News flash: medical students redeem themselves

Having given me plenty of reasons in the past to suppose that your average bunch of medical students couldn't organise a carve up in a mortuary, I am pleased to report that my mind has been changed. I gatecrashed a student conference on global health this weekend (gatecrashed in the sense that I legitimately paid for a 'non-student' ticket, but nonetheless felt a bit of an interloper surrounded by all these clinical types) and I have to say that the organisation was fantastic. They had done a really good job - everything ran really smoothly, there were lots of people to help lost visitors, registration was painless, and only one session overran. So, well done to them. It's easy to point out the bad, but good should also get credit.

What's more, they had really given a lot of thought to the wider messages they were promoting. The conference pack came in a Fairtrade cotton bag, contained some Fairtrade chocolate, and a mug to be used in the tea breaks, thus saving on plastic waste or the cost of hiring crockery. Surefire way to win me around!

One the other hand, I recently got to see the printed copy of the magazine mentioned below. I haven't given it a thorough read yet, but it generally looks good. I did note, however, that the article I had gone through thoroughly and changed every erroneous 'practise' to 'practice' had been published without those corrections. Sigh.

Credit where it's due

Recently I blogged about Fairtrade T Shirts for sale at low prices and pondered whether they could possibly be the product of Fairtrade cotton being used to make garments in sweatshops. Well I did a little delving and this is what I found...

Firstly, from Sainbury's:

Dear [Ginger],

Thank you for your email. I understand you are interested to know our policy on how our Fairtrade t-shirts are made. I appreciate the chance to outline our position in this area.

All our Fairtrade t-shirts are made in an accredited factory in Bangladesh. The factory has to be approved by the Fairtrade foundation to ensure it trades to the highest standards.

The yarn is from India from accredited Fairtrade farms, which means the farmers are paid a better wage for the cotton grown. The funds raised from the Fairtrade foundation are used to subsidise and improve the farmer’s lives and villages through supporting schools. This implements clean water and generally enforces a better standard of living for the community.

Then M&S:

Dear [Ginger],

Thank you for your email.

You may be interested to know that all of our suppliers are expected to meet our Global Sourcing Principles, and to encourage their own suppliers to implement them. This requires our suppliers to comply with national laws and to work towards the international labour laws contained in the Ethical Trading Initiative Base Code.

Our Global Sourcing Principles promote the right to freedom of association, requiring that workers are free to join lawful trade unions or workers' associations, and the payment of national minimum wage. Any new suppliers who we conduct business with have to pass our audits on key issues such as underage labour, pay, working hours and health and safety.

So yay! Nice to know.

On a related matter, I notice that Sainsbury's now print their receipts double-sided which strikes me as a neat and simple way of saving paper. So change can happen.

How 'fair' should Fairtrade go?

A couple of things have recently prompted me to ask this question. Firstly, seeing press adverts for Fairtrade Cotton T Shirts being sold by Sainsburys for £3 (M&S have been doing them for a fiver for a while now), my thought process went as follows:

1. Yay! Mainstream use of Fairtrade cotton!
2. Ooh, and low prices meaning it's commercially competitive, whilst still retaining ethical business practice.
3. Hang on, they only say that the cotton is Fairtrade. How are these made so cheaply?

Now, as anyone who watched Blood, Sweat and T Shirts can attest, the cotton harvesting and garment-making industries are two very separate enterprises, both of which can involve huge exploitation and unfair employment conditions. So it is entirely possible that a company could use certified Fairtrade cotton to make garments in sweat shops. I'm not saying that's the case here (especially as t shirts are so simple that they might only cost pence to make even at a fair price) and I shall endeavour to find out for sure. But it did make me aware of the risk of falling for potential pseudo-greenwashing; just because part of a process has been certified to be sound cannot guarantee the rest of it.

Onto my second issue: even when the wages are fair, is our 'work' as responsible consumers finished? So, the roof is sound and the water is clean, but what about other aspects of the working environment? American Apparel is a company that boasts good working conditions - its clothes are made exclusively in LA, by a fairly waged workforce predominantly made up of migrants who might otherwise be forced into lower paid work that doesn't provide the same healthcare benefits and union membership etc. All fine thus far.

But is there a dark side, after all. A while back, perusing AA's website, it did strike me that the way that some of the clothes were presented seemed to cross that line from 'sexy' to 'sleazy'. In the end, I put it down to perhaps me being an unfashionable prude, who didn't 'get' the art of couture. But it seems there might have been something in my instincts. There have been reports about the conduct of AA's CEO, Dov Charney. Several lawsuits have been filed against him, by his employees, for sexual harassment. Admittedly, none have led to an in-court settlement, but there seem to be quite a range of reports suggesting that Mr Charney is less than keen on keeping business and pleasure separate. Given that working for him is probably the only decent employment opportunity for many of his workforce, one might ask whether it is really fair for them to be subjected to such a working environment. What's an ethical consumer to do?