Presenter: It started with a few cracks in the walls. But then on April 24th, 2013, it became the worst disaster in the history of the garment industry. According to BBC, on that day, the Rana Plaza garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, completely collapsed, leading to the deaths of over 1,100 people. Along with the bodies, bricks, and garments left in the rubble, questions remained about who's to blame for the tragedy.

Sure, there were the obvious culprits, the plaza owner, the construction company, but there were other suspects as well. What about the clothing companies whose goods were being manufactured there? As Imran Hussain and Dave Jamieson pointed out in their May 2, 2013, Huffington Post article, garment industry insiders partially blame Western retailers for the tragedy. They claim that it is retailer demand for low price labor that creates these poorly constructed and unsafe work factories, which then lead to disasters like the factory collapse.

The thousands of miles that separate us from tragedies like this may make them seem unrelated to our everyday lives. But what if they're not? What if by purchasing the products that these companies make, individuals, such as you and me, are somewhat responsible for what happened?