Our fair trade products are as unique as the people who make them
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Beautiful Silks and its joint venturers in this site, Happy High Herbs and Elephant Concepts have a record of corporate social involvement which would be ambitious for an organisation hundreds of times bigger. We take our responsibility as employers, suppliers and purchasers seriously. We source sustainably. We supply ethically. We are an employer of choice for young Australians. We offer generous reseller commissions to regional craft co-operatives and discounts to schools and colleges.
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We trade fairly
We have inspected the workplaces in which our fair trade products are made for safety and to ensure that the workers are not exploited. The Indian co-operatives and institutes we support allow employment opportunities to the poorest of the rural poor. Indian workplaces educate family members in a fair manner, allow children also to go to school, have high female participation in management, and are open to independant external inspection.
We do not purchase from anyone we suspect of using forced labour or of exploiting child labour. We do not use underpaid outworkers. We do not purchase manufactured goods from countries with poor labour-protection records such as Cambodia or Laos. We do not trade with totalitarian countries such as Burma.
Our main source of product is a women's co-operative in rural Mandya, about 30 km from Mysore in Karnakata State, South India, operated by the Vikasana Institute of Rural Development. We aim to provide a living wage to the poorest of the world's poor. Click here to see how we're doing it.
Even our working environment is sustainable:
We're carbon-neutral. We've planted more than enough trees to offset our carbon production in our lifetime on our Warrnambool property (over 4000)!! Our Warrnambool base also has water-recycling, composting toilets, waste-minimisation and renewable on-site energy production. Even our web-hosting is carbon neutral. Our Melbourne plant has its own bio- diesel powered electric generator. Our vehicles are fueled with alternative fuels (and some are bicycles - look for our cute bicycle trailers and electric motorised delivery bikes).
Towards a "nothing artificial" product and packaging range.
We commission, import and sell fairtrade items made sustainably from natural products, and we sell them in natural or recyclable packaging. We are moving to packing in silk, paper, calico or cotton and have achieved our aim of being 90% new-plastic-free (apart from post-office products) by weight of new materials used. We were the first in the industry to move to using post-industrial plastic waste for large items. Our fabric bags are now for sale to the general public.
Where we dye imported uncoloured product we use a dye range which is the most environmentally-friendly available, and use eco-dyes made from vegetable products. We've also taught Indian villagers natural dye techniques.
In the photo: I ndia Flint shown during a training workshop for poor Indian villagers, paid for by Beautiful Silks..
We don’t see corporate social responsibility as necessarily being philanthropy. For us, CSR can actually enhance a brand’s reputation in the eyes of consumers and stakeholders. In the days of globalisation, common understandings of the social responsibilities and rights of employees, whether management or labour, as well as the ethical contours of relations with suppliers, clients, owners and shareholders and other corporate shareholders, can no longer be taken for granted in business.
Milton Friedman nearly 40 years ago that ‘there is one and only one social responsibility of business - to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits. We disagree. The involvement with the Unique Fair Trade Gifts program by each of the joint venturers is a commitment to improve the community through discretionary business practices and contributions of corporate resources not only because it is in our commercial interest to do so, but because it is part of how society implicitly expects us to operate - to build long term relationships of trust rather than existing for the short-term rip-off.
