Fair Trade Bedding – A Better Deal For Farmers

We’ve said it before: we’re doing things differently. Well this is where it begins – with Fair Trade cotton. When we first investigated supply chains in the textile world, we knew it wouldn’t work for us. Child labor is real. The impact on the world’s poorest of ‘throwaway’ fast fashion and other textiles is real. So we decided to build something better and commit to fair trade practices: to treat others how wewant to be treated.

At Square Flower, we insist on Fair Trade Certified Cotton to make our organic bedding with. That’s because we know how important sleep is: it’s nature’s reboot, the time our bodies and minds need to recharge, dream big, and get ready for what the new day brings.

And because we believe everyone deserves a great night’s sleep – you, our factory workers, and crucially, our cotton farmers and their families – we’ve done our homework to make sure everyone involved gets a fair deal.

The upshot? All our Square Flower organic bedding is Fair Trade Certified (FTC) – it’s only ever made with Fair Trade Certified Cotton, in Fair Trade Factories. This is our pledge to you – our guarantee, if you like – that your beautiful organic cotton sheets have a happy backstory. We really do love sleep!

By aiming to deliver economic empowerment and independence for some of the world’s most deprived rural communities, Fair Trade supports the creation of sustainable livelihoods, and helps people reinvest in their future. Essentially, it gives them back the chance to shape

The Fair Trade cotton program focuses on developing countries. Ours comes from small-scale family farms in the Indian state of Odisha. Each cotton farm is part of the wider organic farming co-operative Chetna Organic, which supports marginalized farmers.

Rural villages like these in the rainfed cotton-farming regions of India are among the most impoverished in the world. Unpredictable weather, climate change, the expense and environmental cost of hardy GMO seeds, and the debt cycles triggered by failed harvests were pushing farming families to their limits.

Chetna works with the Fair Trade Association to set the price of cotton annually, ensuring it’s in line with the local living wage. Fair Trade also shines a light on the entire supply chain, to make sure everyone involved is getting a fair deal, and to stamp out exploitation.

Nonprofit organizations around the world, such as Fair Trade USA (the biggest certifier in America), work to set and uphold ‘fair’ standards – standards that protect fundamental human rights and ensure decent working conditions.

All of the farmers, workers and companies behind a Fair Trade Certified product are independently audited to check they meet the standards. Trade standards are different for every industry, but the one that affects Fair Trade Certified cotton is the Agricultural Production Standard. The APS supports healthy farms and healthy communities, setting rigorous standards that cover minimum wages and economic independence, but also environmental stewardship, sustainability, democracy and discrimination-free treatment. If you don’t meet the standards, you don’t get certification.

Of course, in an ideal world, we wouldn’t have to check that people are being fair to one another – but the truth is, cotton farming is in crisis. From the use of harmful chemicals to inexcusable child labor and worker exploitation, the industry is rife with ruthless cost-cutting practices – usually at the expense of the poorest and most vulnerable farmers and families.

That’s why, for us, Fair Trade isn’t a marketing ploy, or greenwashing: it’s a non-negotiable.

Thankfully, for our cotton farmers, this story has a happy ending. Not only has Fair Trade given them economic stability, and a clean, safe place to live and work, it also ensures their land is safeguarded long-term, and their communities are better prepared for the future.

So far, for the farmers we work with in the Chetna co-operative, these funds have:

• built deep-drop lavatories to improve sanitation

• provided ‘seed kits’ for farmers in the critical growing season, supplying vital non-GM cotton seeds and nursery plants, as well as vegetable varieties for home kitchen gardens
• bought a bio-fertilizer unit, nursery, tractor and other essential kit
• built safe storage warehouses, so farmers can sell their cotton when prices are more profitable
• set up an educational eco centre for research and training farmers in best organic practice

You’ll notice that most of these initiatives just give people in our farming communities a better chance to stand on their own two feet. It’s not rocket science – it’s just fair.

Well, we think you are.

By buying Square Flower bedding, or snuggling up under one of our Fair Trade Certified blankets, you guarantee a better night’s rest for everyone – and you can sleep soundly, knowing that you’ve made a good choice and helped us keep a promise to protect real people and the planet we all share.

Sweet dreams…