Your Receipt Is a Ballot: How Every Purchase Can Shape a Better World
“ We don’t have to wait four years to vote for change. We can vote for change with our shopping dollars this afternoon when we go to the store.”
60% of global GDP is consumer spending. We collectively have the power. If we buy more ethically and sustainably, businesses will shift overnight to meet the demand, regardless of who is in government.
Paul Rice, founder of Fair Trade USA makes the case in his book “Every Purchase Matters” which was just released and has already become a national bestseller. Every Purchase Matters
Ethical sourcing, sustainable supply chains, conscious capitalism – no longer a tradeoff with profitability, but rather a real competitive advantage.
Allies he needs:
Consumers to vote with their dollars for a better world
People to read and share his book
Companies to adopt sustainable practices
Podcast Transcript
Jacob: – [00:00:00] If you’ve bought any product in the last two decades or so, you’ve likely noticed specialized labels that indicate certain features about a product, whether it’s organic or gluten-free, or more importantly, even if it’s Fair Trade today we have with us Paul Rice, founder and CEO of Fair Trade USA, who’s launching his new book, Every Purchase Matters.
Welcome.
Paul: Thank you. Great to be here.
Jacob: Tell us quickly about how you got started at Fair Trade and what it even means if someone has been living under a rock for the past 20 years.
Paul: I hope none of our listeners have been living under a rock for 20 years. If so, it’s time to curl out and lift your voice. I was raised by a single mom who grew up on a farm during the Great Depression in Oklahoma. My grandfather was a cotton picker. That was not my life, but I grew [00:01:00] up hearing those stories about how hard life on the farm was. From the youngest age, I just remember feeling a sense of empathy and sympathy for farmers and for all the struggles that they have.
At the university, I studied international development. I was really curious about global poverty and environmental conservation. And ended up going to Nicaragua, straight out of college, bought a one-way ticket, and went off to work with farmers. Thought I would stay for a couple of years, but I ended up staying for 11 years. Lived way, way, way up in the mountains in very remote mountain communities. Working on various international development projects, and kind of by accident, heard about Fair Trade in the summer of 1990.
The slogan of the Fair Traders at that time was ‘Trade not Aid’, and their whole approach was instead of trying to alleviate global poverty through international aid. Why not just pay farmers a fair price for their product and enable them on a journey outta poverty? That resonated with me. And so long story short, in the summer of [00:02:00] 1990, I organized and founded Nicaragua’s very first fair trade co-op with 24 coffee farmers.
That year, we exported a container of coffee to a fair trade buyer who, after costs, ended up paying us a dollar a pound for our coffee at a time when the local market price was 10 cents per pound. That dramatic increase in income meant that our farmers were able to stay on the land and keep their kids in school and dig wells to bring clean drinking water into their village, for the first time. We reforested hillsides that had been deforested a generation earlier by international lumber companies. We set up village banking and provided microloans to women who wanted to become entrepreneurs and develop their own businesses. We built baseball fields and soccer fields. We did all of this really cool stuff in terms of social and environmental grassroots development, and we did it thanks to this really simple concept of a fair price for a great product.
That really changed my whole view on the role of the market [00:03:00] to address poverty. I went from being an anti-capitalist and seeing business as the problem to realizing that markets and companies, and consumers could actually be an incredible ally in our efforts to help humble farming folk around the world develop their communities and improve their lives. I became a true believer in fair trade. I developed this business, which was selling primarily to Europe. Europe was 15, 20 years ahead of the US in terms of the development of the fair trade market.
There were only a couple of very small fair trade companies in the US at the time, and there was no real movement per se. So I moved back to the US in 94 to try and bring the European Fair Trade Movement to the US, and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.
What I decided to do was. set up the first Fair Trade Standards Group here in the US in order to bring the rigor and the credibility of third-party certification to our movement. So fair trade is certainly a philosophy, ‘Trade not Aid’ it’s a movement that brings together farmers and workers and activists and consumers and [00:04:00] companies, but it’s also a standard. Fair Trade is a rigorous 200-point checklist of social labor and environmental criteria that farms and factories adhere to and get audited against every year. If they pass their audit, then they’re certified for a year, and they can wear that Fair Trade certified label on their product, coffee, bananas, tea, whatever it is, and that is rewarded by our market partners.
