| We have been celebrating fairtrade fortnight and in | | | | are quality textiles and from start to finish are made |
| particular fair trade textiles. But surely every day of | | | | with care and attention to detail. Treasure your |
| every week we should be buying such products? | | | | clothes and bed-linen for a lifetime, quality speaks |
| Now that most supermarkets stock fairtrade tea and | | | | volumes about you as a person. |
| bananas and many other fairtrade lines there is no | | | | Protecting the Environment: |
| excuse not to buy these products. But most | | | | Fair trade textiles equal environmentally friendly and |
| supermarkets also stock disgracefully cheap clothes. I | | | | sustainable textiles. Business does not get much |
| doubt that anybody at the bottom of the production | | | | dirtier than the cotton trade. Cotton production |
| chain is making a decent living producing these. These | | | | squanders vast amounts of natural resources, is |
| cheap cotton goods exploit the poorest people in the | | | | heavily sprayed with harmful chemicals and degrades |
| world and degrade the environment in which they are | | | | the soil and local environment. Fairtrade with its |
| produced. The cycle of poverty is thus ensured. But | | | | commitment to sustainable development means their |
| you, the consumer, have the power to change this. | | | | textiles are usually organic or grown to standards |
| Here five good reasons to buy fair trade textiles. | | | | which have minimum impact on the environment. |
| Consumer Power Counts: | | | | Doing the Right Thing: |
| Buying fair trade textiles protects poor producers | | | | If you had to come face to face with the poor |
| against market shocks as fair trade brings producers | | | | people, many of them children, who produce the |
| and traders together and enables them to work | | | | world's textiles you would no doubt feel rightly |
| outside the commodity market. The long term | | | | ashamed by the cheap and thoughtlessly purchased |
| survival of these trade agreements depend upon us | | | | shirt on your back. We must buy fair trade textiles |
| the consumer buying their goods. | | | | because we know it is the right thing to do. |
| Breaking the Cycle of Poverty: | | | | I hope as Fairtrade Fortnight comes to a close I may |
| A proportion of profits are used to subsidise vital | | | | have persuaded you to think a little more carefully |
| services for whole communities, such as educational, | | | | about where your clothes and other textile products |
| medical or environmental projects. It is important to | | | | come from, and what their production has meant for |
| improve the life-chances of each successive | | | | other people on our planet. In a better world there |
| generation if the cycle of poverty is to be broken. | | | | would be no need for fair trade for all trade would |
| Buying Quality: | | | | be fair. Until then, you the consumer, can play your |
| Fair trade textiles are produced to last. These are | | | | part. |
| not cheap, throw-away supermarket clothes. These | | | | |