Buyer, Be Fair

The Promise of Product Certification

A one-hour documentary special for public television

Come to the Northwest Premiere of this exciting documentary!

Summary
"Buyer Be Fair: The Promise of Product Certification" takes viewers to Mexico, the Netherlands, the UK, Sweden, the USA and Canada to explore how conscious consumers and businesses can use the market to promote social justice and environmental sustainability through product labeling, with a focus on Fair Trade coffee and Forest Stewardship Council certified wood.

"Buyer Be Fair" is an inspirational but balanced television special that reaches beyond the choir to present the promise of product certification to a wide audience.

Synopsis
The Seattle WTO meetings and other trade gatherings have stirred powerful sentiment against globalization, but world trade is a juggernaut that will not be stopped.   Still, is there a way to make free trade fair?  How can retailers and consumers use their purchasing power and market choice to make the world better for people and the environment? What is the promise of product certification and labeling?  And how do consumers decide whether the labels can be believed?

"Buyer Be Fair" looks at two major trade goods—timber and coffee—to understand how certification works and whether it works.  We take viewers to isolated Indian villages in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, where some of the answers emerge.  In Santa Catarina Ixtepeji, a community’s timber is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) as produced in a just and sustainable manner.  In the villages that are members of Cooperativa La Trinidad, Fair Trade, Shade-Grown, Organic coffee is produced and finds a growing market in the US.  We see how these communities are benefiting from certification and what the obstacles are to broadening its scope.

Our look at coffee takes us from Seattle coffeehouses and regional universities that have gone “fair trade,” to countries around the world.  We travel to the Netherlands (where the fair trade idea began twenty years ago), Germany, and England, to see how Fair Trade is winning commitments from cities and provinces as well as individual retailers.  A visit to an abandoned coffee plantation in Mexico shows us how the world coffee economy is collapsing as low prices drive non-Fair Trade producers to ruin.  It is a scene out of the Twilight Zone—what happened to the people?

Our look at timber takes us to Sweden, Canada and the United States, in addition to Mexico.  We see how timber practices are certified by the German-based Forest Stewardship Council—following logs from Swedish forests to mills, furniture makers and IKEA outlets.  We see how certification is ending near-violent conflicts over timber cutting in British Columbia.  We explore conflicts between the FSC and other industry-based certifiers and see why giant firms like Home Depot and IKEA have lined up behind the more rigorous FSC, while other companies remain wary.

Can we globalize in ways that treat people fairly and respect the environment?  Why should we try?  How can consumers and retailers make choices that will make a difference?  How is certification affecting the world’s poor, and its lands?  Can the lessons from timber and coffee certification be applied to other products? 

Compelling stories and characters raise and answer these questions in a powerful, exquisitely photographed documentary that will get viewers talking about new ways to make globalization work for all of us.

Produced by: John De Graaf and Hana Jindrova, in association with Fox-Wilmar Productions and the Center for Environmental Film-Making at American University's School of Communication. Special assistance was provided by the National Wildlife Federation.

Executive Producer: Christopher Palmer
Narrated by: Scott Simion, National Public Radio
Photographed by: David Fox
Funded by: The Ford Foundation through National Wildlife Productions