This year Fairtrade celebrated its 15^th birthday. Since being founded by Oxfam and Christian Aid, Fairtrade has helped increase the livelihoods of 7 million people in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Initially the only Fairtrade products available were coffee and chocolate. But the range has since grown to include over 4500 products, including eco textiles, eco furniture and many other items you can buy for your eco home.

What is Fairtrade?

Fairtrade is an organised social movement aimed at helping producers in developing countries get a fairer price for their goods and to become more self sufficient. It finds its roots in the anti capitalist radical student groups of the 1960s, which deplored the exploitation of developing countries by Western companies.

In order to offer customers cheap clothes and food it was often the producer’s income that suffered. This meant the people producing the coffee, bananas, honey and many other products were unable to improve the livelihoods for themselves and their families. So the next time you buy a T-shirt for £2.00 think of the mere pence paid to whoever made it.

Consequently, The Fairtrade Foundation was launched to ensure more producers could be paid a fairer price and helped to gain the knowledge, skills and resources they needed to improve their lives.

The impact of Fairtrade on eco furniture

Currently, the aspect of eco furniture most affected by the Fairtrade movement is the use of organic cotton used to make eco textiles and eco furniture. Conventional cotton is very environmentally damaging to manufacture due to the heavy use of pesticides. In fact, it’s blamed for causing up to 20,000 deaths. Organic cotton, on the other hand, is far less damaging to the environment and the people who grow it due to the use of pesticide free farming methods.

Organic cotton was first certified as Fairtrade in 2005. Since then sales of items made from Fairtrade cotton (such as eco upholstery) have grown from £200,000 to £7.79 million.

The growth of Fairtrade products for your eco home

Last year sales of Fairtrade products reached £700 million, and they’re expected to quadruple by 2012. This reflects how more and more people are becoming ethical shoppers and buying products that promote a more sustainable way of living.

The ethos of Fairtrade is intrinsically linked to that of eco design. So you can expect to see much more eco furniture you can buy for your eco home becoming Fairtrade certified in the future.