Topshop recently announced a collection of Denim and other apparel products made from Fair Trade Cotton. In these times of explosive cotton price increases, companies and buyers may have forgotten about the ‘Fair Trade Cotton’ , but there are retailers who are taking it up on a long term basis as a means to give benefit to producers. Before we go into details, it would be interesting to understand what is Fair trade cotton and actually- What is Fair Trade .. Let’s take some questions and get a better insight .
What is Fair Trade ?
To define simply, Fair Trade looks for poverty alleviation and works through three main actors:producers located in poor countries.organizations that trade, support and usually certify the products and.. the customers who recognize those products and buy them.
Fair Trade organizations seek to establish a long term relationship with producers. This helps eliminate the uncertainty they usually suffer, either due to lack of access to market information, to erratic prices or to plain abuses from prey middlemen. In this collaborative frame, trading NGOs also provide upfront payment or financing for harvest costs and technical advice for organic farming, for example. Apart from that, Fair traders help their providers when disaster strikes.
How Can A Product Be Certified As Fair Trade ?
It takes several criteria to certify a product as a Fairtrade one; they include specific quality standards and general requirements like child labor control, gender equity, democratic organization and respect for Nature. This, in turn, renders nice environmental benefits for mother Earth. Once a supporting NGO has checked that criteria are in place, they back the product; some of those products may be marked with a label . Producers start receiving a higher price for their goods… and also a Premium: an extra amount of money intended for community development purposes.
This way, producers get a wage which is enough for a decent living, community development becomes possible and consumers can rest assured (by the certifiers) that they are buying a product with no exploitation trail behind.