On 24 April 2013, 1,134 Bangladeshi garment workers were killed and at least another 2,000 injured in the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory, where clothes ware being made for international fashion brands. Pope Francis condemned the conditions under which these garment workers worked as slave labour.

Ten years later, the fight for a safe and fair work environment continues. Unfortunately, the way we currently make, buy, use and discard our clothes, has not only led to a “business model” that demands that workers work for a pittance in unsafe conditions but is also contributing to the kind of ecological degradation which is destroying our common home… Read more »

On Saturday 27th May, environmental organisations are calling on the public to participate in a national protest. The demands of the protest include a change in planning policies, a radical reform of all institutions responsible for the environment, planning and lands, as well as a new economic model that seeks a better quality of life for everyone instead of endless economic growth based on the profits of the few… Read more »

Over-reliance on particular segments of the economy such as construction, which has caused growing harm to our communities and wellbeing over time, is increasingly being recognised as problematic even by top politicians. Minister of Finance and Employment Clyde Caruana recently pointed out that we urgently need to rethink and recalibrate Malta’s economic model, which has favoured rapid GDP growth at the expense of workers’ rights, people’s quality of life and our natural environment… Read more »

“Humanity is called to recognize the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat this warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it. Obsession with a consumerist lifestyle, above all when few people are capable of maintaining it, can only lead to violence and mutual destruction.”

(Pope Francis, LS. 23. 204)

Numbers are not everything… Read more »