Think the Earth

Germany is famous for being a leader with respect to environmental issues and fair trade, but there are also a great number of discount retail chains in the country. For example, ALDI is a discount supermarket chain known for its low-priced products - you can buy 500g of pasta for about 50 yen. At the clothing discount chain KiK, you can buy a T-shirt for about 500 yen and a pair of jeans for approximately 1,000 yen. Such discount retail chains are expanding their businesses and are opening up stores around the world.

On the other hand, campaigns that pose the following question to society "why are the products they sell so cheap" and promote fair trade are being undertaken.

"The Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC)" conducts campaigns to improve the working conditions of the garment industry. And the "Supermarkt-Initiative" launched by 23 organizations in Germany undertakes campaigns against low-wage labor and harsh working conditions, which lie behind the success of discount retail chains. Both of these campaigns not only promote changes in consumer awareness or call for a boycott of such cheap products, but they also directly appeal to companies to make such improvements.

For example, last year, an 18-year-old girl died from overwork at a garment factory in Bangladesh that supplies products to a leading German retailer, Metro Group (headquarters in Dusseldorf). As a result of this incident, numerous cases caused by poor working conditions such as long working hours, unpaid wages, and violence, were uncovered. At that time, organizations, including the aforementioned CCC, encouraged the Metro Group to make improvements by negotiating directly with the company and appealing to the consumers.

Social campaigns have a great impact on companies. However, we, consumers, have the strongest power. Low prices are not necessarily bad, but it is important that we first take a moment to ask ourselves, why we can buy these products for such low prices.