It’s Earth Day, and all eyes are on the environment -- rightfully so, seeing as we're changing our climate irreversibly. Companies, NGOs, and others have appropriately set their sights on Mother Earth this week: SAP and Anheuser-Busch touted solar arrays; Environmental Defense Fund applauded green innovations by companies such as Coca-Cola, Google, and Wal-Mart; and SustainableBusiness.com released the State of Green Investing 2009 report.
Earth Day's deluge of enviro-news creates a perfect opportunity to focus on the other elements of sustainability: social justice and economic equality. Sweatfree Communities celebrated Tax Day last week by releasing Subsidizing Sweatshops II. Like its predecessor, the report unearths how state and local governments use public tax dollars to purchase uniforms manufactured in sweatshop conditions. The research covers eight factories in five countries on three continents producing police, firefighter uniforms for nine major brands.
"One consistent finding is that the global economic crisis has been detrimental to labor rights," states SweatFree Communities Executive Director Bjorn Claeson...