Ethical Bricks

Over the past years the products available to the person wanting to support ethical traders has steadily increased. Most people these days have heard of Fair trade, but there are many other traders, (click on the link for a list of some of these).

Whilst in Pakistan last year I was personally struck with reasons why I need to support the companies that seek to provide a work environment that is safe and fair. I was going to buy myself a new leather jacket - there are plenty of good quality, hand stitched jackets with that new leather smell - but then I visited the tanneries of Kasur. I saw kids, (and adults) working in conditions that are not just unfair, but patently unsafe. Teenagers with permanent skin diseases from the chemical treatments. Children wading through stinking offal as they cleaned and prepared the skins.

Now, I won't pretend that my decision not to buy leather is going to change this industry, but having seen, I had to do something.

This week, with the Pakistan team, I began the process to do something about another 'abusive' industry. The brick industry in Pakistan is a large user of child and bonded labour, a source of organ selling and unfair work practices. There is not much ethical or fair for the people that make bricks in the kilns in Kasur (and many other locations). But we are going to have a go at working with a kiln owner or two to develop a fair and safe kiln - we are going to try and change the way the brick makers (in particular children) are treated and paid. At the same time we are going to try and convince some of the 'big buyers' to only buy from our 'model, fair trade, kilns'.

Is it going to make a difference? Will it stop child and bonded labour? Well, not overnight it won't - but unless people start buying ethically traded products it's never going to change. Unless people stop buying products they know to be produced by slave labour it won't change! Unless I decide that I would prefer no leather jacket, to one that started life under the bare feet of a little kid working for $0.25c a day - it won't change.

So, we're going to try and make some ethical bricks. We're going to try and build some fair trade walls. And in the process we'll try and stop some kids having to work 15 hour days; instead they can learn to read and write. We might even be able to stop a father from selling his family to the kiln owner for generations to come, or just selling a kidney, to pay for his daughter's wedding.

Simplistic - Yes! But will you imagine the alternative? Would you accept the alternative for yourself, your family, your kids?