Fair Trade Blog

Things are not getting better in Afghanistan.  We hear about more deaths, new attacks, a reinvigorated Taliban, but little of it sinks in here at home.  In this age of simmering wars, causualty reports, skirmishes, and bombings have lost their impact. 

It takes a hardened first-hand account to bring home the miserable chaos that rules in much of Afghanistan.   I just got an inside look at Afghanistan from Sarah Chayes, a founder of the Arghand Cooperative in Kandahar.   She sometimes sends missives to Arghand’s retail partners.    

There is a brittle frustration in her “Notes from the Field,” dated August 22.  In a report that pressed on my heart, she wrote in part:

I’m feeling a little funny again, that slight pounding of the heart upon the instant of awaking in the morning, sleep broken when the dogs bark at night, that sense that something is brewing…

Little of what she narrates of life in Kandahar sheds hope for the situation there.  She feels that the recent jailbreak and tandem attack on Arghandab by the Taliban had little to do with territory and everything to do with sending a loud warning.  

The message they intended to deliver to the local population came out in stereo: we can come in here when we want to.  If you’ve been collaborating with the government or the foreigners, we’ll know about it.  We’ll string you up by the heels long before ISAF gets around to mounting a counter-attack.  Ordinary people make up the audience that matters in this fight.  For them, the menace of the Taliban message, as expressed in the June assault, couldn’t have been more convincing.

Sarah has been arguing for years that the Karzai government is threatening the future of the country as much as the Taliban.  Corruption, self-interest, and double dealing with the Taliban, have put the average Afghan in the middle of a no-win situation.  Afghans are now forced to chose between competing evils.

In the midst of all the turmoil, the cooperative continues making the essential oils for their wonderful soap.  Often they are running their presses at odd hours when electricity is available.  Sarah reports the cooperative is just about finished planning and paying for a solar electrical system that will gain them independence from the unreliable local grid.  

Still, the future of any enterprise in Afghanistan, including Arghand, is tenuous.  But we keep hope in play by supporting Arghand while we pray for change.  

Keep shopping your good values.

Greenwashing. Is it a real corporate sin, or is all the hype about going green a good thing?

CorpWatch calls greenwashing “the phenomena of socially and environmentally destructive corporations, attempting to preserve and expand their markets or power by posing as friends of the environment.”

There is a raging debate in the environmental and business communities about what really constitutes greenwashing. Even more prickly is the debate about whether calling out corporate powers is useful in driving American business to become more sustainable.

While it may seem obvious that putting SUVs in natural settings and implying they are somehow good for the environment is just outright deception, most claims of greenwashing are not clear cut.

General Motors is often accused of greenwashing by promoting its electric car, the Volt, that is not yet available for sale. Yet it would hardly make sense for GM to wait until 2010 to market a car they know will be in production by then.

Most critics of corporate green initiatives seem to be playing a zero sum game. They are not unhappy with corporate moves toward sustainability, but they complain that progress is not far or fast enough. Given the explosion of public awareness in the past decade, but the slow pace of change in public habits, how realistic is it to expect change to proceed any faster?

And how green does a company have to be before it avoids the risk of being labeled as hypocritical. That’s what a lot of them are wondering.

Much of the debate is encapsulated in Jeffrey Hollander’s blog, The Inspired Protaganist. Hollander, President of Seventh Generation has had an ongoing debate with Joel Makower at GreenBiz.com. Pragmatism and principle battle it out in this particular post and the comments that follow.

Hollander and Makower both have valid points, and the passion of their arguments speaks to what’s at stake as American business struggles to embrace necessary change.

Keep shopping your good values!

Have you ever held elephant poo in your hand?   Have you ever smelled Nepal?  Have you ever seen the colors of Ecuador, or slept with a Llama?  

We invite you to have these adventures and more.

Of course, we don’t really have elephant poo, but we do have wonderful cards and boxes from Thailand made of elephant poo for you to hold.  Yes, you heard me right.   The dung is first dried completely and then thoroughly rinsed.   The remaining fibrous material, from the plants elephants eat, is mixed with natural bonding agents and then formed into sheets to dry. 

And if you’ve never been to Nepal, you can still take home fragrant incense made from native ingredients growing in Nepalese valleys.  Glimpse the colors of Ecuador in our fine cotton blend fabrics, or take a Llama to bed with you.  We have Teddy Bears made with natural re-claimed Alpaca fur.  

So, you see, the adventures are endless and the connections with indigenous craftspeople are infinite.   Spend your summer having a little adventure.  Come to our store and travel the world!

Keep shopping your good values!