Today, we work with more than 2000 companies from Walmart to Whole Foods, Costco, Target, Patagonia, PepsiCo, and those market partners agree to pay a premium back to the farmers and the workers. Those farmers manage locally, they decide whether it’s health or education or housing, or some other need that they’re going to invest in each year.
Fair Trade USA is the organization I founded in 1998. It’s a nonprofit, and it is the standards group and the certifier of Fair Trade products. Which, by the way, has now over a million farmers and workers in 72 countries worldwide. Farmers that are producing coffee and tea, and cocoa [00:05:00] and sugar and fresh fruits and vegetables, but also fishers, we certify fair trade fish, and we certify factory products, apparel and home goods, furniture, cosmetics. So when you, I’ve got one here, when you see that Fair Trade Certified label on Trader Joe’s coffee or tea, or any other product, you know those farmers got a better deal, better wages, better working conditions. We’re stewarding the environment in a more sustainable way.
The Fair Trade movement encompasses all of those products and farmers and workers, the companies that we work with, and the activists. That flywheel of producers, companies, and consumers is what has grown the fair trade market into today, one of the fastest growing segments of this food industry, and the Fair Trade Label is the third most recognized label in the US after organics and non-GMO.
Jacob: Fantastic. Obviously it all is contingent on is the consumer willing to pay a premium; how did you overcome those hurdles? Or what, what is the rebuttal to that?
Paul: The research is pretty clear. There is a significant and growing consumer [00:06:00] segment that is happy to pay 2 cents more for a cup of coffee that makes the world better. Depending on whose research you read, anywhere from a third to two-thirds of American consumers fall into this bucket of shoppers who are regularly looking at the social and environmental impact of their purchasing decisions. Most of them say they’re willing to buy or prefer products that have those attributes and are willing to pay a little bit more.
In my recent book, Every Purchase Matters, I spend quite a bit of time analyzing this issue of who should pay for
sustainability? Should we pay for it as consumers? Should companies pay for it? Should the farmers pay for it? There are a lot of different points of view on this, but the reality is a lot of consumers will pay more. And also many companies now are developing fair trade supply chains that deliver more money back to farmers and workers, but that don’t charge consumers more. The way they’re able to do that is by generating value in the supply chain. Often, they are disintermediating the supply [00:07:00] chain. In other words, cutting some of the middlemen out, but they’re creating value through that more transparent and direct supply chain connection. Which allows them to pay farmers more and not charge consumers more.
So it’s really interesting to see the fair trade market evolving in that way. Proof of it is that you can find fair trade apparel, not just at Patagonia, but also at Target. Target has Fair Trade blue jeans for $19.95. So there’s a democratization of the sustainability movement going on in that companies are finding ways to deliver sustainable products that are accessible to working-class Americans.
Jacob: So you mentioned your book, why this book now?
Paul: So I’m gonna hold this up because I have two kids, and this is my third. And it just, my book just came out. I couldn’t be happier. It’s real. Why this book? Now? Honestly, I led Fair Trade USA for 26 years. It’s my life’s work. I just stepped down a couple of months ago, and a few years ago, I realized that we had earned the right to tell our story.
There have been so many [00:08:00] innovations to the Fair Trade model. So many great case studies of both success and failures, and so many lessons learned. I decided a couple of years ago it was time to write the book for two audiences. The first one is the business audience: CEOs, sustainability professionals, supply chain leaders, marketing leaders. People in the business world who are trying to crack the code on sustainability and business. There was a trade-off mentality in capitalism in the past. Either you could maximize profits for shareholders or introduce sustainability and responsibility, and social good, but you couldn’t do both; there was a trade-off there.
That was the old mentality. What we’re seeing over the 30 years that I’ve been in this movement is a new conventional wisdom. A very different mindset with regard to sustainability and profitability. One in which business leaders are increasingly finding ways to use sustainability to drive the success of the firm. Either in terms of supply chain security or brand differentiation. In many ways, we see companies [00:09:00] overcoming this trade-off, and fair trade is kind of a rich learning lab for this bigger phenomenon of ethical sourcing or sustainable supply chains and conscious capitalism.
So I wrote the book for people like your listeners who are trying to figure out how to bring purpose into their business. How to bring people, planet, and profit together in a way that works. Fair Trade has had some great successes with companies like Whole Foods and Walmart. We’ve also had some colossal failures, and so I dissect those failures in the book because I wanna illuminate the path for people in the business world who are trying to reinvent capitalism.
