- In the past year or so on YouTube,
we've seen this surge in people concerned
with ethical consumerism.
That is, looking up what they're buying
and seeing if those purchases match up
with their own ethical code.
This has often been environmentally focused,
so people looking at their carbon footprint,
global warming, animal testing,
vegetarianism, or veganism,
for example.
There's even been challenge videos,
'how cruel is my makeup bag,'
where people look at all the individual bits of makeup
that they own,
and then cross-reference them against a list
of whether or not the company tests on animals.
If they do test on animals,
they're labelled,
and that person makes sure not to buy the product again.
And if they do pass,
then they're sort of given a gold star:
they're cruelty-free,
this is an ethically sound piece of makeup.
But is that really the case?
Imagine for example,
you have this beautiful gold shimmering eye shadow
and you look it up and low and behold
the company, and the parent company that make it,
don't test on animals.
In fact, they are actively against testing on animals.
We can label this as cruelty-free, right?
This is an ethically sound purchase.
Maybe not.
You see, we need to look at the production
of that particular item,
and its raw materials and the way that it's put together.
Mica is a glittery mineral, found in many beauty products
to give a shimmer effect,
and 25% of the world's supply comes from regions
that use child labour.
Even Lush, a company that prides itself on it's ethics,
hasn't been able to eradicate it from it's supply chain.
And it's not just makeup,
Amnesty International recently found,
Apple,
Samsung,
Sony,
and Volkswagen,
were allowing cobalt mined by children
into their products.
Child labour, slavery, trafficking and forced labour
are all rife around the world.
So why aren't we talking about it?
I recently got the incredible opportunity
to attend the Thomson Reuters Foundation's
Trust Women Conference,
which is a conference around anti-slavery initiatives
and women's rights.
There I got the chance to conduct two interviews,
which I'm going to show you now.
One with Kevin Hyland,
the UK Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner,
and one with Nick Grono,
the President and CEO of the Freedom Fund.
I just want say before I show these interviews,
that I know that the title of this video
is potentially controversial,
and it's not meant to be abrasive
towards anyone who's outspoken about animal rights
or environmental issues.
I don't think this is an and-or thing,
I think that you can absolutely care about animals
and also care about human rights.
I just think that it's something
that not enough people know about,
to be talking about it.
So please,
if you're someone who is concerned with ethical consumerism,
and making sure that we make moral choices
in this global economy,
then do something about it.
Talk about it yourself,
share this video,
have a look at the resources that I put in the description,
because this is something that needs to be talked about.
Is it possible right now to shop completely ethically
in terms of,
kind of trafficking and human slavery,
or is that ultimately the difficulty that there isn't
kind of clear guidelines about these companies,
the sort of green light that they have
a kind of perfect record?
- Yeah, no, it's not possible.
With the best wool in the world,
if you're buying clothes from the High Street,
if you're using mobile phones,
if you're eating seafood,
then even if you're determined
to ascertain whether there's a risk,
you can't have confidence that there's no slavery
in the supply chain.
Super low-cost labour in places like India and so on
is often exploited and coerced.
So that's what we call forced labour and slave labour,
and used to make t-shirts, clothes that we wear,
used to make the phones that we use.
So, this issue is out there.
Consumers have gradually become aware of it,
but I think the whole knowledge base
is perhaps 20 years behind where we are
on environmental sustainability.
- Do you think it is about
education at this point,
and the stage that we're at,
about gathering information,
about getting statistics,
about getting informed on all levels,
and presenting that to the public?
Do you think that's kind of
a step that needs to be taken next,
or are there other things that need to be put in place?
- If you look at recently,
Hull University did some research
and it was only 8% of the people that they interviewed
really realised that modern slavery was something happening
in our day to day's lives.
I think that's important; education is key.
But if we look at this issue,
it's happening here and now today.
So we haven't got time, really.
We haven't got time because there are children in mines
somewhere in the world.
