JEANS: A GLOBAL ISSUE

The information on this page could be for information, or it could form the basis of a comprehension exercise, with some questions to find the answers for, or people could compare the typical working day of someone in the jeans factory with someone working in a factory in the UK.

Take an average pair of jeans. Lee perhaps...

Price around £30 per pair.

Before you put them on, they have already made a journey of around 40,000 miles from the cotton field to the high street, taking in several more countries along the way.

COUNTRIES INVOLVED

Countries involved in the process of making the jeans include:

TUNISIA

ITALY

GERMANY

FRANCE

NORTHERN IRELAND

PAKISTAN

TURKEY

PAKISTAN

JAPAN

KOREA

NAMIBIA

BENIN

AUSTRALIA

HUNGARY

TRANSPORT

There will also be a range of different transport types used.

• They will arrive in the UK from a warehouse in France via the Channel Tunnel.
• To get there, they would have travelled by boat and train from the factory in Tunisia where they were made: in a town called Ras Jebel.

THE FACTORY

The factory employs 500 women, who each play a small part in the production. They specialise in doing one task repeatedly: these could be adding zips, sewing pockets, sewing hems or seams. Each production line produces around 2000 pairs of jeans per day at a furious pace.

• Each worker will have to perform 3 tasks per minute throughout their long working day.
• Working day is from 7.15am until noon, then 1pm until 5.45.
• Trained machinists earn around £110 a month (58p per hour)
• They can also earn bonuses of around £15 a month if they meet their targets
• Jeans cost £5 per pair to make
• Jeans cost 10p per pair to transport to France.

COMPONENTS

Denim has arrived by land and sea from Italdenim in Milan: spun, milled and dyed using:

• synthetic indigo from Frankfurt, Germany
• stonewashed using pumice from a volcano in Turkey
• cotton grown in Benin in West Africa
• softer cotton for the pocket lining grown in Pakistan and Korea.
• cotton to sew the jeans together made in Northern Ireland, Hungary and Turkey
• died in Spain
• polyester thread made in Japan, as are the YKK zips.
• brass for the rivets comes from Germany, using zinc or copper from Australia and Namibia.

Cotton also has a very thirsty life. In order to grow it, it takes up a great deal of water. An example of the effects of this are in the area around the ARAL SEA.

Material adapted from article: 'Travellin' Blue Jeans' in the TES Teacher magazine of September 20th 2002

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