Take a Step for Fairtrade in 2012!

Starting in Fairtrade Fortnight (27 February – 11 March 2012), the Fairtrade Foundation is challenging the public to take a step in the right direction by thinking about what they can do every day, every week or every month throughout 2012 to make a difference to the lives of farmers in the developing world who produce the products they buy – whether that be choosing to buy a Fairtrade coffee on the way to work, or making sure their weekly shopping baskets contain one or two more Fairtrade products like Fairtrade tea or bananas, or encouraging their friends and family to switch to Fairtrade.

M&S Update on Plan A Programme

 Marks & Spencer has released an update on the progress of its Plan A ethical and sustainability programme - including its "Ethical Excellence" award for a denim factory in Bangladesh and a woven fabrics unit in Indonesia.  The two facilities, it said, offer world class working conditions, better productivity, excellent industrial relations, a developed education and training programme and pay among the best salaries in the industry.

"Plan A continues to deliver a more sustainable M&S", said Plan A CSR and Sustainable Business Director, Richard Gillies.

Nestlé Agrees to Audit Supply Chains

“Child Labour has no place in our supply chain,” were the words of Nestlé’s Vice President for Operations, José Lopez as Nestlé announced their partnership with the Fair Labor Association (FLA).  

The investigation will begin in early 2012 when the FLA will send a team of independent assessors to dig deep into the workings of the Ivory Coast’s cocoa bean industry and search for human rights violations and their causes.  In the 2009 Human Rights Report, the U.S. Department of State estimated that there were over 109,000 children working in the Ivory Coast’s cocoa bean industry to produce almost half of the world’s chocolate. It is projected that more than 10 percent of those children are victims of human trafficking or working in slavery.  

It is a 10 year commitment, which focuses not only on an investigation and report, but a detailed look into the root causes of child labor in the cocoa industry and ways to eradicate them (including providing fair wages to farmers and workers in the cocoa industry), as well as increasing the traceability of the supply chain.