You know, here in London there was
a case with a seven-year-old
who was working in slave labour in a household
in North London,
and in the same garden they had men kept in sheds,
who would be sent out to commit crime,
and they were exploited, and sexually exploited,
if they spoke against their captors.
So we need to act,
and we need to use the resources that are there,
the statutory agencies need to pick up their game
and start to respond to this.
We don't want another issue in years to come
where we're having an inquiry about failure
that happens now.
- In terms of the people interested in learning more,
are there places that they can go
to organisations that we should be looking at
for sort of accurate information.
- There's lots, I mean,
Thomson Reuters Foundation,
and TrustLaw and Trust Women,
as doing a lot on this,
a lot of the mainstream media is starting to cover this
in a lot more depth,
so in addition to Thomson Reuters
The Guardian has done some magnificent work on slavery,
New York Times, Al Jazeera.
So, news networks are covering in a lot more detail.
My organisation, the Freedom Fund,
is starting to cover it in a lot more detail,
including pulling together new stories.
So there is increasing information out there,
but there's a huge gap between being aware of the problem
and doing something about it.
What consumers can do, first and foremost,
is ask companies what their policies are on slavery
and forced labour.
That makes the companies aware that this is an issue.
And that's not hard, I mean,
I do it with some of the fast food that I buy,
or some of the clothes that I buy,
just ask, what is your policy on forced labour?
And that message starts resonating,
because companies are aware that they need to do more,
and when consumers start asking more about this
that will encourage greater, you know,
focus on the issue.
- If you've got a group of young people,
or a group of people at university,
who buy in a certain fashion or buy certain things,
they can have their own discussion groups
across universities.
They probably buy a lot of mobile phones,
they probably buy a lot of IT equipment,
a lot of paper and books.
Well they can look at the supply chain statements,
and between them set up a real force
for buying from only ethical companies,
and because we know people at universities
are very good at promoting
and very good at debating and being vocal,
they can actually say,
well actually, this is good, this is bad,
and we're not accepting that.
So once we get that into the right areas
and people start talking about it,
we have got the possibility of making that cultural change.
I went to see a leper colony
and I met a woman who had suffered badly with leprosy,
and their children,
because of advancement of medical science,
are now not at risk of getting these terrible diseases,
and she said, "you come from a wealthy country,
"the rest of the world has come
"and cured this illness we've got
"and now that's gone,
"we've got people from your part of the world,
and some of our own,
"who are now buying and selling our people.
"Our children are safe from the illnesses and the diseases,
"but they're not safe from human beings."
And she asked me,
would I go and say what she said,
and she said,
"will you go and tell people,
"and make sure and do everything you can,
"to make sure that our children and our children's children
"aren't trafficked, aren't dying in the Mediterranean,
"aren't dying in Libya,
"and aren't coming to Europe and being exploited
"and bought and sold."
And I told her I would.
So that's a message I would like to put out there.
- Now I don't want the outcome of this video,
for people to look at that and say,
oh, well, there we go,
we can't shop ethically in terms of human suffering,
so there's nothing we can do about it.
I think it's this lack of choice that's important;
the idea that we can't be players in this global economy
unless we're benefiting from someone else's suffering.
This is something we all need to be talking about
and paying attention to.
The fact of the matter is,
this is something that's potentially more complicated
than the other issues around ethical consumerism
that we've talked about on YouTube before.
This is not something that we can just make
our own personal choices about
to make better ethical choices,
because there are no ethical choices for us to make
in a lot of places.
We're operating within a global system that is broken,
but the good new is,
as you've seen there are people who are working
to change that,
and you can, too.
In the description I have left a link to
Thomson Reuters' action plan.
These are the point of action that came out
of the Trust Women Conference
that everybody, you included,
can help with to make a difference.
So please check them out.
So I hope you found that video useful,
and please continue the conversation in the comments.
If you'd like to help support me make these videos,
then I'll leave a link to my Patreon in the description
along with all of my other social media links
so you can find me over the internet.
Until I see you next time, bye.