GreenKnickers’ cotton undies receives the Fairtrade Mark

We ask Sarah Lucy Smith from GreenKnickers how it feels to be officially Fairtrade:

Although the company has been treating people and planet more than respectfully since it started manufacturing and selling its lovely cotton, hemp and silk knickers, its cotton knickers has only just been rewarded with the Fairtrade Mark now. The Fairtrade Foundation does not certify hemp, silk and bamboo yet.

You've been working according to organic and Fairtrade principles since GreenKnickers started - why did you decide you wanted the Fairtrade Mark when you were doing everything and more anyway?
We started out wanting the mark in order to communicate our values more clearly to more people. However it has turned out to be a really rewarding experience as it has brought us closer to our supply chain and made us realise how fantastic it is. Through the process of auditing and measuring the impact of our supply chain we have realised that our knickers positively affect so many more lives than we had ever realised.

What were the main challenges in obtaining the Fairtrade Mark?
What the process meant for us was tracing back each and every stage of production. We knew our cotton was being grown and sewn under fair conditions but we needed to fill in all the gaps in between. This means understanding who is spinning, knitting, dyeing and compacting the cotton. Often this will involve assisting and enabling certain links in the chain to obtain FLO approval. Luckily for us because of the nature of our cotton supply chain all the links either had approval or were in the process of being audited. Obtaining the certification has been an incredibly fulfilling experience for us. It has meant understaning and working closely with our fair trade suppliers and has made us feel quite proud and emotional describing the work that they do. At the end of the day the mark gives less informed or more cynical people the reassurance that the product is Fairtrade.

Have GreenKnickers changed in any way since you got the right to use the Fairtrade Mark?
Our supply chain has not changed significantly, but as a business we have a deeper understanding of all the important stages where exploitation can occur. The licence involves quite a bit of paperwork which was a change for us as our method has always been more to do with shaking hands and looking people in the eye. This works for small companies with an optimistic enthusiastic outlook but becomes complicated as a business grows. The hope is that ethical fashion will grow and involve more bigger businesses - and for this reason a certain amount of formal regulation is needed. I worry that big businesses will always try to bend the rules so I think FLO are so key to keeping control of this. I wouldn't put anyone off buying from a business without the mark though, there are loads of truly ethical fashion companies who don't carry the mark for purely logistical and not ethical reasons. At the moment it is only cotton which currently carries the mark so our bamboo and hemp knickers can't be certified. Bamboo and Hemp however make amazing sustainable textiles and we would hate for the mark to overshadow the values of our non-cotton products. I would urge people to delve more deeply into the values of the companies they buy from as this can tell you so much more than any mark.

GreenKnickers has also just received its new stock of knickers made from bamboo, which they both use for the 'Padded Cycling Knickers' and for the knickers pictured above.

Find out more about GreenKnickers here.