It’s August in New Orleans, which means extreme heat warnings and heat indexes well over 100°. It’s more than oppressive; it’s suffocating, dangerous, and restrictive. July 2026 was officially the hottest month ever recorded in the contiguous United States, according to NOAA. The hard truth is – summers will not be getting any cooler.
While we grow weary of planning our days around extreme heat in the Southeast, retreating into our air-conditioned homes, cars, and shops, the extreme heat makes us think of people elsewhere in the world who live without the same comforts. For millions of people around the world, climate change is already a workplace hazard.
Climate Change and the Fashion Industry
India, where Passion Lilie clothing is made, is one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change. A World Bank analysis estimated that as many as 380 million people – roughly 75% of India’s workforce – are exposed to heat conditions that can become life threatening.
Textile workers are particularly vulnerable. In June, the Associated Press reported from Surat, one of India’s largest textile manufacturing hubs. They showed life inside industrial factories where workers produce millions of meters of synthetic fabric for the global clothing market.
With 12 hour days in extreme heat, little ventilation, and only ceiling fans to cool the machines and workers, dehydration, extreme fatigue, and even death are common.
Workers spend their shifts feeding damp fabric through machines that use high temperatures to dry, dye, print, wash, and finish cloth. Steam, hot water, chemical fumes, high humidity, and heat radiating from machinery can make conditions inside even hotter than outdoor, leading to headaches, dehydration, and fainting.
Workers interviewed by the Associated Press described wringing their shirts out when sweat made them too heavy, becoming weak and dizzy, and struggling to find relief even in factories equipped with fans and evaporative coolers.
Extreme heat is making these already difficult jobs life-threatening.
When Heat Becomes a Labor Rights Issue
For someone with paid sick leave, health insurance, air conditioning, and a flexible schedule, a heatwave is a nuisance. For workers who rely on factory wages to feed their families, extreme heat looks very different.
Many textile workers in India are migrant and informal workers. They lack the labor protections many of us don’t think twice about. For them, missing work for dizziness, dehydration, exhaustion, or illness can mean losing work they can’t afford to lose.
Factory workers lack health insurance and other benefits, so illness or injury on the job means a loss of critical wages. Conditions are so dire; these workers would not be in them if they had any other choice. Losing a day’s work is simply not an option.
Migrant workers often live in small apartments with other factory workers, with small rooms divided only by pieces of plywood. As a result of climate change, nighttime offers little relief. Temperatures still hover in the high 80s, and these apartments without ventilation remain unbearably hot. Many workers sleep on the floor, where it’s slightly cooler – but their bodies cannot recover before their next shift.
It’s heartbreaking to think that these workers – people who have contributed the least to the climate crises – are the ones with the fewest resources to protect themselves from it.
The High Cost of Fast Fashion
When we think about the environmental cost of fast fashion, we tend to talk about carbon emissions, plastic-based fabrics, textile waste, water consumption, and overflowing landfills – all critical concerns.
We believe the human cost is the highest. When clothing has to be made faster and sold for less, it’s real people absorbing that cost with their bodies. Extreme heat is making it worse.
Factories lose productivity when machines overheat, power systems fail, or workers physically cannot maintain the same pace in higher temperatures. In these cases, losing productivity means losing wages.
This summer, factories in India faced compounding problems that prevented factory owners from cooling their spaces and equipment. According to The Washington Post, “Disruptions to shipping, materials and energy prices caused by the Iran war as well as the heavy tariffs levied by the Trump administration have hit the textile industry, reducing the ability of factory owners to invest in cooling equipment.”
The Polyester Problem
There’s an important connection between the clothes we wear and the heat textile workers are experiencing: most clothing fibers are now made from fossil fuels. Polyester is a form of plastic, made from fossil fuel derived chemicals whose primary raw material is crude oil.
According to Textile Exchange’s 2025 Materials Market Report, “The biggest increase in global fiber production was in fossil fuel-based synthetics, with polyester continuing to be the most widely produced fiber. It now makes up 59% of total global fiber output of which 88% is fossil-based.”
Polyester contributes more greenhouse gas emissions than any other fiber in the textile industry, yet we produce it with more and more enthusiasm. It’s a vicious cycle: the fashion industry relies on fossil fuels to produce enormous amounts of clothing the production of those fossil fuels contributes to greenhouse gas emissions warming our planet rising temperatures make conditions increasingly dangerous for the very people producing those textiles.
Climate change and the fashion industry is inextricably linked, but they don’t have to be.
There’s another way to make clothes.
At Passion Lilie, fair wages are only part of our fair trade promise. We ensure our partners in India work in safe, healthy workshops. Through decades-long relationships and annual in-person audits, we make sure everything with our name on it is made with the dignity of workers as priority #1.
This means: Our weavers, printers, and tailors work in well-ventilated spaces with natural fibers and dyes. There’s no chemical steam harming their bodies. The people who make Passion Lilie clothes do so using traditional techniques like screen printing, block printing, and ikat weaving. There is no hot, loud machinery involved.
The artisans making Passion Lilie clothing are not cogs in a machine. They are real people with feelings, goals, families, and stories. All Passion Lilie producers must, at minimum, provide workers with:
- A living wage*
- Higher pay for overtime
- Paid vacation
- Paid sick leave
- Paid government holidays
- Healthy and safe working conditions
Sustainable fashion must include workers
Fashion brands have a responsibility to choose natural fibers over fossil-fuel synthetics, reduce emissions, and produce less. Above all, we must ensure our workers are paid fairly, receive benefits, and labor in safe, humane conditions.
As temperatures continue to rise, it will be increasingly important to understand who bears the heat of climate change?
*A living wage is a wage sufficient to provide a worker and their family with a decent standard of living, including food, housing, healthcare, education, transportation, and other essential needs.
Sources:
https://textileexchange.org/knowledge-center/reports/materials-market-report-2025/
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