We’ve been writing a lot about sustainability in textiles and apparel, including this most recent article on Fossil Fashion. For too many companies, when they talk about sustainability, they are looking at only a small part of the entire supply chain, the part of the carbon footprint that is under their immediate control. But that leaves out a great deal, including fair employment practices, which should also be included in the full sustainability picture. In many industries, some of the most egregious and unsustainable practices happen at the sourcing of materials, whether it is picking cotton, mining rare earth or conflict minerals, or other upstream processes.

I recently spoke to Patricia Jurewizc, CEO of the Responsible Sourcing Network and founder of Yarn Ethically and Sustainably Sourced (YESS), to get her perspective on this issue and what the organization is doing to raise awareness of the broader aspects of sustainability and fair employment practices.

Jurewicz explains, “The Responsible Sourcing Network is a nonprofit, or benefit organization, as I like to call it, that I created really to focus on issues in supply chains or value chains that are contributing harmful environmental or human rights problems and that are difficult to uncover. It brings together lots of different stakeholders, including businesses, NGOs, human rights groups, and other organizations, as well as socially responsible investors. And we also engage with governments. So it’s really trying to find solutions where everyone can contribute. We also have done quite a lot of work in conflict minerals, looking at the mining, particularly in central Africa, of the different metals that go into electronics, like cellphones, automobiles, appliances, etc. YESS is particularly focused on forced labor or modern slavery in the cotton industry. Unfortunately, even decades after we’ve gotten rid of abuse and exploitation in the cotton industry in the United States, it still happens globally.”