Planet T Shirt Summary

How Mad are the Planets? Rhetorical Analysis of The Madness of the Planets by Corey S. Powell

The Indian textiles chart showed how India used machines to produce greater yarn and cloth amounts in 1914 as compared to the production in 1884. As well it demonstrated how the amount of people using machine made textiles had greatly increased opposed to hand made textiles (Doc 1). In 1916 Radhakamal Mukerjee, an Indian economist, explains how that handwoven textiles cannot keep up with the machine made textiles, and therefore is on a decline (Doc 6). This identifies how India is moving towards

The book Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy by Pietra Rivoli is about the journey of a plain cotton shirt internationally through the economy. This book consists of a plain, cheap t-shirt bought at Wal-Mart, is split into four important parts. The first part is about the source of the t-shirt: cotton. The second part is about the creation process the t-shirt goes through while being created in China. The third part is consists of explaining what happens after the t-shirt goes to the United States and faces the American protectionist policies. Lastly, the fourth essential part of this t-shirt is what happens to the shirt when it is finished in America (or other developed nations).

Often, when we think of a t-shirt, not much consideration goes past throwing it on and walking out the door. We discover in The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy, author Pietra Rivoli conveys the story of a t-shirt she purchased in Florida for just $5.99. Beginning with core element of the t-shirt, she describes the cotton boom in the United States and why we have reigned supreme as the leading cotton producer. She even meets with a Texan farmer who warms your heart from the very beginning of the chapter. Next, the cotton goes on to textile mills and factories, and Rivoli explains the history of the textile industry. With this lesson, she demonstrates how the textile industry boom was a

The book is broken down into four parts: “King Cotton”, “Made in China”, “Trouble at the Border” and “My T-shirt Finally Encounters a Free Market”. Each part explains a different step of the t-shirt process.

Globalization is a system of global connections between countries that serves to increase interdependence between countries economically, socially, politically, and environmentally. In the video titled “Planet money makes t-shirts” the topic of connections is shown through a long, diverse, complex process between MDCs and LDCs. There’s a multitude of steps in the process of creating a t-shirt. This procedure is quite meticulous. The t-shirt begins in America. This is where the t-shirt is designed and where the raw materials are gathered to be shipped to the LDC, which in this case is Bangladesh and Colombia. The raw material to create the t-shirt is cotton it cost about .60 cents. The cotton is genetically modified, 90 % of American cotton

I have read your article ¨Hip Hop Planet¨ by James McBride from National Geographic regarding your thoughts on the meaning of Hip Hop and your experience with the genre. I understand that due to your past with Hip Hop, and the culture that it brings, you had the urge to write this article informing others about the true meaning of Hip Hop, and how it can be greatly misunderstood. You began with stating that you were frightened by the culture that the genre brought upon people and the actions that it encouraged, but later began to understand the message behind the music. Later on in the last few paragraphs, there were remarks about Hip Hop being your generation´s legacy, and that the message is only being understood by the children, with the

The producers in the new T-shirt value chain do not operate in a free market system. Government protectionist measures such as subsidies, quotas, and tariffs have limited economic success to a fortunate few. According to the author Pietra Rivoli, “the winners at various stages of my T-shirt’s life are adept not so much at competing in markets but at avoiding them.” These winners include the U.S. cotton farmer and the China apparel industry. Their market dominance and profitability have benefitted significantly from the political prowess of their government to limit competition.

Although globalization allows for most products to be produced at a more efficient rate, it also has the capability to mar the economies of municipalities in first world countries. In Pietra Rivoli’s book The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy, she discusses the different viewpoints of opposing sides of an on-going battle to reduce the amount of tariffs and quotas put on the textile industries of foreign countries. For decades the textile industry in America has been on a noticeable decline, with outsourcing to third-world countries to blame. Although both faction’s viewpoints on the benefits of such outsourcing, both realize that there is only one way to gain the results they seek; which is to petition to the congressmen, including high ranking officials such as the president, in Washington D.C.

Finally is Part IV of the book, “My T-shirt Finally Encounters a Free Market.” This section deals with what happens to the clothes after they are discarded, usually through donation to Goodwill or The Salvation Army. In fact, American donations to these kinds of organizations have increased so much that they have begun exporting the recycled clothing, “nearly 7 billion pounds” (Rivoli 176), to other countries. The recycled industry has actually created jobs in Africa as America’s old clothes are

Robert Swan once said “the greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.” Two companies that understand this concept are Patagonia and Nike. How they address these issues regarding sustainable business practice vary, however. Both have made it their mission to deliver excellence and make the best quality products within their industries, Patagonia focussing more on outdoor active wear, while Nike is more sports oriented. Part of this process has been developing products from sustainable sources. Patagonia, for example, actively took a stand against chemical intensive cotton in 1994, and has since switched to less harmful means of organic cotton within all their cotton-based products. They are even going the extra

Primark meets the corporate social responsibility to environment at large. Firstly, Primark establishes a partnership with CottonConnect aiming to improve the farming technique that growing cotton with fewer resources. In this way, the farmers can earn more money for themselves. Secondly, in order to promote a green production

EcoSpun was started by the company Wellman Inc. and it completely changed how we view fabrics. These fabrics blend with other materials like cotton to make the product soft to the touch. Patagonia adopted this process to make recycled material that would help the environmental issues and make a really cool product. Yvon Chouinard founder of Patagonia is committed to making a change with pollution and to still have outerwear products that will last someone for many years. Chouinard and his team worked with Malden Mills to make the polyester out of recyclable bottles. There are billions of plastic bottles and they are harmful to the environment, Patagonia, as well as other companies, are taking them into make materials. As Chouinard company was helping with the environmental crisis and letting out millions of chemicals, he decided there had to be a change. His next steps are to find new recyclable fabrics as well as finding other ways to recycle polyester. Also, they are working to receive old Patagonia’s product to re-made into a fiber or other forms of

Commodity chain can be refer to a series of organizational process of production, as well as consumption, transportation and disposal in the global economy. In today’s world, most productions of goods involve commodity chain, For instance, Jeans, is classified as a category under pants, and people wear jeans in numerous occasions. As for jeans, which is a commodity that is extremely essential to everyone across the globe, it is considered as unavoidable, for we are both directly and indirectly make contacts with jeans on a daily basis, an average American would wear up to two pairs of jeans during the year of 2008, and this number is continue to increase. In particular, Americans love Levi Strauss, also known as Levi’s, it is a company known worldwide that is privately held and mainly produces denim jeans. Furthermore, Lewis is the largest manufacturing company of jeans production in the world due to its superb quality, the founding father of Levi’s, Levi Strauss also co-founded and patented Jeans in 1873. Levi’s is a vertically integrated company which means it owns or has owned factories at all levels of production, the production of Levis is spread around the globe. First, nearly 95 percent of its products are made from cotton, the cotton Levis uses is mainly grown in China, US, and India, Levis chose these three locations for their cotton production is because these three countries alone produce two thirds of world’s total output. Second, more than 70 percent of the

That's when she faced a difficult ethical decision: She could order the shirts from a low-cost company in China or she could order them from a fair-trade company in San Francisco, which provided safe conditions and higher wages for the workers who made the clothing. The fair trade shirts were $28.65,making the grand total for her project $8,595. In contrast, the Chinese T-shirts were $5.50 each, and the company's Web site promised fast and free delivery for a grand total of $1,100.