Jun 19, 2013

The Conscientious Shopper

This past Friday evening, I was out shopping for a Father’s Day present after work. I didn’t find what I was looking for, and I could have just gone straight home after that but it was payday, so I thought there’d be no harm in looking for some new clothes. I ended up wandering into Dynamite and heading to their sales rack. I found a very cute black belted dress with tiny white polka dots there, and it was marked down big time! So I took it to the dressing room, hung the dress up, and started undoing all the buttons so that I’d be able to try it on. But as I undid the buttons, I glanced up to the tag and froze at what I saw.

“Made In Bangladesh”

After a moment of paralysis, I slowly backed away from the dress and contemplated it. After the collapse of that factory building, I’ve developed a distaste for clothing from Bangladesh. But it was pretty and affordable; did I still want it? I decided the answer was no. I didn’t want to support cheap third-world clothes, and besides I didn’t need a new dress. So I touched up my makeup in the mirror and walked back out of the dressing room.

In an ideal world, I’d only buy products that were made in Canada. But Canada isn’t really a manufacturer of clothes, and when they do it’s usually out of my price range. But I still buy clothes that are made in China even though the same situation as Bangladesh is probably playing itself out there too. It’s hard to figure out what the right thing to do is.

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