Rodney North Interview on Green America Business Network: Fair Trade = Equal Exchange

From Faces of the Green Pages - Conversations with the Green Business Leaders:

As a founding member of the Green America Business Network, Equal Exchange has a long history of going the extra mile. They were Fair Trade before there really was a Fair Trade movement in this country, and now their efforts to support the workers all along their supply chain go well beyond the already-high bar set by the Fair Trade certification process.

"For us meeting the minimum requirements of Fair Trade certification is just a starting point," says Rodney North, Equal Exchange's 'Answer Man.' "There are many more opportunities beyond those rules for a business to use its sourcing practices to create a more egalitarian, democratic economy, such as providing value-added processing work for the farmer cooperatives, or partnering with other worker cooperatives in the US for processing and packaging. "

We asked Rodney to tell us more about Equal Exchange's worker-supportive business practices, its most popular products ("our organic Love Buzz coffee or our 71% organic Very Dark Chocolate bar"), and how its new domestic Fair Trade program is supporting pecan-farmers in Georgia, almond-farmers in California, and more...

Read the full article.....http://jm.ly/i25BCT

Rodney North
The Answer Man - Information for the Public & Media
774-776-7398
 
www.EqualExchange.Coop & our blog www.SmallFarmersBigChange.Coop
 
West Bridgewater, MA  -  St. Paul, MN  -  Portland, OR  -  Seattle, WA