OU Daily article

The OU Daily, a University of Oklahoma student newspaper, has published an article on the expansion of Fair Trade on campus.
You can read the article on the OU Daily website:
Fair Trade expands to provide more sustainable products

TIME magazine article on the "Responsibility Revolution" in America

[Photo Illustration by C. J. Burton for TIME ]

TIME magazine has published a great article on what the author, Richard Stengel, calls the "Resposibility Revolution" and how the American consumer is making more green and ethically responsible purchasing choices. Here's an excerpt:

   
"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals," FDR said in 1937, in the midst of the Great Depression. "We know now that it is bad economics." We learned this all over again after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the shame of subprime mortgages and the brazen Ponzi scheme of Bernie Madoff. But even amid the Great Recession of 2009, people have been trading in their SUVs for Priuses, buying record amounts of fair-trade coffee and investing in socially responsible funds at higher rates than ever before. What we are discovering now, in the most uncertain economy since FDR's time, is that enlightened self-interest — call it a shared sense of responsibility — is good economics...
You can read the full article on the TIME website.

Department of Labor Releases List of Slave-Made Goods

(From Amanda Kloer's blog at change.org. Photo credit: DOL.gov)
After receiving over 5,400 letters from Change.org community members, the Department of Labor released their long-awaited report on goods produced by child labor and forced labor last week.

This list was mandated by anti-trafficking legislation back in 2005, but the Bush administration dragged their feet for years. Now, thanks to your voices and the hard work of NGOs like Polaris Project and the International Labor Rights Forum, it's finally here. This list is a huge boon for consumers who want to choose slave-free products. With this list, consumers can finally hold companies and countries accountable for the slavery they use in making the goods we buy, and can decisively take action to prevent slavery in the production of consumer goods.

The report  consists of a long list which indicates whether goods in a certain country are made with child labor, forced labor, or both. The
most common goods which have significant incidence of forced and/or child labor are cotton, sugarcane, tobacco, coffee, rice, and cocoa in agriculture; bricks, garments, carpets, and footwear in manufacturing; and gold and coal in mined or quarried goods.

You can read the full story on change.org blog and the entire 194 page report here.

Fair trade footwear by Autonomie Project

Autonomie Project is a new Fair Trade fashion company offering stylish sweatshop-free & eco-friendly footwear, clothing and accessories.

Their sneakers are made with 100% Fair Trade-certified organic cotton canvas upper and tough rubber sole. The sole is produced and stamped with FSC-certified all natural and sustainable latex. That means the rubber was actually tapped from a tree in a well managed and growing forest instead of being made from chemicals like other rubber products. All dyes used on the canvas are PCP and AZO free.

Checkout their footwear online.

Paul Rice featured in Delta in-flight magazine

Passengers on Delta Airlines this past month were treated to "5 minutes with Paul Rice" - an interview with the Founder and CEO of TransFair USA in the August issue of Delta Sky Magazine.
Since launching the Fair Trade Certified label for coffee nine years ago, Paul has helped establish Fair Trade as one of the fastest growing segments of the food industry. This success is rooted in TransFair’s innovative approach which helps companies incorporate social responsibility into their business strategies by igniting consumer awareness and building demand for certified products. The result: a market-based model for poverty alleviation and sustainable development that actually boosts growth, profitability and brand reputation.

Paul has received numerous prestigious international awards for his pioneering work as a social entrepreneur in the Fair Trade movement, including: the Ashoka Fellowship (www.ashoka.org), the Klaus Schwab Foundation Award for Social Entrepreneurship (www.schwabfound.org), Fast Company magazine’s Social Capitalist of the Year award (four-time winner), and the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship (www.skollfoundation.org). Paul holds a Political Science degree from Yale University and an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.

You can checkout the Delta Magazine interview online.