Mindful of our commitment to sustainability and the need to minimise our carbon footprint, we try to strike a balance through our relationship with growers, by sourcing locally where possible and through fair trade organisations when we need to buy outside the UK and Europe. To achieve the Fairtrade mark for our products that contain olive oil, we would need to switch from our current source (a family-run cooperative in Spain) to a more distant Fairtrade olive oil. This would be to the detriment of our lovely Spanish suppliers and would also increase our carbon footprint.
In addition there are other fair trade certifications – Fair for Life – for example (that certifies our gorgeous coconut oil, which are excellent certifications, but are not recognised by the Fairtrade Foundation. We are keen for the Fairtrade Foundation to change the policy and instead to recognise other fair trade certifying bodies (as organic certifiers do). This would benefit producers by enabling more composite products (like cosmetics) to be certified. – Don’t get me wrong, I think the work the Fairtrade Foundation does is great, but there is opportunity for a little more fairness all round!
To read our article with Katie Franks, of the Fairtrade Foundation, visit http://www.essential-care.co.uk/media/pdfs/Katie-Franks-Essential-Care-Blog.pdf
To learn more about Fairtrade Fortnight, visit http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/
To shop our range of Fairtrade lipsticks visit http://www.essential-care.co.uk/organic-makeup/organic-lipstick.html
