3.9B - Fair Trade and Ethical Consumption
Fair trade and ethical consumption schemes may reduce the environmental degradation, the inequalities of global trade and improve working conditions for some people. (A: actions of NGOs and pressure groups)
Globalisation has led to a number of widely held ethical and environmental concerns:
- fears that consumer goods have been made using exploited labour
- concerns that imported food products like tea, coffee, bananas and cocoa do not provide their farmers with a decent income due to low prices
- concerns that consumer goods use excessive resources during their production, packaging, transport and use
- worries that our consumer culture is contributing to global warming as ecological footprints rise
These concerns can be illustrated by jeans from Bangladesh:
- growing the cotton to make the denim fabric uses 13,000 litres of water
- fertilisers and pesticides leak into rivers and groundwater
- dyes and chemicals from fabric treatment waste from factories poison rivers
- Bangladesh's 3.5 million textile workers earn about £25 per month
- Many textile workers work 14-hour days in appalling conditions
- Jeans need to be transported by ship from Bangladesh, which burns fuel-oil and releases greenhouse gases
- most cheap jeans last for 12-18 months before being discarded for the latest fashion
Fair Trade
Fair trade - rather than free trade - pays farmers of cocoa, cotton, tea, and coffee in developing countries a guaranteed price for their produce plus a 'fair trade premium' payment. This attempts to reduce the inequalities of global trade.
The aim is to make income sustainable for farming families, and use some of the additional money to support community facilities like wells, schools and cities.
The downsides of fair trade are that the extra income is small, and fair trade products are more expensive for consumers.
Ethical consumption schemes
Founded in 1993 in Germany the NGO FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) uses its FSC logo on wood products that are sourced from sustainable forests thus helping consumers ensure that products are not contributing to environmental degradation.
Its criteria include that forestry must respect the land right of indigenous people and that forestry workers are well treated and paid.
FSC has become well known globally, but has been criticised for being too brand focussed.