Dare to Care - April 14th 2023

Addressing Climate Change: Pesticides for the home gardener

With the arrival of spring, many of us start planning vegetable and flower gardens. Beautiful flowers and delicious fruits and vegetables can be often spoiled by the arrival of garden pests. Synthetic pesticides, which kill or repel garden pests, can be highly effective tools to eliminate these unwelcome visitors, but they often come with undesirable toxic side effects. Consider some of these natural pesticides that are safer alternatives for humans, animals, and the environment—and they are often more affordable, too! Click here to learn more about natural pesticides.

Ending Human Trafficking / How many slaves work for us?

Do we, the consumers, know how we contribute to forced labor? The clothes we wear, the coffee we drink, and the fish and chocolate we consume all contribute to our slavery footprint. Whether we like it or not, forced labor becomes personal when we purchase goods and services from industries that rely on forced labor because we create a profit incentive for those benefitting from this labor.

Traffickers are estimated to exploit over 40 million victims; 25 million are victims of forced labor. The U.S. Department of Labor published a list of goods produced by child labor or forced labor by country. A buying guide also offers a list of slave-free products supplied by companies.

What can we do? We can start by going through these lists, figuring out what to purchase, becoming more involved in our parish, community, and sharing what we learn amongst our friends, family, and colleagues.

Getting together and finding one thing in which we can all engage can empower us as ONE.

Read the full article, How many slaves work for us?, by Maria Elena Perales.

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