Column Chocolate is a guilty pleasure in more ways than one.

For most people, chocolate evokes positive associations: indulgence, childhood, Valentine’s Day. But in Western Africa, the connotations are far less positive. There, an estimated 1.8 million child laborers work tirelessly to produce the cocoa that goes into our Easter bunny chocolates.

The ills of the cocoa industry first entered the public eye in the early 2000s, after a BBC documentary called “Slavery: A Global Investigation” highlighted the child labor and slavery abuses occurring on West African cocoa farms. According to the International Labor Rights Forum, child workers in the cocoa industry typically “labor for long, punishing hours, using dangerous tools and facing frequent exposure to dangerous pesticides as they travel great distances in the grueling heat.” In addition, those working as slaves “suffer frequent beatings and other cruel treatment.”

The Good

The BBC documentary sparked a loud, though short-lived, public outcry. Soon after it was released, U.S. House Representative Eliot Engel and Senator Tom Harkin sponsored the Harkin-Engel Protocol, a public-private agreement to eliminate the “worst forms of child labor” (as defined by the International Labour Organization) in the growth and processing of cocoa in the Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, where nearly 75 percent of the world’s cocoa supply is grown. Signed in September 2001, the agreement, better known as the Cocoa Protocol, outlined six actions, each with specific deadlines.

• Public statement of the need for and terms of an action plan.
• Formation of multi-sectoral advisory groups. (By December 1, 2001)  
• Signed joint statement on child labor to be witnessed at the ILO. (By December 1, 2001)
• Memorandum of cooperation. (By May 1, 2002)
• Establish a joint foundation. (By July 1, 2002)
• Building toward credible standards. (By July 1, 2005)

The agreement was signed by multiple stakeholders, from the heads of the Chocolate Manufacturers Association and World Cocoa Foundation, to the coordinator of the Child Labor Coalition, to the presidents of the world’s top eight chocolate manufacturers at the time. It was a significant commitment to ending child labor in the cocoa industry, from the people in positions to effect that change.

The Bad

The Cocoa Protocol was first lauded as a success, but its long-term results have been less than impressive. By the first protocol deadline in 2005, the industry had still failed to implement an industry-wide certification program. An amendment gave the stakeholders three more years, but by 2008, the objectives were still not met. In 2010, the parties signed yet another document – commonly referred to as the 2010 Joint Declaration – that reaffirmed their commitment and added the goal of reducing the worst forms of child labor by 70 percent by 2020.

It’s evident that the Cocoa Protocol still has a long way to go. A 2011 report from the Tulane University Payson Center revealed that about 1.8 million children continue to work in cocoa agriculture in the Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana alone. In the Côte d’Ivoire, about five percent work for pay, and in Ghana, about 10 percent do. In the 12 years since the Cocoa Protocol was signed, only about five percent of child laborers have been exposed to its related initiatives.

In early 2012, the issue was again brought to the public eye thanks to a CNN Freedom Project documentary called Chocolate’s Child Slaves. While exploring cocoa farms in the Côte d’Ivoire,  filmmakers found that not only were child labor and slavery still very prevalent, but many of the employers they encountered hadn’t even been informed of the need to change their practices.

So What Now?

Educate yourself further.

This column just scratches the surface of the abuses and ills of the cocoa industry. To learn more, I recommend watching Mika Mistrati and U. Roberto Romano’s 2010 documentary, “The Dark Side of Chocolate,” and checking out the “Chocolate’s Child Slaves” content from the CNN Freedom Project.

Sign the petition.

Oxfam recently launched a “Women and Chocolate” petition as part of its larger “Behind the Brands” campaign, which seeks to change the way big brands do business. The petition calls on the top three chocolate manufacturers — Nestle, Mars, and Mondelez International (formerly Kraft) — to reduce gender inequality in their industry. While a separate issue from child labor, it’s still an important one.

Indulge responsibly.

Relax — no one is asking you to boycott chocolate now that you know its darker side. But you might want to consider switching your loyalties to Fair Trade brands that work directly with certified slave-free cocoa producers. And beware of Fair Trade brands that are actually owned by troublesome corporations, like Green & Blacks, owned by Mondelez, or Dagoba, owned by Hershey. My personal Fair Trade favorites are Equal Exchange, Kopali Organics, and Divine Chocolate.

Images: Kirti Poddar, Peter DiCampo/Oxfam America, Clive Dara

The post Behind The Label: The Unsweet Dark Side of the Chocolate Industry appeared first on EcoSalon.

