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Slavery Footprint asks: How Many Slaves Do You Have Working for You?

by Suzanne Kantra on October 28, 2011

Slavery FootprintI have 66 slaves working for me. Or at least that’s what Slavery Footprint estimates based on my lifestyle and the size of my family.

For a quick snapshot, you answer 11 pages of questions, including your age, the number of children you have, whether you rent or own a home, what’s in your medicine cabinet, what you eat, the clothing you own, how much jewelry you own and what electronics you have. If you have time, you can fine tune your results by reporting specific number of items. Like how many computers, leather shoes or stuffed animals you have.

Slavery FootprintFor me, the main contributors were my electronics—not a big surprise there, as slavery has a large footprint in mining of raw materials—and my children’s stuffed animals. Now I have a better idea of my impact on human trafficking, and I learned some interesting facts about forced labor while filling out the survey. For instance, did you know that “bonded labor is used in Southeast Asia’s shrimping industry, which supplies more shrimp to the U.S. than any other country?”

The website, which was created by Call + Response, a non-profit dedicated to ending slavery, in collaboration with the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, estimates the number of slaves by taking a look at more than 450 products—from the sourcing of their raw materials through the manufacturing of the finished product. And the data is taken from sources such as the Department of Labor’s “List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor 2010,” International Labor Organization’s “Committee of Experts Reports 2011-2003” and Transparency International‘s “Corruption Index 2010.” Check the site’s Methodology page for a complete explanation and list of sources.


Topics

Family and Parenting, News, Health and Home, Blog, Green Tech


Discussion loading

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From Kelly on November 01, 2011 :: 9:15 pm


I had difficulty fine tuning my results-it wouldn’t save my changes.  I doubt the average person has only 25.  We’ve removed ourselves from a large portion of the consumerism in America, yet we still scored 51.  We do have electronics and know that’s a big contributor, but we don’t buy any cosmetics or toiletries, and raise a good portion of our own food.

I fine tuned the electronics to accurately reflect what we do own (less than avg, I’d say) and our score went up-even though every time I go back to it, it has reset to the defaults.

Overall, good info to have, but what to do about it?

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From douglas m. francis sr. on November 02, 2011 :: 2:37 am


i never new of the degree of forced slave/labor i did not know of the magnitude of the problem a big surprise.I wish i new an answer to this,but have none.I thank techlicious for bringing this issue to the internet, just maybe certain people could read this,the right people could bring some attention to someone who could help w/issue.Hopefully

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From Rich Moser on November 30, 2011 :: 10:48 pm


Hi, thanks very much for sharing this with your subscribers. It’s critically important information for us all, as much as we do not want to think about it.

Having said that, I found some problems with the survey that are too big to ignore. First and foremost, there was no way to contact the people who made the website. I wanted to tell them how confusing certain elements were to me, and suggest how to make it better—but I couldn’t do that.

Second, the “fine tuning” didn’t make sense. I interpreted the numbers to mean “each” many places, instead of the impact or the size or who knows what else, so if other people did also I can see why the average scores were so low. I live very low on the food chain and have little, but I still got a high score, so I’m thinking the whole site needs clarity.

Please pass on my comments and address to them if you have a way to do so.

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