Blogging Fair Trade

The run-up to Christmas is now in full swing and there is no better time to pledge to make your Christmas an ethical one.

And with the high street’s number one ethical shop [according to the Ethical Consumer magazine], Monsoon, today being exposed as having child labour and underpaid workers in its supply chain in the Observer newspaper; the best way to ensure that the products you buy are truly ethical, is to go fair trade.

Monsoon was nominated as the most ethical business on the UK high street because it has a strict ethical policy, and indeed it has reacted to the revelations about the unethical goings-on in its supply chain (which, incidentally, were discovered in the company’s own internal audits) by firing the sub-contractor responsible for employing children believed to be have been trafficked, and working together with an NGO to put the children in care homes until they can be reunited with their family.

This is all well and good, and Monsoon should be commended for dealing with the issues head on and doing all it can to prevent child labour and exploitation being part of its supply chain. But the problem is, the supply chains of the large high street shops are so long and convoluted that these practices will continue to be carried out by sub-contracters and, most of the time, the high street businesses won’t even know it is happening.

This is just one of the many reasons as to why fair trade is so fantastic. One of the basic principles of fair trade is transparency: keeping the supply chain short and making sure that there are no sub-contracters helping themselves to a great big chunk of the money designated for the work force.

The producers lie at the heart of fair trade. Often they work together in cooperatives, which then export their goods to the retailers in the West. The money paid by the retailers goes directly back to the cooperatives, where it is generally used to make the business more sustainable, to improve production methods and to provide education and training.

So, when you buy fairly traded products, you can rest safe in the knowledge that the goods weren’t made by children, stolen from their families to produce clothes and other products for western consumers. You know that the adults who have produced the goods will have been paid fairly and will be directly benefiting from your purchase.

With fair trade, your money goes where it belongs: to the people at the bottom of the supply chain; the people who have a lot less than we do; the people whose lives fair trade is transforming.

So let’s make this an ethical Christmas, and buy fair trade.