‘Ethical Consumption’ Changing World
By Ryu Jin
Staff Reporter
Kang Yu-mi, a 29-year-old worker at a dental clinic in Seoul, enjoys a cup of coffee everyday at her office. Unlike many other women her age, she does not consume upscale brand-name coffee. Instead, she drops by Beautiful Store (in Anguk-dong) from time to time to get ``A Gift from the Himalayas.''
A Gift from the Himalayas is a fair trade coffee from Nepal. Kang does not know terms such as ``fair trade'' or ``alternative trade." But she is definitely one of the growing number of consumers who pay attention not only to the price and quality of a product but also to the ethical aspects of the production process.
Originated in Europe in the 1950s, ``fair trade'' is an organized social movement and market-based model of international trade which promotes the payment of fair prices as well as social and environmental standards in areas related to the production of various goods.
In particular, it focuses on exports from developing countries to developed countries, most notably handicrafts, coffee, cocoa, sugar, tea, bananas, honey, cotton, wine, fresh fruit and so on.
One of the strategic intents of fair trade is to deliberately work with marginalized producers and workers in order to help them move from a position of vulnerability to economic independence and self-sufficiency.
In South Korea, Beautiful Store ― run by the Beautiful Foundation ― joined the movement in 2003. YMCA, Dure Cooperative and other organizations have followed suit over the past five years.
Ethical Consumption
``Ethical consumption,'' through which people can help the needy around the world simply by buying something, is spreading slowly to change the world. Now the new trend is even changing corporate behavior.
Beautiful Store (www.beautifulstore.org), which introduced fair trade to the nation five years ago with handicrafts from Southeast Asian countries, has been selling the fair trade coffee from Nepal at its online and offline shops. Its sales, which stood at around 36 million won in 2004, rose to 166 million won (roughly $175,000) last year.
Earlier this month, the non-profit organization began to sell a different brand: ``A Gift from the Andes.'' Grown in the high reaches of Peru, South America, the coffee beans are brought here to be roasted by local experts.
Fair trade goods are not limited to coffee beans.
FAIRTRADE KOREA, for example, sells about 120 different kinds of fair trade goods from teas and aromatic products to clothes, accessories and porcelain through its Internet homepage (www.ecofairtrade.co.kr).
Natural Dream (www.naturaldream.co.kr), a distributor of eco-friendly foods, also introduced a cacao product, which was made in a ``desirable way'' in Colombia, ahead of Valentine's Day earlier this month.
Corporate behavior has been affected. Starbucks, for example, struck a deal with Ethiopia in 2000 to offer more benefits to Ethiopian coffee farmers in the face of pressures from ethical consumers. Nike also had to admit in 2005 that it had profited through sports shoes made by children in underdeveloped countries.
Microsoft's Bill Gates described the social business as ``creative capitalism'' at the Davos Economic Forum in January, stressing the need for capitalism to find ways to help not only the haves but also the have-nots.
Long Way Ahead
But ethical consumption here has a long way to go. While an increasing number of people pay attention to fair trade, there are not many who understand exactly what it means.
In a survey of 1,000 adults by Beautiful Store last October, about 70 percent of respondents said that they are willing to buy fair trade goods. However, only 3 percent of the respondents knew exactly what fair trade means.
``Unlike advanced countries, which have had 50 years of fair trade, this country has had it for only a few years,'' FAIRTRADE KOREA President Lee Mi-yeong said. ``So we need to raise public recognition, first with quality products.''
Natural Dream CEO Shin Seong-sik also stressed that ethical consumers can change enterprises and even the world. ``Most people do not know how chocolate is made. If they think about the problem of child labor, they would want to know how to solve it.''