Are You a Slave Owner?

A recurring request in this blog has been for all of us to be more thoughtful consumers -- to think about the repercussions of the purchases we make. It's not enough to score a better deal (though that feels great!): we need to think about how the purchases we make affect the world we live in.

For example, for several years we have been asked to consider the size of our "carbon footprints", measuring our individual and household effects on the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change.

And we've learned about "blood diamonds" (diamonds whose sales are used to finance insurgencies, warlord activities, and other conflicts).

An article by Andrew Martin in yesterday's New York Times introduced me to a new concept: the slavery footprint.

You may think that slavery is a thing of the past, but the creators of a new website want us all to understand that "anyone who is forced to work without pay, being economically exploited and is unable to walk away" is a slave, and that the State Department estimates that there are 27 million slaves globally.

If you want to know how many slaves work for you, take the survey, here. Along the way, you'll get depressing little bits of information, like: "Bonded labor is used for much of Southeast Asia's shrimping industry, which supplies more shrimp to the U.S. than any other country. Laborers work up to 20-hour days to peel 40 pounds of shrimp. Those who attempt to escape are under constant threat of violence or sexual assault."

The site and survey were created by the Fair Trade Fund, a nonprofit group that focuses primarily on human slavery; funding was provided by a State Department grant.

As Martin writes, the purpose of the survey is "to get consumers engaged enough in the issue to do something about it, primarily hoping people demand that companies carefully audit supply chains to ensure, as best as they can determine, that no 'slave labor' was used to manufacture its products."

What do you know about who made the stuff that surrounds you? I know that my answer now has to be, Not enough.

(PS: if you're curious about the size of your carbon footprint, a couple of free calculators can be found here, from the Nature Conservancy, and here, from the Cool Climate Network at the University of California, Berkeley.)