of work that anyone has ever done to bring awareness to the crazy and sometimes troubling supply chain that our garments go through. We encourage you to consume the audio and video content below for an unforgettable deep dive into the garment world.
Planet Money Explores The Economics Of T-Shirts
Planet Money is making a T-shirt and following the shirt around the world as it gets manufactured — from the farms where the cotton is grown to the factories where the shirts are sewn together.
Chapter 1:
How Technology And Hefty Subsidies Make U.S. Cotton King
More than 25,000 of the shirts were sold online. And then the team set out to follow the process around the globe. All this week we'll hear the step-by-step journey of the Planet Money T-shirt. In this installment, a search for the place where the cotton was grown.
Chapter 2:
Planet Money Spins A Yarn And Makes A 'Perfect' T-Shirt
Today, the T-shirt makes a detour in the Pacific Ocean. Cotton from America gets shipped to a factory in Indonesia where it gets transformed into yarn.
Chapter 3:
Two Sisters, A Small Room And The World Behind A T-Shirt
The rise of factory jobs in Bangladesh has brought profound cultural changes to the country — and to the lives of two sisters who made the Planet Money T-shirt.
Chapter 4:
Next Stop Bangladesh As We Follow Planet Money's T-Shirt
Bangladesh is the cheapest place in the world to make a T-shirt. But this month, the minimum wage there will rise from $39 a month to $68 a month. That's got some factory owners nervous about whether Western retailers there will pull out. The Planet Money team examines the future of the garment industry in Bangladesh.
Chapter 5:
'Our Industry Follows Poverty': Success Threatens A T-Shirt Business
Colombia's economy has been growing, and wages have been rising. That's good for the country as a whole, but it may wind up driving away the T-shirt industry.
Chapter 6:
Nixon And Kimchi: How The Garment Industry Came To Bangladesh
The business that transformed the nation is the product of an obscure but hugely influential trade deal — and a cultural struggle over Korean food.
Chapter 7:
Meet The Humble Container That Moves The Global Economy
NPR's Planet Money team is manufacturing its own T-shirt. After the women's shirt was assembled in Colombia, they voyaged by container ship to Miami. The container, a big standardized box that moves easily from truck to ship to train, is the unsung hero of the global economy.
Chapter 8:
The Giant Book That Creates And Destroys Entire Industries
The book lists the tax that importers have to pay on approximately every single thing in the universe — and raises a key question about the Planet Money T-shirt.
Chapter 9:
The Afterlife Of American Clothes
The U.S. exports a billion pounds of used clothes every year. Much of that winds up in used clothing markets in sub-Saharan Africa.
Chapter 10:
Planet Money T-Shirt Exposes Issues Of Work, Trade And Clothes
All this week, All Things Considered and Morning Edition has aired stories about the global journey a T-shirt makes from seed to finished product. Over the months NPR's Planet Money team spent reporting the series, they tackled questions about trade, work and clothes play in the global economy.
