Buy Local vs. Buy Fair Trade: The Conscience of a Socially Conscious Consumer

Meredith Barges' Idea for Change in America to Support Local Economies reawakened my quest to explore the ever burning question of: To Buy Local or to Buy Fair Trade?

A while back, I was surfing the blogopshere and came across this post that caught my eye. The author couldn't justify buying Fair Trade flowers because he thought it was hardly carbon neutral to buy cut flowers that came all the way from Nigeria, so he opted to buy locally grown flowers instead.

I then thought to myself, "Self, are my decisions to be Fair Trade actually doing more harm than good? Should buying local trump buying Fair Trade?" With the gift giving season upon us, socially conscious consumers are asking the same question. Let's explore shall we?

Buying Local has many benefits including strengthening the local economy by producing more income and jobs. It preserves the economic diversity of our communities and it also cuts down on food miles.

Buying Fair Trade means that the producer making those goods are receiving a living wage, they are working in healthy and safe conditions, there is no abuse of child labor and of course that the products were made in an environmentally sustainable way. Buying Fair Trade also guarantees that you are strenghtening the community of the producer since they are able to use the guaranteed Fair Trade premiums to build schools, infrastructure, clinics and offer other benefits such as providing training of organic and sustainable farming techniques.

So...the question still stands. Should I be choosing one over the other? Global Exchange's Marketing Director, Tex Dworkin answers the question with a question: Who says you have to choose?

[T]he ‘Buy Local’ and Fair Trade movements share similar qualities.They both support environmentally sustainable solutions, and layers of middlemen are left out of each economic model, helping to ensure that a fair percentage of profits actually reach the producers. Fair Trade and locally made products are often handcrafted with care, resulting in a higher quality product than the mass-produced sweatshop products available in big box stores, and in both cases, the preservation of cultural heritage is a by-product of doing business.

Both movements can even work hand-in-hand.

It’s important to note that choosing Fair Trade products can actually help your local merchants survive in this sluggish economy. Prices for cheap imports made in sweatshop factories outside of the US are usually so low that local merchants have difficulty competing on price. So during a time when consumers are looking to cut costs wherever possible, cheap knock offs made in sweatshops often outsell locally made products, even though the quality is drastically lower.

Food miles! What about my food miles? Acting head of Oxfam Cymru, Steve Brooks stated in his op-ed piece that food transportation currently contributes relatively little to CO² emissions.

If everyone in the United Kingdom switched one 100W light bulb to a low energy equivalent, CO² emissions would be reduced in one year by 4.7 times the amount saved by boycotting fresh fruit and vegetables from sub-Saharan Africa.

The main lesson to take away from all this is that the Buy Local and Fair Trade movements are not mutually exclusive propositions. Eat Local advocate, Jen Maiser states that no one movement is going to solve all the issues. What really matters is that people are actually making more conscious decision about their consumption.

For this holiday season, Global Exchange's Tex Dworkin says it best.

This holiday, [it's about] buying differently, and every dollar you spend is a statement about how you want this world to be.