I had been slowly moving toward deeper involvement in the Green movement most of my life but it was my headlong dive into Fair Trade that really committed me to trying to better our world and environment in a sustainable way. I taught English and reading, among other projects, in Guyana as a Peace Corps Volunteer between 2003 and 2005. Interacting directly with the producers of my food and other goods I consumed drove home the idea that trade is a fundamentally human interaction.
Upon returning home I wanted to find a way to continue assisting disadvantaged producers and artisans break the cycle of poverty and develop their communities to provide basic social services like education and health care. My wife, Alicia Erickson, and I started Two Hands Worldshop, a Fair Trade retail business, to start to fulfill this goal. Our dream is to grow Two Hands into a development organization focused on education, training and financing micro-enterprises at home and abroad.
Fair Trade and the Green movement are thoroughly linked and through my involvement in Fair Trade I have become a greener person. Alicia and I have been slowly but surely greening our daily lives. In addition to writing for Green Options we also write, along with a couple good friends, about the greening process, sustainable living and fair trade on our blog.
As I continue to write and think about the issue
of Fair Trade, it becomes more and more apparent to me that our economic system is a root cause for a wide array of our world’s woes. Instances of poverty, disease, wars (and the dehumanization that accompanies all three), and our quickly degrading environment occuring all over the world (but especially in the poorer Southern hemisphere) can all be traced back to an economic [...]
The Fair Trade movement operates under the basic market principle of supply and demand. In order to spread the ideas of economic sustainability and justice to others, we create demand for Fair Trade by spreading the word. But with demand for Fair Trade products repidly increasing (by more than 40% a year) around the world, we need to ensure that Fair Trade products are easily accessible in the marketplace. And just [...]
Safe sex will soon be greener and more fair. The French Letter Condom Company, based in the UK, will open for business at the end of this month offering Fair Trade latex condoms. The latex used to make the condoms is sourced from rubber producers in India and Sri Lanka who have been working with FairDeal Trading, makers of fine Fair Trade sports equipment, [...]
Many of us are working to green our home lives but it is important to bring that green initiative to the workplace as well. Offices generate tons and tons of waste everyday.
The often forgotten first step in any greening process is to reduce the amount of waste generated. Remember reduce, reuse, recycle? Recycling is the last step. Try this: gather up a few of your co-workers from [...]
A study conducted by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) of the UK determined that ethical consumption is limited more by a lack of accessibility and availability than a lack of awareness. Researchers held 12 focus groups representing different socio-economic classes throughout the city of Bristol, and found that, across the spectrum, consumers were aware of ethical consumption options, such as Fair Trade and organic goods. However, the participants [...]
A few months ago Scotland, building off of the Fair Trade Town movement, joined forces with Wales to establish a set of criteria for the two countries to declare themselves the first Fair Trade Nations. The Fair Trade Town idea has proven very effective in securing institutional support for the consumer-driven Fair Trade movement. Hundreds of towns and cities in Scotland and Wales have committed to purchasing Fair Trade products for [...]
Microfinancing, the loaning of small amounts of money to the asset-less poor, garnered worldwide attention last year when one of the leaders in this emerging field, Grameen Bank, and its founder Muhammad Yunus were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Microfinancing reaches out to a massive economic underclass that has been shunned by the international banking and lending system by providing necessary seed capital for small ventures.
It may seem intuitive for some to [...]
The idea of socializing capitalism, an economic system that combines the idea of open market competition with consumer enforced social ends, has been responsible for the steady birth and growth of creative economic institutions that are realizing economic, social and environmental profits. One of the best examples of social-capitalism’s love-children are the social stock exchanges of Brazil, South Africa and one under development in Scotland.
Brazil’s Environmental and Social Investment Exchange [...]
Netherlands-based Max Havelaar, a European Fair Trade pioneer, is working to make sure economic justice and human rights are not forgotten in the rush to find a profitable and sustainable biofuel to lead the green energy revolution. The organization is working with an energy company in the Netherlands to market Fair Trade carbon offsets.
The project is kicking off with a pilot program in Tanzania and is centered around the cultivation [...]
Solar Roast Coffee, a company based in Pueblo, Colorado, is making some of the most ecologically friendly coffee in the world. In fact, Solar Roast has been roasting their Fair Trade organic beans with nothing but the power of the sun since October of 2004.
In the past three years these enterprising innovators have continued to improve their solar roasting technology, and are now using the third iteration of their invention, the [...]