 

British retailer Marks & Spencer and charity Oxfam create a giant Union Jack from unwanted clothing as part of their new scheme to get customers “shwopping.”

It’s quite a banner year for the British—the Olympics and the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. Lots of reasons to celebrate with the Union Jack and now, thanks to a campaign by British retailer Marks & Spencer and charity Oxfam there is one more.

To raise awareness for their new shopping scheme called “Shwopping,” they have created the world’s largest Union Jack flag from unwanted clothes. Using 2,100 unwanted items of clothing that was donated to the initiative, pieced together by local volunteers and school children who put together the clothes mosaic – measuring 65’ by 33’ – in East London in under 2 hours (see video below). All the contributed garments will be recycled by Oxfam.

So what exactly is shwopping? The idea is to encourage consumers to adopt a “buy one, give one” mentality when they are shopping, rewarding customers with gifts and prizes for donating an item of clothing to charity whenever they purchase something new from the store.

Old items are dropped into “Shwop Drop” boxes located inside Marks & Spencer stores and are then directed to partners Oxfam. The clothing is then resold in one of their stores or forwarded on to those in need in the Third World, or recycled into fibers to make new material. Absolutely nothing goes to the landfill. Oxfam will use the money raised to help people around the world overcome poverty.

The initiative is part of the Marks & Spencer Plan A program that was launched in 2007 in partnership with Oxfam. Since its initial launch, Plan A has already collected over 10 million garments. Aiming to create a new retailer culture beyond throwaway fashion where reusing, recycling or reselling old clothes becomes the norm. Their goal is to become the world’s most sustainable retailer by 2015 and to recycle as many clothes as they sell, currently more than hundreds of millions of items each year.

Find out more by visiting Marks & Spencer.

The post The Brits Go Shwopping appeared first on EcoSalon.

Oxfam and the London College of Fashion partner with Marks & Spencer to do some shwopping.

It’s always refreshing to see how far sustainable fashion has come. One needn’t search any further than the crowd at the launch of British retailer Marks & Spencer’s (M&S) new sustainable fashion initiative in East London’s Brick Lane neighborhood last week.

As vintage-clad guests sipped champagne inside, thousands of donated clothing items covered the building edifice outside, serving as a powerful visual representation of the 2 million tons of clothing that end up in British landfills each year.

Through a partnership with Oxfam and the London College of Fashion, M&S used the event to introduce the idea of “shwopping:” for every clothing item purchased in their stores, M&S wants customers to swap a donated item of any brand, which they will then pass on to British charity Oxfam. The ultimate goal is to “collect as many clothes as [M&S] sells.”

As Britain’s largest retailer, M&S launched their “Plan A” initiative in 2007, with the goal of becoming the most sustainable major retailer in the world by 2015. While the idea of shwopping addresses waste reduction, the iconic British brand – which has 21 million customers per week – is also improving its practices in the areas such as energy efficiency, packaging, food sourcing, and resource consumption.

Since 2008, when Oxfam began offering £5 vouchers to customers who donated M&S clothing to one of its many charity shops around the UK, the effort has collected 10 million unwanted garments from the wardrobes of Britons.

Despite concerns from critics that the new effort will reduce the amount of donations given to smaller charities, Leona Everitt, head of PR for OxFam, said these donations are needed now more than ever. In addition to providing inventory for Oxfam’s more than 600 hundred shops and online store, Everitt explained that clothes donated to Oxfam are also sold to foreign markets in a responsible way.

“For charity shops like OxFam, what happens during a recession is that our sales go up but our donations go down,” Everitt said. “The pieces that we can’t sell in a charity shop get sorted, recycled, or sold in a responsible way.”

Standing amid racks of clothes featuring “shwopped” pieces from various designers and celebrities, was Absolutely Fabulous actress Joanna Lumley, the public face of the shwopping campaign. Lumley, who has long been a public supporter of Oxfam, spoke about how the initiative accomplishes multiple goals: getting people to be more conscious about what they’re accumulating, reducing landfill waste, and supporting the global efforts of Oxfam.

“Fashion doesn’t suddenly have to become gloomy,” said Lumley. “But if you keep buying clothes your wardrobe will keep getting fuller and fuller. However, if you give pieces away, they will go on to have another fabulous life.”

Images: Unity PR

The post ‘Shwopping’ is Chic: Marks & Spencer’s Sustainable Fashion Launch appeared first on EcoSalon.

 Luxury Shift: Recycled products that rival those from the best fashion houses in the world.

