Fair trade

Fair trade means that the producer of the product gets a reasonable compensation, that is over the world market price, for her/his work.

The fair trade compensation scheme tries to guarantee a compensation which (roughly in order of importance):

covers production costs
is enough for sustained living
contains a premium to enable investments
is guaranteed over a long period of time, thus providing for economic security and the possibility of planning ahead

There are plans to introduce fair trade cotton and textiles in 2005.

Fairly traded is a feature of a product.
Partially Fairly Traded is a feature of a product, meaning that some raw-materials or parts of the product are fairly traded. (eg. In restaurant meals)
Partially Fair Trading is a feature of a company, meaning that some part of the company's business deals with fairly traded products.
Fully Fair Trading is a feature of a company, meaning that the company deals only in fairly traded goods.

FLO defines and audits the "fair trade"-labels and consumerium provides additional information (not present on the packaging at the moment) on how long the Point-of-Production and traders have been certified by FLO. This can be used to assess companies if the consumer wants to reward companies for taking risk in entering the Fair trade field early on. Also current and past breaches of fair trade regulations shall be stored and displayed if wanted by consumer.

Contents