The Challenge

For those of you who stumbled across this chance at making a difference, I am grateful for it. I'll try and give you the briefest background I can so as not to lose your interest. Basically what I am trying to do here is to create awareness through taking a huge leap and creating this year long challenge. I want to make a resolution that means something. These past two years I have tried to live sustainably through purchases of food that are ethically responsible, such as being hormone and pesticide free. It brought me into the interest of trying to buy chocolate and coffee that ensured fair wages for the farmers that grew these products. I feel that taking those steps made a difference, but to say I can do no more is a lie.
By all means I am not here to preach. The fact is many people don't know what fair trade even means. If you don't, in a nutshell it means the products are made under fair conditions and return a fair profit to those who made them. I can't blame anyone who is not educated on the subject, because there is not much blatantly out there. The good news is though that SuperStores (what I'll call big national chain marts) are starting to wake up and carry some organic and fair trade products.
Gone are the days when your lighting needs were carried out by Mr. Joe up the street who lived above his store. Mrs. O'Leary isn't there to make your dresses and hem them. Steve around the corner is no longer your only source for deli meats. You are now able to get these items every two blocks almost at many different stores. Your deli needs may even be met at the place you fill your car with gas. It is now very easy to get lots of stuff at really cheap prices. What is not often pondered is the invisible costs that are still there on a really cheap product: the reckless emissions of negative environmental substances, the more than sub par working conditions for workers and the business that is being taken away from any remaining Mr. Joes or Mrs. O'Learys. Do we really need to have the cost of sheet sets be as cheap as we can find them so we can have ten or more sets? Would it really hurt us to only have two: one for the bed while the other is being washed, thus ensuring better wages for those who make the sheets?
Notice I use the words us and we, because I know that I have done my fair share of contributing to the problem. There is all kinds of controversy around one SuperStore in particular, and while you may have your reasons for why it is worse than the other, are any of the other SuperStores that much better? I actually convinced myself late this past summer that because everything comes from China and impoverished countries I might as well just shop at any SuperStore. There's no winning, I thought. I somehow got myself on this one track mind that if I couldn't find a product at two different stores then it didn't exist. To be upfront with you, even though I had heard all my life about sweatshops, the fact that if I shopped at a certain place or bought a certain product made me feel like I was living the "American Dream" and that I was exactly like everybody else. I had the 'in'. Does owning the right pair of shoes really make my life more worthwhile, or does time spent laughing with my friends on wine night give me a true satisfaction? I guess I feared that I would turn into the hippies in high school that I thought were weird for not having TVs and going on service trips on spring break instead of to Florida. Turns out I could have learned a lot from them. Maybe though, buying fair trade can become the new "American Dream", you know the one that talks about "liberty and justice for all"?
This blog is meant to open the floor for discussions about what fair trade is and how we really do have the power. There are many websites out there that offer fair trade products at equal or even less costs than you're paying now. Not only will your choice make you feel ethically stronger, but your product will have a meaning. I hope to never sound like I'm condemning anyone, but the fact is that every time we buy something we are making a choice. We're either supporting the companies that put money over people, or we're not. It's scary to think that every time we run an item over a scanner we're making a contribution to the unfair conditions for people we don't even know. We don't want to believe we're doing it, so many heads are turned away from it. That's what this challenge is about: how to avoid the negatives of corporate America like the cones on a driver's ed course. Even if I just reach one person, this year will be worth it.