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Nestlè

H & M

Shell Oil

The Sweat Shop Labour

In 2010, it was revealed that a factory in Bangladesh supplying to Swedish-based clothing retailer H&M had caught fire – with the fire exits blocked and with inefficient equipment to stop the fire – and killed 21 workers. Although it has tried to advertise itself as a pro-green company, H&M has a spotty track record overall, with a 1997 TV documentary in Sweden accusing the company of putting young children in the Philippines through child labour to produce their clothes.

In 2009, a lawsuit was brought against Shell for their actions in Nigeria. Although it settled out of court, a number of memos pertaining to the case were later leaked to the press. According to the Guardian, these leaked memos revealed that Shell had frequently paid the Nigerian military to brutally quash protests and even helped organise raids on villages opposed to the drilling. Needless to say, all this raiding and quashing frequently escalated into massacres.

In 2001, it was discovered that a large part of the cocoa Nestle uses to make that lovely cheap chocolate came from farms in the Ivory Coast. Farms that don’t exactly have much in the way of governmental oversight—which is our polite way of saying they keep over 600,000 children in conditions even Calvin Candie would describe as a bit harsh.