Ask most North Americans if they’d purchase their clothing from barefoot, hungry children working for slave wages and they’d respond with an emphatic, “Of course not.” We all know that children belong in school to ensure a future that has dignity, purpose and economic independence. Yet, so many of us walk into our favourite retail outlet and purchase clothes that were produced by children — under conditions that aren’t safe and don’t offer them even a living wage.
Journalists for The Observer discovered the children in a filthy sweatshop working on piles of beaded children’s blouses marked with serial numbers that The Gap admitted corresponded with its own inventory. The Gap, in the past few years, has been working to eradicate its reputation as a company that does business with sweatshops. The company created a Code of Conduct that it demands its suppliers comply with, including not using child labour. The Gap responded to this latest infraction by immediately cancelling its order.
That, however, doesn’t alter the fact that India continues to do a booming business on the backs of exploited children — according to one estimate, more than 20 per cent of India’s economy is dependent on children, the equivalent of 55 million youngsters under 14.
Sure we could shake out heads in disgust at what business owners are doing. But that would be a failure to acknowledge our own complicity in the exploitation of anyone who’s not paid a fair wage or provided with decent working conditions to produce the goods that we purchase. Fact of the matter is, China and India, along with other developing countries offer up something that we, as consumers, crave: cheap labour, which in turn becomes cheap goods. Professor Sheotaj Singh is co-founder of the DSV, or Dayanand Shilpa Vidyalaya, a Delhi-based rehabilitation centre and school for rescued child workers. “It is obvious what the attraction is here for Western conglomerates,” he told The Observer. “The key thing India has to offer the global economy is some of the world’s cheapest labour, and this is the saddest thing of all the horrors that arise from Delhi’s 15,000 inadequately regulated garment factories, some of which are among the worst sweatshops ever to taint the human conscience. Consumers in the West should not only be demanding answers from retailers as to how goods are produced but looking deep within themselves at how they spend their money.”
I couldn’t have said it better.

It seems to go without saying… So why am I saying it? Because it seems so few people — particularly politicians — understand it. As I write this, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has just approved use of a pesticide for use on strawberries and other food crops that is known to cause cancer in laboratory animals and miscarriage. Yep — that’s right. Approved. The pesticide is called methyl iodide and because it vaporizes quickly, it’s prone to drifting far away. The EPA admits it causes thyroid tumors, causes neurological problems and miscarriages in animals, but approved it anyway under pressure from the Bush administration. What’s more, residents of California are asking for disclosure about a pesticide sprayed to eliminate a moth infestation after the residents experienced rashes, asthma-like breathing problems and other distress. They were told that it was a “trade secret”.
And I just returned from a conference in Northern California in which I heard an incredible woman speak — Majora Carter, who has created a Green the Bronx program (I’ll post more on both the conference and the brilliant speakers later…)– about the unconscionable disadvantage inner-city children have because of all the pollutants to which they’re consistently exposed. They have higher rates of asthma and other respiratory problems, higher rates of learning disabilities and higher rates of obesity — all of which can be traced back to an environment which lacks clean air, safe streets for playing and gives kids a steady dose of toxins in food, air and water.
Yet we all know the answer. We’ve always known the answer — it’s just been lost in the noise of science and technology always offering up a better, newer, faster, smarter alternative. The answer, of course, is that if we take care of our planet, it will take care of us. It really is that simple.