Some people ask: "Shouldn't we buy everything locally?" In theory YES! In a perfect world we would weave and knit our own clothes and craft the toys we give our children; grow the vegetables that go into our meals,etc to make sure the environment is taken care of given that it provides all the resources we need to live. However, there is very few people that even grow their own spices, leave alone make our own clothes. For the majority of us, fair trade is as green as it gets.
Fair trade is all about about better prices for unprivileged producers, decent working conditions, local sustainability, and fair terms of trade for farmers and workers in the developing world. All too often profits of the sale of crafts, jewelry, tea, coffee, chocolate, bananas, etc, are eaten up by multi-national companies and the growers/artisans end up with very little return for their work or their traditional way of creating products dissapear when industrialized factories appear trying to comply with demands from large multi-national companies for lower prices and mass produced products.
Fair Trade is a voluntary model of trade that brings consumers and companies together to offer small-scale farmers a price for their products that covers the cost of production and provides a sustainable livelihood so that they can send their kids to school and pay their bills. It helps them support their families while improving their standards of life but mantaining their traditional way of living (which they usually like, to the surprise of some people). In summary, it gives disadvantaged small producers more control over their own lives and fosters awareness and appreciation for different cultures.Some people ask: "Shouldn't we buy everything locally?" In theory YES! In a perfect world we would weave and knit our own clothes and craft the toys we give our children; grow the vegetables that go into our meals,etc to make sure the environment is taken care of given that it provides all the resources we need to live. However, there is very few people that even grow their own spices, leave alone make our own clothes.
Recycling is of course good but that is an "after the fact" action and doesn't encourage necesarily businesses to grow based on ethical and eco-friendly principles (unless we talk about the stores that sell recyled items or recycle their products)Â
Still, for those of us who can't make our own clothes or do want to buy something new now and again, Fair Trade fashion is a sustainable alternative.Much of fair trade apparel and accessories is made with organic cotton, first and foremost, because producers in third world countries have little or no access to the tons of chemical fertiliser and pesticide available to industrialized nations. That of course reduces the waste that goes on the land, sea, and air, and of course the pollution caused by manufacturing them.The fabrics and other raw materials used to make Fair Trade clothes are not synthetic. Most synthetic fabrics are petroleum based, and even if they are not, it still takes lots of energy to produce them - usually generated from fossil fuels. Ovine wool and Alpaca wool, the main materials for all of our apparel and accessories (like our handbags) are totally natural and eco-friendly dyes are used.Traditional techniques such as handweaving or Arpilleria don't realease any CO2. (check www.incakids.org for samples of products)
Like Safia Minney from the "People Tree" says: "A weaver can handweave 8-10 metres per day. A power loom here can weave 25-30 metres per day providing work for only one person for every three machines. The energy consumption of one power loom is the equivalent to twenty vacuum cleaners sucking all day. That's 20 x 3 power looms = 60 vacuum cleaners' worth of energy to provide one job - a lot of carbon emissions and global warming for one job!"
"Ah... but what about production capacity?" says the journalist.
With ten million handweavers living on starvation wages in Bangladesh and India ONLY, there is ample production capacity. We just need the will to work in the villages and arrange the distribution channels so the villagers can sell what they produce.Additionally, craftsmen and producers take good care of their environment, they understand that depend on it. They feed well (and real food) to their animals because they know the animals need to be healthy to provide good quality wool for their products as well as meat for the family. They take good care of their plants because they know they produce the food the family eats and they take care of the water and the soil since they are the base for their survival. It is different for us, city dwellers, we are used to living in huge houses or buildings with little green space. We drink filtered or bottled water and we eat produce and veggies that come from the supermarket. We don't see what the animals eat or what the veggies are sprayed with, we don't get to see (or smell) the water in their source and we don't know what is to depend on rain or sun to eat that month.