How To Know If Something Is Fair Trade Certified

How do I know if something is Fair Trade Certified?

There are two kinds of certification, and both of them have a valuable place in making sure that the things that you buy are Fair Trade. The one is certification that goes on a particular product. You may see this with Fair Trade coffee, for instance, or Fair Trade bananas, and you find these products in stores that you go in all the time anyway; like at the grocery store, you may see a whole line of coffees, and there is one coffee that is Fair Trade Certified, that has a label. The most reliable Fair Trade label in the U.S is the TransFair label; it is a picture of a guy holding two buckets. There is that certification that goes on particular products. Also, there is Fair Trade Certification that goes on an entire organization, and there are a couple of very reliable third-party organizations that do certify businesses. One is the Fair Trade Federation, another is the International Fair Trade Association. Both of those organizations, rather than just certifying a particular product, do the research on organizations and make sure that their principles, mission and practice in business aligns with the Fair Trade mission and principles. By certifying the whole organization, everything that that organization sells is, by way of that certification, certified.