It’s also written for the average consumer because we have 67% consumer awareness of that Fair Trade certified label. So 150 million people have seen it, but many people don’t know what it means. There’s a positive association, but they don’t know how Fair Trade or other certifications work and what the impact is. The approach of the past was very two-dimensional. There’s a label on the package, and that means that the product did no harm. But we’re only now [00:10:00] entering in era where we’re using digital technology to go much deeper into the stories.
Part of the book is a way to reach consumers with the stories of impact. It’s my hope that this book will appeal to general, conscious consumers and people who are curious about the labels and the impact.
Jacob: You wrote this book with a certain purpose in mind. What do you hope it accomplishes?
Paul: Well, I wrote this book to elevate our movement. It’s a book by the movement, for the movement. And when I say movement, I’m referring not just to the Fair Trade Movement, but there’s this larger meta movement, the ethical sourcing movement, or the responsible sourcing, sustainable supply chains. This bigger movement of which Fair Trade is a part, but that also includes other third-party certifications like Marine Stewardship Council Certification, which looks at ocean stewardship in seafood. Or Forest Stewardship Council Certification, Organics, Rainforest Alliance. There are many, many expressions of ethical sourcing, including a lot of companies that are addressing the issue of sustainable supply chains [00:11:00] in-house with their own codes of conduct.
The book is in service to the Fair Trade Movement. It’s in service to the broader ethical sourcing movement in all its expressions. And finally, the book is in service to conscious consumers, you and me, ordinary people who may have read about the fact that there’s commonly child labor in the West African cocoa fields. Therefore, there’s probably child labor in your chocolate bar unless it’s certified by someone. So many consumers have read about the scandals in global supply chains, child labor in chocolate, or sweatshop conditions in apparel, especially in fast fashion.
There’s a growing awareness among consumers that not all is well in business as usual. Awareness is only going to grow because every developing world farmer and worker has a phone. So there are no more secrets in the global supply chain. If a factory collapses like Rana Plaza in 2013 in Bangladesh, the world will find out. There’s this realization among consumers that there’s some bad stuff out there, and consumers at the very least want to do [00:12:00] no harm. What American consumer would, in good conscience, buy a chocolate bar knowing that there was child labor in it? No one wants that on their conscience.
And so, in answer to your question, what do I want from the book? Well, I want it to serve that evolution of the consumer mindset. When I look at the data, millennials and Gen Z and I see their expectations of companies in terms of stewarding the environment and taking care of workers in the global supply chain. I want this book to be in service to all those starting to think about the issue, starting to be mindful about their shopping decisions, and the impact.
I hope this book will lend support to the momentum of our movements when we really need it. Trump is, quite frankly, a disaster for sustainability. And yet companies and consumers have the ability to trump Trump. We have the ability to not just maintain, but increase the momentum in the sustainability movement by leaning into this notion of buying sustainable products.
Here’s a fun fact for you: the sale of Fair Trade Products actually accelerated [00:13:00] sharply during Trump’s first term. From 2016 to 2020, we saw a dramatic increase in the sale of Fair Trade products across all categories. And so I think this just lends credence to the notion that consumers see their shopping decisions as a way to vote for a better world with their shopping dollars.
Jacob: Love that. So, if someone is interested in the book, where can they find it?
Paul: It’s on Amazon, it’s on bookshop.org. You can go to my website, paulrice.org, and find lots of ways to buy the book there. And also sign up for my newsletter. The book is being sold wherever books are sold.
Jacob: How would you respond to, is fair trade even still relevant in today’s, let’s make a deal, it’s all about me kind of mentality?
Paul: Fair Trade and things like it are actually more relevant and more necessary than ever before in this current political climate.
The reality is, we don’t have to wait four years to vote for change. We can vote for change with our shopping dollars this afternoon when we [00:14:00] go to the store, simply by choosing products that impact the world. in a positive way, that take care of farmers, that address the issue of climate change. The US can pull out of the Paris Accords, but if we buy net-zero products that are environmentally sustainable, the world of business is listening. The world of business will respond to consumer signals. If we buy more products that are green and socially responsible, then companies will do more in spite of this government’s lack of interest.
