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Fair Trade and Ethical Policy
We are One World is Enough, a Family Business based in Cambridge England. We were set up by Peter Harlow after he spent a year travelling around Asia in 1996-97. Now every year we spend at least a month abroad visting our suppliers, working with them, designing new clothes and meeting new producers to join our network of Fair Trade Producers.Our current producers are based in India, Nepal, Indonesia and Thailand. We import all our own goods and personally vet the suppliers to ensure that they do not use child labour or dangerous working practices and of course we pay a fair price for our goods. Our fair trade policies, which we have had in place since we started trading, are as follows; Social Policies i)We buy directly from the small manufacturers and workers co-operatives who actually make our clothes and handicrafts. This policy ensures that the profits go back to the people who make the goods rather than to a middle man. ii) We carefully vet all our suppliers to ensure that they do not use child labour or dangerous working practices iii) We pay a fair price for our goods and insist that all the workers are paid a fair wage and that they are not forced to work unreasonably long hours. We also insist that the workers are given at least one day a week off as holiday. iv) We insist that men and women are treated equally regardless of their religion or ethnic group. We have developed Long Term Partnerships with our suppliers. We are both interested in a mutually beneficial long term relationship, this approach has lead to a non exploitative and trusting relationship between us. Having a love and respect for the countries that we trade with, we are determined that our organisation would help rather than exploit the people with which we trade. By trading on a fair trade basis One World is Enough creates a demand for the handmade goods that people in developing countries so skilfully produce and ensures that the producers get a fair reward for the goods that they produce. Environmental Policies We aim to promote good environmental practice throughout our supply chain. Most of our clothes are made from natural materials such as Cotton or Wool, rather than synthetic or man made materials. We encourage our producers to use vegetable and mineral based dyes where ever possible. The wood used in our wood products comes from sustainable sources. Most of our producers work in clusters and utilise local products thereby cutting down on transportation. We try to ship in large consignments, thereby cutting down on the pollution costs per kg and we generally use sea freight as it is less polluting. We minimise the amount of plastic used in packaging and recycle as much of our packing materials as possible. We only have One World so let's look after it and let's help the poorer countries look after their environment because at the end of the day, as global warning shows, we're all in the same boat' One World is Enough When asked about the meaning of ' One World is Enough' we reply, ' It has several meanings, its primarily about breaking down the artificial barriers between the ' First World' and the ' Third World' , we're all on the same planet, there is only One World. There is a tendency to dismiss the problems of the developing countries as being endemic and intractable, but we firmly believe that we can help and that the best way of helping developing countries is to provide a market for their traditional made goods rather than encourage them into large scale industrialisation. We have seen enough pollution horror stories. One World is Enough firmly believes in the concept of 'Trade not Aid'. |