Why Buy Fair Trade Products?
"It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly... before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you've depended on more than half the world."
Martin Luther King's words are probably even more relevant today than when he spoke them in 1967.
Fair trade is a way to help reduce poverty every time we shop. It is practical action towards building a better world. By making a simple choice to buy fair trade, it contributes towards:
- Establishing decent working conditions, eradicating sweatshops and ending exploitative child labour
- Persuading companies and governments changing the way the do business
- Transforming the lives and communities of farmers and workers in the developing world, enabling them to improve their position and have more control over their lives.
Fairtrade certification standards are established by Fairtrade Labelling Organisations International (FLO) and comprise both minimum social, economic and environmental requirements, which producers must meet to be certified, plus progress requirements that encourage continuous improvement to develop farmers' organisations or the situation of estate workers.
The FAIRTRADE Mark and certification is currently available in some categories but not others. For example it includes cotton and many food & drink categories but excludes handicrafts. Fairtrade Certification and its system of minimum pricing were designed initially for commodity products. It is technically difficult to adapt this model of standardized minimum pricing to crafts and other products made by small-scale artisans, which are each unique, made of varied materials and have highly varied production processes and costs. However, FLO is currently working with the International Fair Trade Association (IFAT) to explore whether we could work towards a certification programme for these products in the future.