CHART: How Many Sweatshops Does It Take to Make This T-Shirt?

Your clothing’s long, strange trip from Chinese cotton field to big box to dresser drawer.


This chart is part of Mother Jones‘ investigation into Walmart’s much-praised green makeover, for which reporter Andy Kroll traveled to China, the home of many of the retail giant’s manufacturers. He found that although Walmart claims to be monitoring its factories’ compliance with environmental and labor rules, its auditing system is plagued by corruption. What’s more, many factories outsource more than half their work to “shadow” factories—unregulated operations that auditors never visit at all. To read the full story, click here.

 

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We were built for times like these

Russian bots are impersonating us. Trump and his allies want to silence us. AI wants to (and does!) steal our content. The list goes on. But with 50 years of experience, we know we were built for this moment: We’re ready to keep diving deep and uncovering the truth, then getting that to you right here, completely accessible and never behind a paywall.

While our work is free to read, watch, and listen to online, it’s incredibly costly to make. Court documents, travel, research: It all adds up. Because we’re a nonprofit newsroom, we rely on reader support to fund our investigations. Will you stand with us in these extraordinary times, as headlines clamour for our attention and disinformation is rampant? We can’t get the truth out without you.

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