It's Valentine's Day, Spread the Love

Here’s the Thing:

Buy Fair Trade chocolate & flowers for your sweetie.

Your honey-bunches-of-oats is going to cop a whole lot of gratitude when you pull out those Valentine’s Day proofs of your affection. You will have made his or her day.

Nothing says ‘I love you’ like goofy yellow tulips.

That’s awesome.

But with just a few clicks of your mouse, you can make hundreds of other people’s day at the same time!

You see there’s a lot of bad stuff that goes on in the chocolate and flower businesses around the world. With chocolate, the main issues are child labor and worker exploitation — primarily in West Africa. As for flowers, the issue is weak labor laws in Colombia, which is the main supplier of flowers to the United States. Flower workers there are exposed to dangerous chemicals without any protective gear and they’re forced to work long hours at repetitive tasks that often cause painful carpal tunnel injuries. (Alexandra Early’s excellent article turns over all the dirt on Colombia’s flower industry.)

So what’s the alternative? Buy fair trade chocolate and fair trade flowers. For the flowers, check out Organic Bouquet online — they’re one of the only sellers in the United States to be certified by “Veriflora” (technically “fair trade” is not the term used for flowers, but who’s counting?). That means their flowers have been produced in an environmentally and socially responsible manner.

For chocolate, you have lots more options, but I would recommend the Global Exchange store for buyers in the U.S. and Canada.

Ok, so I recognize this article is coming too late to actually be useful for you on Valentine’s Day. My bad. But, if you’re like me, and you tend to celebrate holidays about a week late anyway, this may be just what the doctor ordered. You can use the excuse that you needed the extra time to make sure you were doing the socially responsible thing. Or heck, just celebrate it twice!

Oh, and if you’re interested in buying lots of other fair trade stuff, check out this handy listing of online sites to buy coffe, tea, soap, stationary, knick-knacks, and more.