Green and Black's motto is "As Chocolate as Humanly Possible", which means of course, they use fair trade ingredients. In fact, the company was the first to earn the UK's Fairtrade mark.
SLO Chai Fair Trade Organic Green Tea Now Available Online
Our friend Alison moved to CA last year and has been working on marketing for SLO Chai Fair Trade Organic Tea. When we told her about Really Natural, she offered to send along some samples of SLO Chai's products. We loved 'em, and wanted to blog about them. But at the time, they were only available at select grocery stores and farmers markets on the West Coast.
Well, good news, tea drinkers. SLO Chai has launched a new website, which includes an online store.
SLO Chai offers teabags, loose teas and other chai-inspired foods and beverages made with fair trade tea and organic ingredients. The company was founded three years ago by Joel Pace and his family to recreate the sweet, spicy chai he tasted while trekking in the Himalayas.
Today, SLO Chai sells not only Pace's original blend, but several varieties including Vanilla Spice Latte, 5 flavors of teabags, loose leaf teas, and Chai Cream Ale. All are made with high quality fair trade and organic-certified ingredients. We especially like their decaffeinated black tea and green tea blends, as well as their chai chocolates!
SLO Chai is a green business, paying close attention to the ecological and social impact of their company, and donating 1% of profits toward sustainability education.
Speaking of Fair Trade Month, why not pick up a copy of Fair Trade: A Beginner's Guide by Jacqueline Decarlo. Here's the description from Amazon:
Grounded in the inspiring power of Fair Trade as a positive alternative to poverty, environmental destruction, and human exploitation, this enlightening book explains how we can make a difference. Providing an accessible explanation of the principles behind the movement and tracing its development into the powerful economic and social justice tool it is today.
So your kid has a Mimi the Sardine Lunchbug lunchbag. What about something for you?
Allow me to recommend a Basura Bag tote bag. Made from recycled juice packs by a women's cooperative in the Phillipines, each bag is unique. According to the write-up on ReusableBags.com, the women's coop purchases the containers "through a network of local school children."
Indestructible and non-biodegradable by nature, foil juice packs clog landfills, fields and streets throughout the Philippines. Using clever designs that combine the material's strength & brilliant colors, the co-op helps keep the environment clean via this very cool method of recycling.
Ideal Bite published a newsletter last week dedicated to eco-tourism sites. Among the sites recommended:
* EcoTour Directory - lists over 65 eco-holiday providers.
* G.A.P. Adventures - offers tours for groups of 12 or fewer and encourages carbon offsetting.
* Sierra Club Outings - tour the world with other eco-conscious travelers.
* Sustainable Travel International - a non-profit that helps you book all sorts of eco-adventures, from archaeological digs to yoga tours.
* Relief Riders International - guided horseback rides that let you help the Red Cross and distribute books to kids along the way.
* Responsible Travel - awesome trip packages geared toward folks in the UK.
Fair Trade Sports: Soccer Balls and Sports Apparel with Fair Trade Credentials
Ah, Memorial Day. The start of summer - time for beaches, frisbees, kicking a soccer ball around in the park. If that sounds like your idea of fun, allow me to steer you toward Fair Trade Sports, makers of Fair Trade soccer balls, frisbees and sports apparel.
All their sports balls are certified to be stitched by adult workers paid fair wages and ensured healthy working conditions. All apparel on the site is certified to be sweatshop-free. And all their after-tax profits are donated to children's charities.
We got a long-sleeve tee with a design based on the expression "Fish Out of Water." The clothes come wrapped in neat brown paper bag packaging with a rope cord and the Blirt logo -- kind of like the kind used for whole coffee beans, but way hipper. The shirt is super-soft cotton, with the "Fish Out of Water" graphic and the expression written out on a stitched label underneath. It comes with a little booklet explaining the meaning of figure of speech.
As we mentioned, this is a shirt you'll feel great wrapped your baby in and snuggling up to. The cotton feels great against your skin and Blirt's non-toxic dyeing and screening process ensures that the only thing touching your baby or toddler's skin is soft organic fabric.
Maybe partly because of the dyeing process, the shirts come in a more natural range of colors than your typical baby gear. "Fish Out of Water" is olive green with baby blue design; other shirts in the collection are brown, light blue, granite - hip, natural colors for hip, natural kids.
As we mentioned in our earlier Blirt post, the shirts are made of 100% organic cotton, using fair trade labor practices. So you can feel good about your purchase while your kid looks good. Super cute, and a nice gift for eco-conscious parents-to-be. As an added bonus, shipping is free!
Blirt Shirt - Organic Cotton Baby T-Shirts with a Message
Kathleen Tracy just sent in an email about her fledgling t-shirt company, Blirt . Her concept is to introduce infants and toddlers to wordplay, taking English-language figures of speech - e.g. "bull in a china shop" or "good egg" - and illustrating them with fun, lighthearted designs. Talk about a fashion statement.
But Blirt's statements don't end there. They're also concerned with the environment and fair trade manufacturing processes. The company's website includes an environmental and fair trade mission statement that lays out the costs of unsustainable, un-fair manufacturing processes, and then explains how Blirt makes sure its processes are eco-friendly, fair and just.
