Fair Trade – the acquisition of goods from sources where people have been paid a fair wage for their work in a sustainable way – is an idea that has been around for 50 years but has become an organised movement over the past 20 years.

When it comes to certain products like coffee, tea and chocolate there is no excuse for everyone to be reaching to pick up anything but Fair Trade-produced goods these days as there are many options. It only takes a slight bit more effort to seek these options out and then you can feel good about your purchase.

Other than these items, there are heaps of fair trade options for clothing, health & beauty products, rice, oils, sweets, sugar and many more items. When combined with organic farming practices and even animal-free ingredients, then you really know that what you’re eating/using is truly healthy and cruelty-free.

Here’s a good service called TradeAsOne.com to help you out. I think it’s a clever video and they offer quite a selection of goods:

We have to be aware that the products we purchase from big corporations often come at the expense of someone else’s well-being so to start using a bit more care when buying items we commonly use, we will all be able to reduce the amount of people enslaved or farmers being bullied into providing their goods at below reasonable rates.