Most major companies that produce chocolate source the raw materials from the Ivory Coast, where working conditions during the cocoa harvest are described as “nothing short of terrible”. The cocoa is often harvested by slave labourers, many of whom are children taken from neighbouring poor countries such as Mali. Often these children have been abducted or sold into slavery by their families for as little as $30.

Many of the world’s leading electronic brands including Apple, Samsung, and Sony have been caught up in labour abuse scandals related to the production and manufacture of every-day items such as phones, laptops and tablets. One in three foreign workers in the electronics industry in Malaysia, a major electronics manufacturing hub, is held in a condition of forced labour.

There are millions of children working in all parts of the clothing supply chain; from the production of cotton in Benin, harvesting in Uzbekistan, yarn spinning in India, to stitching together clothes in Bangladesh. An estimated 60% of workers in yarn mills in India are under 18. The factories that supply cheap clothes for the biggest high street brands are notorious for abusing workers and endangering their lives. Poor safety practices are common, resulting in tragedies like the Rana Plaza disaster which killed 1,138 workers.

Rubber plantations in Liberia are rife with labour exploitation of children. The plantations, often controlled by gangs and warlords, supply the world’s major companies in the rubber industry. Children carry buckets of latex tapped from trees for miles from the forest to storage tanks. The average worker can generate thousands of dollars worth of natural rubber per month, but receive only a few dollars a day in compensation.

It is used as everything from a cheap cooking oil to an ingredient in cosmetics and even fuel, with the industry worth over $40 billion a year. Most of the world’s palm oil production takes place in just two Indonesian islands, Borneo and North Sumatra, notorious hotspots for slave labour. Little oversight gives companies who run the plantations a free hand in abusing their workforce, often forcing migrant workers into years of bonded servitude with payment in loans and beatings for those who try to escape.

Knock-off handbags, counterfeit sunglasses, fake sport shoes. When even legitimate manufacturers are complicit in horrendous worker abuses, the plight of those who make fake or unbranded goods can even worse. The producers of counterfeit goods are generally unscrupulous to start with; profits are often funnelled into drug trafficking and organised crime. There is little incentive to improve the dire conditions in factories that produce these goods as the buyers at the top of the supply chain are not tied to major brands.

Produced in marginalised rural areas of the global south, rice plantations are high risk for labour abuses. Children in Ugandan plantations are susceptible to snake bites and high instances of malaria due to standing for hours in swampy mosquito-infested places. Rice mills in India are often staffed with bonded migrant workers who are charged extortionate fees, unable to ever pay the debt back. Even in Brazil,many rural children have to give up education in favour of rice farming, keeping another generation locked in poverty.

The prawn-fishing trawlers off the coasts of Southeast Asia in Thailand, Burma, and Cambodia, are rife with modern slavery. Some slaves are kept at sea for years, pumped with drugs to work 20 hour days and subject to beatings, torture and random execution. One company with a $33 billion turnover was found to be using slave ships to supply prawns to the world’s leading supermarkets and food producers.

A recent EU-Uzbekistan trade deal lowers the price of importing cotton from the country, despite the entire industry relying on state-run forced labour. Every year, the lives of millions of people in Uzbekistan are upended for the annual cotton harvest under penalty of beatings, intimidation or prison to toil under back-breaking conditions. At least a third of cotton farming in India is done by children. Young girls will often be sold by their families, working up to 12 hours a day and suffering lung problems and other serious health effects.

From prison labourers in China to children in Brazil, footwear factories are harsh places to work with violence, intimidation and abuse commonplace. Fast fashion means that new orders must be delivered to international suppliers very quickly, with already-exploited workers bearing the brunt of forced overtime. Children in India’s footwear industry often develop cancer, skin infections and paralysis resulting from the neurotoxic chemicals found in glue.

Products made from logging, including wood pulp and cardboard boxes are often sourced from regions highly vulnerable to modern slavery. This includes central Africa, South America, China, Russia and South Asia. Illegal logging proliferates much of the industry, and poor environmental management causes further devastation in already disadvantaged communities. In Bangladesh, children are often used for logging in remote areas, cutting into the forest territory of Bengal tigers who prey on the children.