3º British: Globalization - Planet Money makes a T-Shirt

Good news! This is the very last topic/task for this academic year!

What is Globalization?

Globalisation is the process by which the world is becoming increasingly interconnected as a result of massively increased trade and cultural exchange.

Globalisation is not a new phenomena. On the contrary, it has been taking place for hundreds of years thanks to trade, but has speeded up enormously over the last half-century. Globalisation can be both positive or negative (read page 3 on my theoretical topic).

Let’s study a specifical example: Planet Money makes a T-shirt.

Planet Money is a USA radio show to learn the basics of economy, broadcasting by NPR. One year, the Planet Money team decided to do a special T-shirt with its logo... and follow the whole creation process.

The simplest shirt is touched by people and machines all over the planet, from highly paid researchers in seed laboratories to factory workers who earn a few dollars a day. By making our own T-shirt, we figured, we would discover this massive, interconnected, largely hidden world. Follow its journey: http://planetmoney.com/shirt 

Do you know how much water is need to create a simple t-shirt and a pair of jeans? Look at the image:

  

As seen, one of the negative impacts is the huge amount of residues and waste produced. Do you know how to correctly manage YOUR waste? Do you know if we are doing our best in the recycling system? Have a look to this website:

To make sure globalisation will brings more positive to negative things, specially to LEDCs, there are some concept to keep in mind (all of them, again, explained on my theoretical topic):

• Sustanaible development
• Appropiate technology
• Fair trade

Back to the previous example: the creation of that T-shirt is industrial or “fast-fashion”, activity with a huge impact in the environment and, therefore, in human life itself! Recycling fashion (the town turning waste into clothes, BBC 4 minutes video) has become a major need. Recently, a new model appears: Slow-fashion.

Slow-fashion advocates for manufacturing in respect to people, environment and animals. Eg.: There are, nowadays, several alternatives more respectful with the environment, with the animals and much less water-consumer. Have you heard about the "vegan-leather"? Shoes, bags of jackets than with special materials than totally reproduce the visual appearance and texture but vegetable-done. For example, from pineapple or cactus!

As such, contrary to industrial fashion practices, slow fashion involves local artisans and the use of eco-friendly materials, with the goal of preserving crafts and the environment. Some elements of the slow fashion philosophy include: buying vintage clothes, redesigning old clothes, shopping from smaller producers, making clothes and accessories at home and buying garments that last longer.

And when the garments can not be reuse anymore, they can be transformed into something completely different, such as kitchen tiles (1 minute BBC video) or kindergarten pavement! Did you know it? Sure not...

Have you ever try to customize your own clothes? For example, an old pair of jeans. What can you do with them? The usual answer is to cut them into shorts for summer time but, with some sewing skills and a bit of patience (there are a lot of tutorials on internet) you can transform them into a skirt, a backpack or a cushion: 

After watching carefully the videos by Planet Money (they are very short, 3 minutes the longest one!) and reading the topic, answer all the following questions as complete as possible (as usual, send your answers to acarriles@educa.jcyl.es):

  

Task 1: about the videos:

• Video III: People. Why do you think the t-shirts were made in Bangladesh and Colombia and not the USA?
• Video V: You. Identify something else (not a t-shirt) from your daily life that is the result of globalization and explain why you think it is a product of globalization.

Task 2: general synthesis:

• What technological innovations do you think have made globalization possible?
• Identify two positive effects and two negative effects of globalization and explain why each is positive or negative.
• Do the economic benefits of globalization outweigh the costs? Why?
• Do the social and cultural benefits of globalization outweigh the costs? Why?

Task 3: recycling and slow fashion

• What do you think about the concept of slow-fashion and the customize of clothes? Are you in favour or against? Why?
• Look at the image below: it’s a XL man-size shirt. What would to do to customize or transform it? Give at least 2 ideas.

And that's all this year! I promise! :)