The Child Who Makes Your Makeup

You know that shimmer eye shadow that you wear on date or to special parties?  Well, that shimmer comes from the mineral mica.  And much of the world's mica comes from India, where children as young as six work long, arduous days for as little as a single meal of rice.  And their labor is what fuels the Western cosmetic industry.

According to one Indian child rights NGO, after garments, sporting goods, and fashion accessories, cosmetics is the fourth largest industry employer of child labor.  As one child laborer testified,

I used to go to school and I learned how to write my name in English and some maths.  Now I just collect mica with groups of children. We work in a 5ft to 10ft hole, and loose earth falls down all the time. Last year one girl was buried.

Mica is not only used in cosmetics, but also in paints and in some electronics.  It is actually a surprisingly common material in a number of consumer products.  Just for fun, I decided to check some of my own cosmetics, specifically one that I thought was safe from being tainted by exploitation.  My Burt's Bees Lip Shimmer? Contains mica.  Since my Burt's Bees was made in North Carolina (at a factory near where I went to college), I thought for sure there could be no exploitation in it.  It even says "100% Natural" on the label, which must mean something!  But supply chains can taint products, even those made in America in fair factories.

The moral of this story is bigger than mica.  Slavery and exploitation sneak into products via supply chains.  And when a product like my Burt's Bees Lip Shimmer has up to 20 ingredients, it can be very difficult to track the source of each one.  Maybe the mica in my tube was mined by poor, desperate and exploited children and maybe it was not.  But as a very loyal customer, I want to ask Burt's Bees (and all the many, many other cosmetic companies who use mica) to find out.   

Image from indiansari.blogspot.com