I feel confused sometimes when I ask a few businesses I like (esp. after they start telling how much they care about people environment etc) why they don’t certified or publize about their best practices or FT concept. A few for example answered that they’re also against ‘institution’ or Fair Trade bureaucracy etc. and that they don’t want to go that route to promote what’s already best practices for themselves and only they know better. They feel good about what they’re doing and they don’t seem to want to go ‘out of their way’ to get noticed. I can’t disagree with them…sometimes I don’t know what else to suggest or to say.

I know what I support consciously…everything good for humanity, environment, for our world basically…but there are many shades of grey like Rainy said. How are we going to deal with this? How are we going to decide?

Labels is all good that’s for sure…I’m all for that. But my concerns are all in the shades of grey…There are responsible businesses out there..I read about them and I heard about them, and they understand that they’re the ones who can control their own behaviours so-to-speak. When they do best practices or at least really do care about many things and that makes them feel very good about themselves (people who work for them or costumers are happy), I can’t say that they have not done their parts. Do they really have to go farther than that? to get noticed? to get approval? of who? I can’t blame them for feeling good and confident about what the ‘right’ things they alredy do.

Urgh..it’s true, who to judge? there are many ways to do the ‘right’ things…I dont know I’m just writing here…in the morning hours in France :-) But lying or falsifying info is not right for sure.

Cheers everyone and Happy New Year again…

I think one can get so hung up on the details, that it’s possible to miss all the shades of grey in between. There is no reason for Starbucks not to become more FT friendly, both in offering the existent blend more reliably and in buying more (verifiable) FT beans in general. A small cafe like Urth or Groundworks might have reasons for not carrying coffee with the sticker, but might still be doing their part for FT in general. It might not really be an option for them to get the sticker, but they might still be paying farmers fairly. Plus, the restaurant (Urth) screams about the issue all over the menu, so you can’t help but see that it’s something worth thinking about when you go in. You feel good about getting something ethical there because the menu talks about ethics, maybe it spurs the consumer to go looking for more ethical beans, to look into the issue at all. That? That’s good. That’s the point, right? I guess what I’m saying and have always said, is that the sticker is not the only benchmark for fairly traded coffee, tea and chocolate. The consumer must have others and vendors must be allowed to trade within those shades of grey. The FT folks at Transfair have to stop being so damn black and white, and relax their rules a little about individual farmers, so those “grey” beans can get certified. Then, et voila, sticker. Or something.

Plus, Urth’s coffee is SO good, best I’ve ever had at a restaurant, and they put leaves on the top of my lattes.

Anyway — The challenge page alone was getting close to 3000 individual visitors a day when the challenge was in full swing — and that’s just for my site — I’m not sure how many City Hippy got. And many many people have taken the challenge without reporting the results… The challenge had the benefit of attracting not just the people interested in fair trade coffee, but also the legions of people who have an axe to grind against Starbucks for various other reasons too. Down with uniculture! Down with corporatization! Down with globalization! :)

And even for the people who didn’t take the challenge themselves, but read or heard about it — Hopefully these fair trade issues — and corporate accountability issues — will be of concern in their future decisionmaking :)

Ok — Done tooting my own horn now :) (It was really all City Hippy’s idea…)

So do I happily buy at the non-union places because right now they are choosing not to exploit their employees or do I shop at the union stores which have the protection of the union if the owners ever decide that being fair isn’t something they’re interested in?

Like your question, this is rhetorical. I’m staying at Giant - unless I hear that they’ve committed some unpardonable sin. I’m not sure how I’d find that out though …

Certified is bad if it limits the way in which socially responsible consumers can choose not to be completely exploitative in their consumption, even accidentally. (Excluding certain farms that most would see as good setups for all, because they do not fit a narrow certification criteria.) Or, if like big operations of all sorts, the cert looses focus or lower standards without a lot of publicity.

Because the FT label is limited in its scope, I see it as desirable but not the only way to get at a more ethical consumer experience. Companies that are not living up to their claims know that consumers that care about such issues will leave them in double-droves if they cheat lie or fudge; witness SBX extraordinary efforts to gain creditability with a handful o’ bloggers.

Wouldn’t it be nice if part of the ethics of a local business was that one could work with and believe its proprietors? This is one of the values of acting locally — in theory, local proprietors have more to loose than trans-regional companies if they get caught out.