When did you last buy something from Primark? If you’re anything like the average student a large part of your wardrobe will consist of cheap clothes from the high street; we have come to accept £5 as being standard price for a t-shirt from shops like this. While the price tag is good for us, it means the opposite for workers in countries such as Bangladesh who earn just £13.97 per month in appalling conditions, living in poverty to make our clothing.

We all know sweatshop labour is nothing new. When previously it had been maligned and brushed aside, recently it is starting to become more exposed due to efforts of ethical campaign groups such as Labour Behind the Label. Even celebrities are making a stand; at London Fashion Week in September 2009, War on Want launched Love Fashion Hate Sweatshops - the largest-ever ethical fashion drive supported by stars such as Jo Wood and Little Boots.

Student organisations also are getting involved; this January Edinburgh College of Art is holding a two day symposium on ethical fashion. As people have been made more aware, there has been a surge of ethical fashion lines with even young fashionistas starting new ethical clothing ranges like Emma Watson, whose collection for People Tree is due to hit the shops in February this year. There’s a sure buzz about eco-fashion.

The need for ethical fashion grows from the exploitation of employees who have no option but to work in these sweat factories. A recent War on Want investigation into labour in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka revealed that people were making clothes for Primark, Tesco and Asda for an average of £19.60 a month. Given that £44.82 is the amount needed to live on the poverty line in Dhaka, and with the somewhat ethically questionable Jeremy Clarkson recently announcing that the world’s most expensive car (a £1 million Aston Martin) is due to come out in 2010, it’s a sad reality that the gap between the rich and the poor appears to be growing in the dawn of the new decade.

The Dhaka investigation found employees (sometimes children) living in appalling slums in vastly overcrowded shacks which lacked essential plumbing and washing facilities. Not only this, but the fast-changing Western fashion trends means workers are pressurised to work harder in order to meet unrealistic targets. As a result, many are abused verbally and physically and often made to work unpaid overtime. These sweatshop conditions translate into the cheap high street costs we all know and love - a pair of Tesco Value jeans can now be bought for a mere £3.

When we’re shopping we probably uncomfortably consider this in the back of our minds but don’t want to look any closer. Besides, this all goes on in third world countries miles away, right? Wrong. If you thought that you didn’t live on sweatshop soil, it may surprise you that sweat-factories are actively present in Britain today. Although in the past trade unions have fought and won to end child labour, clandestine companies still employ workers for below minimum wage in poor conditions.

An undercover BBC report in 2009 discovered one Manchester warehouse supplying Primark clothes. Many of the workers were illegal immigrants, enabling them to be abused, working for £3.50 per hour, 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Campaigners are currently lobbying against a new Primark store due to be opened in Edinburgh later this year.

By default, low budgets make bargain-hungry students a lucrative target market for these retailers, but the flip-side is that our actions can and have been used to bring good out of this situation. In 1997 the organisation ‘United Students Against Sweatshops’ was founded, now considered the largest anti-sweatshop community group in the US and Canada with branches in more than 250 colleges. British universities are picking up the trend with the introduction of courses teaching how to develop an ethical fashion brand at London College of Fashion and a two-year MA degree in Ethical Fashion at Epsom’s University for the Creative Arts.

In Edinburgh, in addition to the forthcoming ECA workshop, last year Queen Margaret University students staged a ‘green fashion’ show with a focus on economic and environmental sustainability. The idea was to demonstrate how second hand clothes can be re-designed and created into new fashionable items as an alternative to high street buying.

Student human rights campaign group People & Planet (a member of the ‘Let’s Clean up Fashion’ campaign) have a strong record of student sweatshop protests. In 2008, Edinburgh P&P members gathered to physically boycott the opening of Princes Street’s new Topshop store and questioned staff on the company’s dubious ethical policies. As a result it later cancelled a promotional event on campus. Ever a leader in cutting edge trends, the brand recently launched its own ethical clothing line alongside that of Marks & Spencer and designers such as Mrs Bono’s ‘Edun’ range, available in Harvey Nichols.

As we begin the new decade with this still going on, is it possible that we could see the eradication of sweatshop labour by the end of it? Society’s growing knowledge of these issues is forcing a sense of shared social conscience and responsibility; a new generation are prepared to finally take action, and the results so far have been promising in at least raising awareness. Over the next decade, today’s students could find themselves in positions of power able to turn the tide once and for all. There is real hope that unethical labour could be perceived as globally unacceptable in 2020.