Why Conscious Consumerism?

I used to be the queen of great bargains. Sales were my friend. Give me the rock bottom price, sister. A pair of pants for ten bucks? I am a friggin’ genius shopper! All good until about six years ago when I happened on a story about children as young as six years old being sold into forced labor to make soccer balls and weave carpets. All of the goodies were shipped and consumed by us bargain-shopping westerners. That’s when I had an epiphany. That’s when malls died a sudden horrible death for me and my life changed forever.

The truth is far worse than most of us realize. Beyond the extremes of child slavery, indentured labor, forced labor— whose numbers by the way are estimated to be in the millions— there are just plain sweatshops and rock bottom wage shops. Wages so low that surely the intention must be to keep the workers merely surviving but never, ever thriving. So when large corporations from the west move their factories overseas, do you think its because they are trying to merely be international and multi-cultural? No. It’s because they can get away with unspeakable labor conditions and destructive environmental practices in those countries that they would never be able to get away with in their own backyards.

You may be asking yourself ‘what’s that got to do with me?’ or ‘better them than us, right?’ The truth is we are all interconnected. When a country goes up in flames because its people are starving, its lands are depleted, its citizens are hopeless—we feel the impact here. In our backyards. Hopelessness begets violence. Violence begets more hopelessness, and it almost always spreads. It builds resentment, a world of fear, anger, frustration. A world that eventually turn its eyes on us. On you.

So the next time you wander into a store that is selling ten dollar tee shirts or ten dollar pants and think you have just struck gold— think again. What you have in front of you is a choice. A choice to use your money to applaud and reward companies that are lining their pockets while stripping the earth and degrading lives. Or a choice to use your money as a conscious consumer and reward those companies that balance profit with decency. The real great deal here, is let your money work toward a world that works for everyone.

For more information visit these sites:

Fair Trade Federation, Co-op America, Oxfam,

Kathryn Haydn-Hays
http://affirm-aware.org