The news is full of stories of the powerful people in government and the billionaires, and yet we have the power too. You and I, we have the power. In so many ways, right? Through our purchasing decisions and through our investment decisions. We have the ability to influence the business community, which in many ways is so powerful, to continue the momentum that we’ve had in recent years toward sustainability.
Jacob: What are you looking to accomplish now? You’ve already had a great track record, but there’s a new chapter for you. What’s next and what’s next on the horizon for you?
Paul: It remains to be seen, I’m literally finishing the first week since my [00:15:00] book launched, and I’m on the road. I’m doing my book tour. I’m telling the world that Every Purchase Matters and really trying to build momentum around that.
It’s interesting, I think a lot of consumers look at labels on products, they see Fair Trade, for example, and without knowing the story behind the label, they assume it’s good, and they appreciate it, and they buy the product. One of the challenges we all have trying to use products as a vehicle for change. The challenge of storytelling, the challenge of helping people understand in real human terms, the impacts of their decisions.
I’m keenly aware that there are two amazing stories right behind me, and I’m gonna tell you one. This is a picture that I took myself in Haiti a few years ago on a coffee cooperative there. In Haiti, as in most of the world, elementary school is free, but to send your kids to elementary school, they have to have shoes on their feet and they have to have a uniform. And so their grade school-age kids couldn’t go to school, because they were that poor. Imagine the shame that father and mother [00:16:00] must have felt.
So what did that community do? They organized into a co-op. They got Fair Trade certified. They found a buyer, actually Nordstrom started buying their coffee. They got a fair trade premium, 20 cents per pound, and the pounds add up. And so they had tens of thousands of dollars coming into their community for the first time.
And the project that they chose to spend that money on the very first year was a scholarship fund for their kids to buy shoes and uniforms. I happened to visit one day when all these kids were streaming out of the school. So happy playing on the playground, and I brought ’em together to take the picture, not knowing what I was seeing. The head of the co-op said, You know, half of these kids weren’t in school a couple of years ago. They’re in school thanks to the shoes that Fair Trade helped put on their feet.
It hit me like a ton of bricks, but in the sweetest, most uplifting way that you and I have the ability, through something as simple as a cup of coffee, to help kids stay in school. And so, when you think about this term, conscious consumerism, what does it mean? It’s kind of like the intersection of commerce and mindfulness. [00:17:00] It’s us as consumers bringing awareness and realizing that when we buy something, there’s a family behind that product. There’s an ecosystem behind that product, and the way it was sourced matters.
That’s why I chose Every Purchase Matters as the title for my book, because every purchase that we make is an opportunity to be mindful and to support families that don’t want our charity. They just want a little help so they can keep the kids in school. I think storytelling for change that’s one of the most powerful opportunities that we have collectively as a movement. To tell stories in a way that helps inspire ordinary Americans about the power that they have, the ability that they have to reach halfway across the world, and in an act of grace and goodwill, help keep kids in school through their everyday purchases.
Jacob: That’s beautiful. So what are the allies that you most need right now?
Paul: I see the business world in this 50-year transition, and maybe we’re [00:18:00] halfway along or less, where business people are trying to figure out how to bring profit and purpose together. I have had a chance to work with amazing companies, large and small, and I see companies struggling and leaning into this challenge of how to engineer a business model that is sustainable and that generates positive social and environmental outcomes while helping the business thrive. There’s no one formula for a sustainable business. Because different industries, different geographies, different consumer segments all impact how we engineer these business models for social, environmental, and financial success.
And so, what allies do I hope to have? All of our listeners who are wanting to bring their values to work, wanting to engineer businesses, as John Elkington used to say, triple bottom line businesses, social, environmental, and financial. Lean in, keep going, take comfort in the fact that you are on the right side of history. It’s not easy work. A lot of companies, a lot of people in companies struggle [00:19:00] between the pressure to generate short-term profits and the realization that we have to think longer term, we have to build for the future.
So in terms of allies for the sustainability movement, it starts with people with good hearts and innovative spirits in their respective businesses, staying the course and testing, having the courage to test different approaches to sustainability. The other ally is the consumer, the American and European consumer who arguably have a 20, 30, 40-year head start on this conscious consumer phenomenon. And the most ability to encourage companies down this path through our everyday purchasing decisions.
