It was revealed

A groundbreaking chronicle of the birth and death of a pair of jeans, exposing gaps in global supply chains and our relationships with each other, ourselves, and the planet. Take a look at your favorite pair of jeans. You probably bought them on Amazon or Gap; their label probably says “Made in Bangladesh” or “Made in Sri Lanka.” But do you know where they really came from, how many thousand miles they traveled, or how many hands plucked, woven, dyed, packed, shipped, and sold them to get to you? The fashion industry operates in a highly opaque way, increasingly to conceal countless environmental and labor abuses. It embodies the destructiveness inherent in the global economy, all in the name of ensuring we keep buying more while giving less thought to their true cost. In Unraveled, entrepreneur, scholar, and activist Maxine Beddat follows the life of an American icon—a pair of jeans—to reveal what really goes into giving our clothes their due. We visit a Texas cotton farm and discover how to thrive without relying on fertilizers that poison the earth. Inside dyeing and textile factories in China, chemicals banned in the West litter factory floors and flow into waterways used to irrigate local family farms. Sewing floors in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are crowded with women working for illegally low wages to produce garments with the efficiency of machines. In America, our jeans are stored, picked, and shipped by Amazon warehouse workers forced to be as fast as the robots equipped to replace them. Finally, the jeans we were forced to own are sent to landfills or, if “donated,” shipped around the world to Africa, where they are sold for bargains at flea markets or buried and burned in waste heaps. “Unraveled” is a sweeping, deeply researched, and surprisingly compelling novel that is not just the story of a pair of jeans, but also the story of our global economy and our role in it. With insightful insights and unprecedented coverage, "Unraveled" challenges us to use our relationship with our jeans—and everything we wear—to reclaim our pivotal role as citizens in rebuilding a society where everyone thrives and preserves the planet for future generations.