Football...going ethical?

Maybe some of us can't tell our Rooneys from our Fabregas (no seriously, there are people who could not tell them apart or which teams they play for) but perhaps what is more important is what they play their games in! The Ecologist, one of my favourite online eco magazines, is always full of very useful tips on how to green our wardrobes, our furniture, our make up, our gadgets... the list goes on! But this article on 'What to wear and how to buy it' really scores a goal on where to go for more ethical fashion sportswear brands.. MOVE OVER BIG BRAND NAMES!

You know how much footballers get paid. But what about the people making the football?

Who saw the England v Germany match? How poorly did England play? The England squad was one of the most highly paid team in the tournament.

With Capello earning £6 million a year and England stars like John Terry earning £135,000 a week you’d think they would have already won the World Cup!Do you think they deserve the amount of money being poured into them?

With all the newspapers and fans venting about how much they get paid and asking if they are worth it, it got me thinking about the other people involved with the world cup, the people working behind the scenes who also don’t deserve how much they are getting paid. The labourers who manufacture products bearing the World Cup logo for less than a decent wage. They also don’t deserve their salaries.

International Labour Rights Forum launched a report into how much workers in Pakistan manufacturing replica world cup footballs are being paid. The numbers are shocking ! A worker who would spend 2 hours stitching one ball is paid £2 for a full days work. Workers work long hours..... Nearly 18 hour shifts!

Employers take advantage of workers and threaten to fire them if they speak up. “The problem is that unemployment is so high the bosses know we have no choice and can pay us less” a worker told The Telegraph. Is this fair? Can a countries weakness be used against the workers like that? If so wouldn’t that make it exploitation?

John Terry’s salary should reflect England’s poor performance just as the labourer’s salary should reflect their hard work.

What do you think? Whose job is harder? Should anyone get £135,000 for kicking a ball?

Nike: Ticks the right box

Not only has England actually made it to the World Cup this year but a very important issue has become a part of the great sporting event. Nike has produced environmentally friendly uniforms for the upcoming 2010 football world cup.

The kits are going to be made from discarded plastic bottles collected from landfills in Japan and Taiwan.

When I first read on Ecouterre about this, I was a tad confused. “How on earth are they going to pull that off?” Well the plastic bottles get melted down into yarn first and are then spun into fabric.

Each shirt is made from 8 plastic bottles. Apart from just saving on raw materials, Nike managed to reduce 13 million plastic bottles from the landfill which is enough to cover a football pitch 29 times over!

Nike seems to have grown a corporate conscience since the late 1990’s. It feels like just yesterday that a photo of a Pakistani boy stitching Nike footballs started making its rounds...

Image Credit- James Temple on Flickr at Creative Commons