Designing Panic Buttons

In designing panic buttons there are some issues that cannot be addressed successfully, the most significant is the poverty and oppression inflicted on workers of factories in developing countries. They work in an industry that between 2002 to 2007 has risen to £6.3bn and by 2012 the industry is predicted to be worth a record £8.7bn. An industry worth so much should be paying its garment workers more than an hours pay that is as little as 13p, in a working week that is 48hours long. An hourly rate so low that the Indian factory workers who receive these wages have to sometimes rely on state food packages to survive as their wages are not enough to buy food to feed their families.

An area that the design of panic buttons has worked in, is the much more fashionable area of the environment. One victory for sustaining the environment as it is recently has been “Some of the biggest names in the cosmetics industry are recognising their corporate social responsibilities and choosing not to contribute to the extinction of these important animals.”1 It is an important area but even in designing panic buttons for social change animals are more popular than humans. One possible reason for this is that people can be scared into understanding climate change will effect their own lives, while people in living in poverty due to inexcusably low wages are an easier issue to over look.

Reference: 1 (Rebecca Greenberg) The Guardian, James Meikle, Face cream firms stop using shark liver oil, 30th January (2008)
Other reading: The Guardian, Rebecca Smithers, Ethical concerns left at home as demand for cheap clothes surges, 30th January (2008)

(image from http://www.ecobeetle.com/tiger3.jpg)