Last month Building magazine became the latest bit of the media to ‘expose’ the use of children in the stone extraction and processing industry in India. Quoting Anti Slavery Interna-tional, the magazine says there are a million children in Indian quarries, often effectively working as bonded labour paying off family debts even though bonded labour has been outlawed there.
Building developed their report with hard landscaping ethical trading champions Marshalls and the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI), to which Marshalls belong.
A few months ago the issue was aired on ITV’s News at Ten. The Telegraph newspaper covered it in December. As long ago as 2007 Garden Design Journal covered it. BBC Radio 4 have run programmes on it. There has been a lot of other media coverage. It is an issue that seems unlikely to go away.
Perhaps it is time for the stone industry to tackle it collectively.
After all, nobody really wants to see children risking life and limb working in quarries or stone processing yards – or anywhere else.
But what can you do about it? That is the question most often asked by companies in this country selling imported stone.
In a competitive market with customers basing buying decisions on price, if you don’t supply the material a competitor will. And, in any case, following your supply chain to a quarry perhaps hundreds of miles from its port of departure in India, China, Brazil or some other distant part of the world is not going to be easy for a company with £1million a year or so turnover buying tiles or slab from a company they have only ever contacted by email.
Neither does there seem to be a demand from customers, commercial or domestic, for ethically sourced stone. This magazine’s discussions with architects and designers reveal that although many are aware of the issues of child labour and dangerous conditions in the quarries of developing countries, few actually raise the question and those who do are easily satisfied with the answers they receive. Consumers are clearly not concerned as they continue to buy imported sandstone and granite paving and worktops.
So, do nothing then?
The problem with that, apart from the ethical issues themselves, is that by the time the industry is losing sales to other product areas as a result of customers not wanting to buy stone from quarries that employ children it will already be too late. At that point customers will have taken on board the idea stone involves the exploitation of children and changing people’s perceptions is difficult.
Marshalls have been spearheading the ethical trading campaign in stone because, says Group Marketing Director and ethical trading champion Chris Harrop, the directors care as individuals about it and “we don’t morph into something else when we get to work”.
Marshalls have already done a lot of work into the ethical sourcing of stone and that experience can benefit other companies in the stone industry who join the ETI because the organisation encourages co-operation among its members.
The number of companies belonging to ETI grew by 50% last year and the fastest growing sector is stone, Deputy Director Martin Cooke, who chairs the ETI Stone Group, told NSS. He is one of 15 people employed by ETI at their offices in Coldbath Square, London.
The actual numbers are not quite as impressive. After 12 years in existence ETI has about 70 company members, nine of which are from the stone industry.
The stone firms are in the company of giants. Marshalls are pretty big, with an annual turnover of well over £300million, but they pale alongside the likes of Tesco, Sainsbury, Asda, Next, Gap and River Island, who are all ETI members.
But ETI says its influence goes beyond its own membership – beyond even all the companies in members’ supply chains. For example, its Base Code is the foundation of Sedex (the Supply of Ethical Data Exchange) used by the food and garment industries to share information about suppliers. There are 20,000 companies signed up to that.
ETI was established by Clare Short, then Secretary of State for International Development, in 1998. The aim was to get businesses, NGOs and unions working together, with government funding, to tackle poverty and exploitation worldwide.
ETI is still 50% funded by the Department for International Development. The other half of its income comes from membership fees, which are based on turnover. Up to a turnover of £20million, membership costs £2,000 a year. After £20million there is a sliding scale. At £50million, for example, membership is £3,500 a year. Everyone also pays a one-off joining fee of £500.
To join the Ethical Trading Initiative, companies sign up to a nine point base code (see the box above).
When you join, you are not expected to have solved these issues but you do have to have a commitment to tackling them. You join at a ‘foundation’ level and as you move towards the Base Code goals you become an ‘improver’, an ‘achiever’ and eventually a ‘leader’.
One of the benefits of ETI is that you can work with other members towards achieving the goals. Martin Cooke says $60billion a year are spent worldwide on social auditing. That could be cut if more companies worked together. The money saved could be put to better use improving the conditions of those in the supply chain.
During the ‘foundation’ stage, in particular, ETI work closely with you to develop the systems needed to show you are buying from ethical sources. There is a time limit of 25 months on this stage. If you have not completed the groundwork in that time membership is terminated, but Martin says companies usually complete this stage well within the timescale.
He says companies who apply for membership usually succeed in becoming members because there is considerable dialogue with them before they apply.
He says there was one stone company he advised not to apply for membership because their commitment was to a commercial advantage rather than to social improvements.
The ‘foundation’ stage involves establishing systems for auditing the supply chain and creating plans for taking corrective action. The corrective action can take many forms.
Marshalls, for example, fund an NGO that runs four schools and six health centres. Another member, BBS Granite Concepts Ltd, are supplying water purification kits to their suppliers in China as part of their initiative this year. During one of their auditory visits they became aware of the lack of constant clean water during the summer in some of the smaller factories and realised they could help in this way.
ETI members have to carry out a risk assessment of their supply chain and use that to determine what they will audit. Martin says he doubts a company could achieve this without visiting suppliers. ETI also expect members to demonstrate their commitment to the organisation by attending meetings such as those of the stone group.
ETI will expel members who do not live up to expectations but it is not a regulatory body. It exists to try to tackle poverty and child labour and improve people’s working conditions – something the countries of the world are committed to as members of the United Nations.
You can’t argue against the principles of such a noble ambition.
See Editor Eric Bignell’s blog on this subject under ‘current issue’ at www.naturalstonespecialist.com
By the way, the United Nation’s International Labour Organisation’s Minimum Age Convention C138 is used to determine what constitutes a child. It says the working age should not be less than the country’s minimum age for completing compulsory schooling and in no event less than 15 (14 in limited circumstances in less developed countries).
Help from the Stone Federation
A new guide to choosing stone has been published by Stone Federation Great Britain that includes some advice on making sure stone used on projects comes from ethical sources. The 16-page illustrated publication is called Selecting the Correct Stone and contains advice for those planning to include stone in a new project. It can be downloaded from the Federation website (address below).
The guide describes how to make sure the correct stone is chosen in the first place and emphasises the importance of seeing the right type of samples before choosing.
There is a section on the value of visits to the quarry, mine and factory during the selection process and the desirability of visiting buildings constructed using the same type of stone in a similar environment.
The publication describes the various technical assessments that have to be undertaken and contains a comprehensive list of relevant British Standards and codes of practice.
On ethical issues it says: “Many project teams are now more concerned by the environmental and ethical impacts of the extraction operations and while documentation can give an indication, first-hand experience of the site is invaluable in assessing the merits of different operations and operators.”
Later, under a specific heading, it says: “Ethical / Social Issues: The quarry / mine should have consultation with the local communities about the impact of their operations and may have objectives and targets to reduce these impacts and any resulting complaints. For the employees, there should be encouragement for learning and development. Most UK and EU sites will have these in place, but it becomes more important when stones are being considered from developing countries.
“While it is tempting to look at more competitively priced stones it should be equally important to ensure that the company extracting the chosen stone is conducting its operation in an ethical manner.
“Child labour and bonded labour is still used in quarry sites in the developing world and companies that have been encouraged to abandon these practices should not find themselves penalised by the price being the only factor of consideration. It is vitally important that the extraction site is visited and appropriate questions asked. The health and safety of these operations should also be assessed and health and safety policies can be requested so that these can be compared with the actual operating conditions.