Just about everyone knows that one of the easiest ways to be environmentally friendly is to recycle. Sustainable style seekers have long been known to add breadth to their wardrobes with finds from thrift, consignment and vintage stores. More and more, the buzz is that fashion retailers are turning to reusable materials and some innovative techniques to get mainstream fashion consumers hooked on recycled fashion.

Born into one of Italy’s most famous and important fashion houses, Camina Campus creator, Ilaria Venturini Fendi uses the family talent for fine craftsmanship to produce high quality products from recycled materials that rival those from the best luxury houses in the world. Her line’s ongoing collaboration with the International Trade Centre and their Ethical Fashion Program—which seeks to improve working conditions for women in slums and rural areas of Kenya and Uganda—recently developed a capsule collection with legendary Milan lifestyle emporium, 10 Corso Cosmo. According to their journal, the lustworthy collection is made from recycled materials including “reclaimed military blankets and 10 Corso Como colorful fabric cuttings.”

From Style.com’s Style File, news of another retailer embracing recycled materials came from a fashion editor who got a glimpse of Club Monaco’s under-the-radar recycled repurposed vintage military collection due to hit stores this fall. She reports that “while in London, Club Monaco’s design team hand-picked one-of-a kind men’s vintage military jackets at Portobello Market and reformatted them into parkas, vests, and jackets for women.”  Authentic but altered for an updated, modern look, the line is sure to be a hit with eco and mainstream consumers alike. The 20 piece collection priced from $149 to $199 will be available at select Los Angeles and New York Club Monaco stores.

Oxfam, the U.K.’s Goodwill, have developed a truly innovative way to connect consumers to the fun of thrifting. The Oxfam Curiosity shop, a pop up store in London’s world-famous Selfridges store has partnered with Tales of Things to create QR code tags for many of the celebrity donations and vintage selections. According to PSFK, customers can “scan the mobile tags using their smartphones or any of the store’s bespoke RFID readers to reveal video of the associated celebrity explaining the charity and talking about the history of the item.”

With our culture’s voracious appetite for fashion and celebrity media, and, in turn, fashion and celebrity media sharing an unending appetite for newness, it seems logical to think of a future where everything has to be re-used and regenerated. For trend watchers, recycled fashion—the concept of taking something old and working it into something new—might yet be the most exciting style scene to track.

The post Hooked On Recycling appeared first on EcoSalon.

There’s a lot to learn from the cool UK example of raising funds to share the wealth.

Take Oxfam, for instance, and their ethical and secondhand shops whose funds raise money for relief efforts around the globe. They do great work and offer us one-of-a-kind clothes and jewelry to die for.

Another group, most commonly known as TRAID (Textile Recycling for Aid and International Development) is a UK charity that actively works to divert clothing and shoes from landfills as well as to reduce world poverty by raising funds for development projects.

From TRAID has sprung TRAIDremade, an environmentally-conscious fashion label launched in 2002, giving new meaning to conscious shopping. They recently partnered with Timberland to create Bagsy, limited edition eco bags made from 100% recycled denim and leather (including reconditioned Timberland shirts and jackets).

Bagsy by TRAIDremade and Timberland

Timberland’s role in the partnership is equally impressive with its “Change Your Wardrobe, Change Their Lives” campaign where Timberland customers get 20% off new purchases by donating clothes they no longer need. TRAID then transforms the clothes into “funds to fight global poverty.”

If you live in London, shopping TRAID is a given. But the best resource for Stateside shoppers is to contact the site and see if you can claim your own Bagsy and have it shipped. (Man, but then there’s a carbon footprint to offset. Can’t anyone open a location here?)

The post TRAID to Fight Global Poverty appeared first on EcoSalon.

Do you have your email set up for Google alerts? I do. One of them is for “eco-fashion” (go figure, right?).

A few days ago I got an email talking about Oxfam Great Britain’s secondhand and ethically-produced clothing you can buy online and was flabbergasted by how great the pieces were in both sections.

I’m ashamed to say I never knew the same Oxfam has over 700 shops, including specialist shops for books, clothes and music all over the world, which sell many fair-trade items and clothing. This all started in 1948.

According to the website, the proceeds from these usually get paid to different charities or are used to further Oxfam’s relief efforts around the globe. They rely on people donating things for free.

In just the Second Hand section, there are 1,282 pages and numerous others in the Ethical Collection. Where to begin?

Well, how about page four of their Second Hand store under Evening Wear for this stunning evening dress which goes for around $31.00?

Wait until you see the back of it…

The post Oxfam Goes Shopping appeared first on EcoSalon.