World Fair Trade Day Coming Up This Week

Source: globaldimension.org.uk

This Saturday (11 May 2013) is World Fair Trade Day, an initiative of the World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO).  Events will be taking place worldwide, aiming to raise awareness of the fair trade movement which began over five decades ago.

Our Five Favourite Ethical Brands

Source: MuMu organic

  1. Patagonia A firm favourite with outdoor types, Patagonia also wins the hearts and minds of non-outdoorsy environmentalists.  With campaigns like Don’t Buy This Jacket and a commitment to repair clothing though the Common Threads Initiative, this company leads the field in sustainable business.  Patagonia is still privately-owned by Yvon Chouinard whose book ‘Let My People Go Surfing’ we mentioned in our ‘Five Inspiring Sustainability Reads’ post.  Yvon is co-founder of 1% for the Planet, which Sustainability Consult is a proud member of.  And Kathryn certainly wouldn’t set foot on the mountain without her Patagonia Backcountry Guide Pants.

  2.  Oxfam A brand, you say?  Surely Oxfam is a development NGO not a retail brand?  And yet in some countries, for example the UK where Oxfam was set up in 1942 as the Oxfam Committee for Famine Relief, Oxfam has built up its retail operations and has not just second-hand clothing and bookshops but their own brand of fairtrade and ethical products.  You can even ‘buy’ a goat, a chicken, clean water or renewable energy through the amazing Oxfam Unwrapped products.  In Belgium, Oxfam organises fairtrade breakfasts (check out our photos from 2011 and 2012) and promotes both local agriculture and fairtrade.  They also have a policy division who we’ve worked with in the past.

3.    MuMu organic MuMu organic is an up and coming ethical fashion company from Greece who we have been helping on their start-up path.  Truly breathtaking designs with natural and fairtrade fabrics, MuMu organic is one to watch.

4.    Ecover Belgian natural cleaning products company, Ecover, is the cleaning product of choice for the Sustainability Consult office where we can’t resist taglines like ‘Feel Good Cleaning’.  Our favourite products are the floor soap with linseed oil, the lavender handwash and the loo cleaner.  They all smell good enough to eat, not that we recommend it, and they come in large refill sizes. We’re waiting to see what their ‘Small Steps’ environmental campaign will look like.

5.   Triodos  Rethinking banking, Triodos invests ethically and offers a full range of banking services.  They have a great one-minute video on how they do things differently.  You can also see where they will invest your hard-earned cash.  With banking services in a number of countries, now ethical banking is within reach.

Getting Back On Track

Having overlooked what we advise clients to do, i.e. blog at least once a week, for a little while we are now turning our attention back to the Thought Shower blog.  The learning from this is that keeping a twitter feed active is much easier (click on the button on the homepage to follow us on twitter) and that we need to dedicate time to the blog even when things are really busy.

So what’s been going on in the world of environment policy?  Is Brussels still standing?  Well, the answer is a resounding ‘yes’.  The new European Commissioners are now in office and work has begun in earnest.  We are watching the new Climate Commissioner and the Research and Innovation Commissioner with great interest.  Also Commissioner Potocnik who moved from Research to Environment.

The (Research &) Innovation Commissioner has said she wants to create an ‘Innovation Union’ in Europe.  She seems at least to be embracing the idea that innovation should be a horizontal issue across the whole Commission and not just in DG Research.  I’ve just discovered a new blog by an old colleague Nigel Griffiths.  I met Nigel ten years ago when I was a journalist on the introduction of the euro and we’ve kept in touch.  You can read him at http://www.innovationeu.org, home of Innovation Europe, a new publication on innovation which we’re working with for one of our clients.

So what else is new?  Ellie Haag finished her internship and went on to work for an organisation which looks at how business fits into society, an interesting initiative for sure.  And we are working really well with our Network.  There’s so much expertise to draw on within the Network and we are learning by doing, finding the best way to make the most of this great resource.  There is still lots of interest in Sustainability Consult and as such new business is good.  Just one of the new projects we are currently working on is for Oxfam which we’re very excited about.

That’s a quick catch-up.  We are now back on track with the blog.  And the photo?  I just took it.  It’s the sunrise looking down to the sea over the Spanish countryside.  And the socks?  Well, the less we say about the socks the better.