Slavery Footprint

Most people have heard the term carbon footprint. “What is your carbon footprint?”, is a trendy, and important, question. We are all worried about how the choices we are making now, will impact the environment for generations to come. I make choices each day to lower the carbon footprint of our family. While cleaning house today, I recycled the endless stacks of paper, I hung our sheets outside to dry and used vinegar as a disinfectant. I’m hopeful that those small actions will make at least a small difference.

Have you ever considered your slavery footprint? Considering that you are currently taking the time to read a blog about preventing human trafficking, maybe you have. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I considered my slavery footprint, long after I had started making better choices for the sake of our environment. There are 27-30 million slaves in this world. People made in God’s own image that are forced to work in deplorable conditions without pay. The list of raw materials that are often acquired from slave labor is endless: copper, corn, gold, nylon, soybeans, limestone, propane, brick, castor oil, coffee, cotton, emerald, iron, silicon, diamond, acrylic, cashmere, linen, the list goes on and on. Add to that the material goods that are assembled using slave labor, well there just isn’t room here to list them all.

So, do you really want to know what your slavery footprint is? How many slaves work for you? Go here and find out. After you take the survey, come back to this blog and post your number in the comments, along with your plan of action. Before you find out how many slaves work for you, take a moment to contemplate one of my favorite quotes from William Wilberforce, an abolitionist: “You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.”