3.9B: Fair Trade and Ethical Consumption

• 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 downsides of fair trade are that the extra income is small, and fair trade products are more expensive for consumers.
  • 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.
• 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. 
  • FSC has become well known globally, but has been criticised for being too brand focussed. 
  • Its criteria include that forestry must respect the land right of indigenous people and that forestry workers are well treated and paid. 
• Local councils

  • Local councils in the UK play a key role in reducing waste and ecological footprints through recycling and councils' waste collection service. 
  • Recycling does reduce waste, but different councils have different schemes with different results and reducing packaging may be a better way forward. Rate of recycling varies by product as not all materials are easily recyclable - these and valuable materials are recycled most (e.g. metals, paper, glass). Those that are difficult or dangerous to extract will not be (razor blades, medicines, cling film, crockery). 
• NGOs

  Keep Britain Tidy is an NGO set up in 1954. In 1969 they introduced the 'tidyman' logo on bins and packaging to encourage people to dispose of litter appropriately. Their campaigns encourage households to recycle and firms to reduce packaging or the proportion that can be recycled. 
• The benefits of recycling

  • Recycling materials from waste products reduces the extraction of new materials and decreases consumption and the amount of waste sent to landfill. 
  • Recycling of household waste increased from 17% to 44% between 2003 and 2013 but this was still some way behind the 65% achieved in Germany.