Indigo Handloom founder Smita Paul always had an independent streak. A former professional journalist, she found she did her best work as a freelancer. As she explains:
I love the freedom and adventure of coming up with an idea and seeing it to fruition. The thrill of watching an idea grow - there is no bigger high!
This same spirit led Paul to found Indigo Handloom, a Brooklyn-based importer of gorgeous handloomed scarves and fabrics from India and South Asia. Handloom is part of the growing eco-textiles movement because it leaves no environmental footprint and requires no energy other than human energy to produce.
Purchase one of these Indigo Handloom's scarves, and know that your money is helping to support artisans and craftspeople around the world.
Serving something delicious? Make it bamboolicious with this square bamboo tray from World of Good. Handcrafted of renewable bamboo and hand-painted by artisans in a fair trade family workshop in Hanoi, Vietnam.
On a cold winter afternoon, nothing beats good, old fashioned hot chocolate with marshmallows. And I don't mean the kind that comes in a packet labeled Swiss Miss.
Lately, we've been warming our bellies (and our hearts) with some locally produced organic cocoa from Taza Chocolate in Somerville and marshmallows from Tiny Trapeze in Hyde Park.
Taza Chocolate owners Alex Whitmore, Lauren Adams and Larry Slotnick source beans directly from farming communities and co-operatives in Mexico and South America to ensure that a fair price is paid for high quality cocoa beans. From there, they bring the beans to our chocolate studio in Somerville, Massachusetts and grind them into delicious chocolate. Buy the beans and grind 'em yourself, or buy them pre-ground in a chocolate drink like Taza's Velo Rouge.
Tiny Trapeze Confections, located in an old mill building in the Hyde Park neighbor of Boston, makes tasty, old world sweets using all natural and organic ingredients. My latest guilty pleasure - and the perfect topping for a mug of cocoa - is one of their Simply Vanilla marshmallows. Pillowy and sweet right out of the package, the marshmallows melt in your mouth. Better still, if you can stand the wait, they melt right into your hot chocolate, creating a smooth sweet marshmallow foam that's pure heaven.
Taza Chocolate's Velo Rouge Chocolate Drink is available at Taza Chocolate. If you live in Massachusetts, visit Taza's open house next Sunday, February 11th from 1-4 at their Windsor Street studio, or stop by their Chocolate Lounge on Thursday nights at Mariposa Bakery in Cambridge.
Tiny Trapeze's Simply Vanilla marshmallows are available at Whole Foods. If you're vegan, don't despair. Tiny Trapeze also makes a vegan marshmallow that is out of this world. (Call your local Whole Foods to see if they carry it.)
Fair Trade with a Cherry on Top: Ben and Jerry's Introduces New Fair Trade Ice Cream Flavors
Fair Trade can be delicious. Ben and Jerry's, which introduced Fair Trade coffee ice cream flavors to their scoop shops and grocery stores in 2005, is continuing the charge with Fair Trade vanilla and chocolate ice cream. The new flavors are available in grocery stores this month.
"Since Ben and I started the business we've used ethical values to guide our business decisions, such as sourcing ingredients," said Ben & Jerry's co-founder Jerry Greenfield when the company announced the move last October. "Expanding from our Fair Trade Certified Coffee flavors to Fair Trade Vanilla and Chocolate is another step forward in our values-led sourcing decisions."
Ben & Jerry's purchases its Fair Trade Certified coffee from a cooperative in Mexico; vanilla from Fair Trade Certified producers in India, with producers in Indonesia and Uganda under consideration; and Fair Trade Certified cocoa from producers in the Dominican Republic.
Stop the presses. The Cute Patrol has discovered a whole new species of adorableness. Or Speesees, if you will.
Speesees is a San Francisco-based company founded by Rachel Pearson, a self-described "cotton diaper baby" raised by hippy parents in the 1970's. Pearson designs some of the cutest baby t-shirts and body suits we've ever seen, and has them manufactured in India using Fair Trade practices and principles. What does that mean, you ask? Well, according to Pearson,
Our cotton is organically grown and handpicked by farmers whose families live biodynamically and receive health care. Once spun, knit and dyed with low-impact dyes, our cotton garments are sewn and printed in a beautiful, sweatshop-free factory in Southern India. Natural light floods the premises and our energetic team, including disabled members, work decent hours for fair living wages. An organic garden surrounds the premises.
An integral component of Fair Trade is that the local community benefits from manufacturing. The local elementary school in the village where speesees is manufactured is called Zari Pada. They have needs from water hand pumps to small shelves and racks for each classroom. $1 from every $100 earned from online speesees retail orders will go to buy these children various supplies to support a more conducive learning environment.
The designs, like Chik, pictured above right, are truly, totally and completely adorable and come in t-shirts, body suits or long-sleeved body suits, as well as cute little skull caps. We also LOVE Pearson's lamb jacket, pictured right.
Eco Food Friday: The Absolute Best Organic Chocolate in the World
Speaking of Fair Trade Month, why not pick up a copy of 
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This same spirit led Paul to found 
Fair Trade can be delicious. 
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