Slavery Footprint

This weekend, I was doing some reading on human trafficking, and came across slaveryfootprint.org, which estimates how many people are likely working in slavery to create the things you own and consume.

I figured, "I don't have that many computer gadgets or tons and tons of clothes, my slavery footprint will probably be minimal." False! My score on the quiz was 44--that's a lot of people being exploited to enable my overly-comfy American lifestyle. (You can check out the methodology and the data sources used in the algorithms here, I'm no expert but it seems pretty reasonable.)

Did you know some of the soybeans produced in South America use forced labor? And cotton grown in Uzbekistan? I never really thought about products other than tea and coffee and bananas since they are the products you see sometimes with the "fair trade" stickers in the store. But now I need to be more intentional about the clothes and other products I buy, to know whether the supply chains and manufacture/assembly practices are ethical and fair to the workers. Not exactly sure how yet, but it is time to find out.

So, how many slaves work for you?