Protesters and clothes swapping initiative in front of the new Primark store at Alexanderplatz

Today the second Primark branch in Berlin and the 13th in Germany opened. Primark is a budget clothes and home products manufacturer from Ireland. Its prices are scandalously low with T-Shirts often for no more than 2 €. The company is hugely successful in Europe and people go crazy about the stuff. The clothes can also be described as fast fashion, produced to be thrown away after wearing them once. Was it only about wasting resources like water, land or chemicals and polluting the environment it would be bad enough but it's also about exploiting workers who earn so little that they can't afford a living, working in unsafe factories that burn down or collapse from time to time, like in Bangladesh last year, where about 1.000 garment workers died. And people are often exposed to toxic chemicals as well. All those facts make the products of brands like Primark, KiK or Mango so bad, terrible yet lethal.

As long as the companies refuse to improve working conditions along the production chain and develop an environmentally friendly attitude the only effective thing to do is to stop buying them. There were a lot of people today at Alexanderplatz to protest against Primark and the Inkota network organized some good initiatives, here, like the clothes swapping booth. And there was lots of media with some articles also about the protests here and here. If you have a facebook account you can see the pictures of BUND here, or check out the Lebenskleidung page, here, they covered it very well, too.

By the way, if you need new underwear or basic shirts, check out the ethical clothes by NIKOLAIKIKI,

here. You can also have a look at how we produce, I documented the production in Izmir, Turkey, here.

Happy considered shopping!

KIKI