Fair trade
General definition of 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 enable investments
- contracts are made for long periods of time to give economical security and possibility to plan ahead
Fair Trade and Consumerium
- 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.
See also:
- FLO - Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International
- w:fair trade for more information.