There’s a new wave of ethical trading going on these days. Fair trade products are all the rage across a huge spectrum of product and industry †from chocolate, coffee and tea to clothing and fashion. So why not kitchen goods too? Fair trade products, basically, are any product whereby the people who made it, or helped produce it, are not taken advantage of in any way. That means providing a fair wage for the person or persons doing the making, and a proper price for the people or companies doing the selling. When a person in the UK buys fair trade products, he or she is buying into an implied contract, which states: the UK business that sold this item is not behaving unethically towards its suppliers. Now, the implied contract that comes with fair trade products also breeds a certain lifestyle: or, vice versa, a particular kind of modern lifestyle has generated both the kind of conscience that made fair trade products possible, and the contract implied in them. That lifestyle has always collected a certain type of goods around itself †fun stuff, funky stuff, ethnic stuff. The stock in trade, in other words, of alternative therapy stores, ethical trade stores, organically conscious food producers, and so on. The goods people who live this kind of lifestyle tend to buy are colourful, natural in feel and fun to use. Perfect, then, for the kitchen. There’s been a trend for fun and funky in kitchens for the last 20 years †pretty much synchronised, in fact, with the advent of the coffee bar and its attendant trendiness. Now, those stylishly â€organic†items are starting to turn up as fair trade products, as retailers of kitchen wares realise that their target audience is an audience with a conscience. Take Pinks and Green, for example. A small UK based distributor of kitchen essentials, Pinks and Green have sourced suppliers of fair trade products from all over the world †which means all their trendy plastics and fun, colourful utensils have been made according to a code of proper practice, and so are properly aligned with the issues that motivate their target consumers. The results, one suspects, will be phenomenal. Give the kind of person who likes kooky things in his or her kitchen (and that, these days, is a lot of people) the opportunity to buy fair trade products over articles of indeterminate origin and he or she will come running. Fair trade products look set to take over our kitchens †good news for the kitchens, and good news for all the people making the goods, too. ================================================
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