Jacob: Awesome. As a small aside, that big, hairy, audacious goal of how do we shift that paradigm and accelerate that? You’ve got my wheels turning.
What are the messages that the world needs to hear? Inspire some of that paradigm shifting to the ants versus the grasshoppers in A Bug’s Life, right? We have the collective power, how do we awaken ourselves to that power that we do [00:20:00] have? There’s fother for some great stories and messages in there that we would really love to help inspire people on that journey.
Paul: You know, it’s interesting because most Fair Trade products just have the label, they don’t have a QR code that you can scan to see the impact.
A friend of mine who’s a big fan of Driscoll’s berries said to me recently, When are you gonna sign up Driscoll’s? And I said, well, actually we did, and there’s the label on Driscoll’s blueberries, and they also have ’em on strawberries. And the label is so small on that clamshell that my friend never realized that they were buying Fair Trade blueberries.
So I think that’s part of the challenge is just raising awareness that if you wanna know if it’s fair trade, look for the label. And it might be small, so look hard. But then, to your point, going beyond simple two-dimensional labeling to storytelling through QR codes and through other ways on websites and so on, that opportunity is ripe now with the ability to curate stories from a million farmers in 72 countries, and upload those stories in [00:21:00] real time. I think we’re gonna see a lot of progress and innovation in this area, not just in fair trade, but in ethical sourcing in general over the next five, 10 years.
We’re seeing a dramatic increase in the expectation of these future consumers that companies are gonna do right, and we want to know the story. We want an authentic story of the impact of these products.
I’m encouraged. I’m really encouraged. I’ve been in this movement for a long time and there’s some days where I wake up and I think, damn, we should have done more by now. But when I think about the long arc of evolution of capitalism and business and society, I feel really encouraged about what’s to come.
Jacob: Love that. It makes me think our parents, especially our grandparents, bought product and didn’t even have a nutrition label on it. And yet societally, we decided, the consumer deserves to know what’s in this product. I foresee a time there’s a societal demand we want to know where this product came from and who was behind it, what were the practices because our consciousness is raised to where that matters to us.
Do you [00:22:00] foresee a time or a day where that’s integrated, like it’s the standard as opposed to a special label? Or how do you see that playing out?
Paul: You know, it’s an interesting question. I’m sure our European listeners are very familiar with the due diligence legislation that’s going on in Europe. Essentially, the European Union is moving in the direction of requiring that companies demonstrate what they’re doing in terms of labor rights, human rights, and environmental impact. So we’re moving from the world of voluntary approaches by companies to one that’s becoming increasingly part of the regulatory regime. We’re years, maybe decades, away from something like that in the US, but Europe is often the trailblazer.
I’m really intrigued by the thought that some of the biggest problems in global supply chains like child labor, slave labor, deforestation, and use of the most toxic chemical pesticides around the world. I’m encouraged by the possibility that starting in Europe, we’ll see a regulatory approach that will require companies to [00:23:00] address those problems. And so maybe eventually third-party certifications like Fair Trade are not necessary, or maybe they’re necessary as one of the array of approaches that companies implement. And that more companies come to Fair Trade, not just because of the profit motive and consumer demand for it, but because government is saying you have to implement it.
That’s probably the more likely scenario, not that third-party certification will go away, but that it will become the new normal, as governments increasingly require that companies change business as usual because business as usual means there’s bad stuff in your product more often than not.
Jacob: What’s the one thing you wanna leave our listeners with?
Paul: Well, I’m definitely hopeful about the future, and I’m also deeply disturbed and outraged by what’s happening in the world today. There’s need for action, I feel a sense of urgency in the face of what feels like a lot of pressure to roll back the gains of the last decade in terms of sustainability.
I think [00:24:00] there’s a sense of urgency for all of us to lean in, in any and every way we can. In our businesses, in our shopping decisions, now is the time. It matters what we do right now.
I’m not only hopeful, I’m also optimistic about what’s ahead. But what I’m curious about is the pace of change and how we pick up the pace, before it’s too late.
Jacob: Wow. Paul, thank you. Thank you for who you are and the good that you’re doing, and God bless you in this movement, and excited to see where you take it next.
Paul: Thank you. Back at you. God bless you as well. Thank you for everything you’re doing to get rich stories of change out there. It’s really powerful work, so thank you, Jacob.
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