This blog is for the Wieuca Road Baptist Church J.E.P.R. (Justice, Ethics and Public Responsibility) Council & friends. We are a group of laity and clergy who seek to enable the church to tackle tough issues of our society such as poverty, hunger, racism, environmental destruction, and war. We hope to encourage healing, unity, diversity, and peace-making for all God's creation.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Footprint of our Products

The following is a song by an african american female group that sings of justice issues:

I wear garments touched by hands from all over the world
35% cotton, 65% polyester, the journey begins in Central America
In the cotton fields of El Salvador
In a province soaked in blood,
Pesticide-sprayed workers toil in a broiling sun
Pulling cotton for two dollars a day.
Then we move on up to another rung—Cargill
A top-forty trading conglomerate, takes the cotton through the Panama Canal
Up the Eastern seaboard, coming to the US of A for the first time
In South Carolina
At the Burlington mills
Joins a shipment of polyester filament courtesy of the New Jersey petro-chemical mills of
Dupont
Dupont strands of filament begin in the South American country of Venezuela Where oil
riggers bring up oil from the earth for six dollars a day
Then Exxon, largest oil company in the world,
Upgrades the product in the country of Trinidad and Tobago
Then back into the Caribbean and Atlantic Seas
To the factories of Dupont
On the way to the Burlington mills
In South Carolina
To meet the cotton from the blood-soaked fields of El Salvador
In South Carolina
Burlington factories hum with the business of weaving oil and cotton into miles of fabric
for Sears
Who takes this bounty back into the Caribbean Sea
Headed for Haiti this time—May she be one day soon free—
Far from the Port-au-Prince palace
Third world women toil doing piece work to Sears specifications
For three dollars a day my sisters make my blouse
It leaves the third world for the last time
Coming back into the sea to be sealed in plastic for me
This third world sister
And I go to the Sears department store where I buy my blouse
On sale for 20% discount
Are my hands clean?
-"Are My Hands Clean?" by Sweet Honey In the Rock


Some websites on more ethical spending:
http://www.cleanclothes.org/companies/04-04-alternative-ethical-clothes-review.htm
http://www.fairlabor.org/index.html
http://www.sweatshopwatch.org/index.php?s=59&PHPSESSID=52a241ef26b6e65c1b375d08e156701f

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