Buy locally, buy responsibly, to avoid supporting child labor
- By Noreen Adler
- Published 04/30/2008
Noreen Adler
Founder and President, Ecobrownstone
Noreen is Founder and President of Ecobrownstone. She has been a resident of brownstone Brooklyn (Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights and Carroll Gardens) for over two decades and has planned, designed and managed a wide range of renovation and real estate development projects in Brooklyn and elsewhere. As a developer she is a member of the NYC Committee evaluating the LEED for Homes Guidelines for application in New York. She also has a personal passion for sculptural relief ceramic tiles and murals which she has designed and fabricated at her studio on the Gowanus Canal.
Whenever I pick up a product that was made in China I wonder what human misery has gone into its production. We need to be conscious consumers -- does anyone really want our children to play with a toy that was produced by another child's slave labor? Buying locally-produced products not only supports your local economy but also removes support for products produced by abusive labor practices that enslave children, pay unfair wages, or poison the workforce and the planet.
I realize not every product you may need or want is produced locally, but at a minimum you can look for products produced in countries where child labor protection laws, occupational safety and health regulation, and environmental regulations to reduce green house gases and the release of other toxic chemicals into the environment, are in effect or being implemented.
China is not the only offender. The International Labour Organization (ILO) is an agency of the U.N. that, through its International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), provides technical advisory services focusing on the worst abuses to children: hazardous work, forced labour, street-life for children, treatment of girls, and the employment of children who are less than 13 years old. You can read more about international efforts to eliminate child labor at the International Labour Organization web site, which includes a database of child labor statistics on a country-by-country basis around the world.
I realize not every product you may need or want is produced locally, but at a minimum you can look for products produced in countries where child labor protection laws, occupational safety and health regulation, and environmental regulations to reduce green house gases and the release of other toxic chemicals into the environment, are in effect or being implemented.
China is not the only offender. The International Labour Organization (ILO) is an agency of the U.N. that, through its International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), provides technical advisory services focusing on the worst abuses to children: hazardous work, forced labour, street-life for children, treatment of girls, and the employment of children who are less than 13 years old. You can read more about international efforts to eliminate child labor at the International Labour Organization web site, which includes a database of child labor statistics on a country-by-country basis around the world.
