Benefits of buying Fairtrade and ethical products, and carbon saved
Very often many of the goods we buy, be it food, clothes, jewellery or home furnishings, have been made in countries where labour is cheap and prices are low. And it is these people, the producers, who are at the greatest risk of exploitation, and can end up working long hours for little money in appalling conditions. Buying Fairtrade products guarantees that the workers have been paid a fair price, with a bit extra to go towards local community development, helping to provide things like clean water and medical supplies. It also ensures they have good working conditions, and that certain environmental standards are being adhered to. A simple act of choosing a fairtrade product over one that isn't has the power to lift a person, a community and eventually an entire country out of poverty.
It's certainly time the balance was re-dressed. Rich countries give $1 billion a year in aid to poor countries for agriculture, whilst they spend $1 billion a day subsidising their own agriculture. Yet if poor countries could increase their world exports by just 1%, 128 million people could be lifted out of poverty.
And despite popular belief, fairly-traded products do not automatically mean large air miles. In the UK, out of the 3000 Fairtrade products, only one is flown in (roses from Kenya); the rest were responsible for just 0.03% of UK food mile emissions and 0.001% of total UK carbon emissions.
Although we associate cheap labour with cheap goods, even the most expensive clothes could have been made by the poorest people in the world.
Carbon saved by choosing a fairtrade product:
The Fairtrade mark requires that high environmental standards are followed during production, much higher than is required of conventional products.
In addition, producers are able to sell their goods directly, cutting out anything from 3 to 10 extra layers of middlemen from the equation, leading to energy savings in distribution and storage as the products pass through fewer stages before they arrive in the market.
Based on a range of data, we've calculated that the carbon embedded within an average conventional product is approximately 9.73 kg per item, or 0.78 kg CO2 per pound spent. See here
for the methodology behind this figure.
Using this list of Fairtrade products as a guide, we can take the average price of a fairtrade product as being £5; some will clearly be more and some less, but comestibles like sugar, coffee and chocolate will balance out the more expensive craft items and clothing.
Emissions for a conventional product costing £5 = 0.78 kg CO2 x 5 = 3.9 kg CO2.
With stricter environmental considerations, and several processing stages removed from the process, we can take a conservative estimate that emissions from a fairtrade product may be reduced by at least 40%.
So CO2 saved by choosing a fairtrade product = 0.4 x 3.9 = 1.56 kg CO2 per item.
