Top 5 reasons to buy fair-trade home decor

You’ve heard of fair-trade bananas and fair-trade clothing, but did you know you can buy fair-trade decor for your home? Consumer awareness is rising, which means people want to know who is making the products they buy. As mass-produced products fall out of fashion, it’s more timely than ever to look for ways to change the world with your purchasing power.

Decorating your home with high-quality fair-trade art pieces is the most environmentally friendly and ethical way to beautify your living spaces. Shopping fair-trade stores is the easiest way to find ethically made home decor. Fair-trade products like unique wall art, funky photo frames, and hand-painted candles can elevate your home decor while giving it some global flair.

But first, why is fair-trade important?

Fair-trade means a producer in a developing country is paid a fair, livable wage by a buyer in a more developed country. It’s a business arrangement focused on building lasting partnerships that is beneficial to both parties. The term can be applied to produce, clothing, art, and is the easiest way for you to discern if a product has been ethically produced. There’s no question as to why fair-trade is so popular. You shouldn’t be surprised to find your local coffee shop offers a cup of fair-trade coffee or that your favorite boutique carries jewelry carefully crafted by a women’s art collective. There are many reasons to forgo buying decor from large retailers like Ikea and Target, but the following are the top five reasons why you should buy fair-trade home decor:

1. Buying fair-trade art is ethical

It’s no secret most of what we buy in the United States is made overseas. You want to believe your Ikea purchases are meticulously constructed in Sweden, but the company’s manufacturing is outsourced to factories located in places like China, Vietnam, and Myanmar. In Myanmar, the average daily wage for a manufacturing job is K4800 ($3.30), which is far less than the daily cost of living there. To put it into perspective: a 1.5 L bottle of water costs $0.57 in Myanmar, and the average cost of monthly utilities is $27. These workers can’t earn a liveable wage on such low salaries. Factory workers in Myanmar are just one example amongst many international workers who do not receive fair pay for their hard work.

Free-trade prioritizes people over profits. Businesses that import fair-trade goods are less focused on profits and more focused on building lasting partnerships. Fair–trade organizations encourage workers to form unions and build collectives, so they have greater bargaining power to set their prices.

Fair-trade can uplift entire communities. When workers receive a liveable wage, they are empowered to make large-scale changes in their respective communities. An artist who sells her work can afford to send her child to school. An art collective can pool its money to build a new water pipeline, so children don’t have to walk miles to collect clean water. Actions like these can improve lives within the community for generations.

2. There’s a human story behind every piece of art

When you buy fair-trade art, you discover a face behind every piece. An artist collaborative like The Home to Go, let you “meet” the artist behind each piece by providing information about the artist and their community. Sometimes the art pieces are produced by a single artist, and sometimes it’s made by a collective. Either way, getting to know a little bit about the artist whose art you have hanging on your wall may lead to an entirely new appreciation for it.

It’s more than just buying home decor: you’re discovering new artists and cultures from around the world. Fair-trade is building a global community by connecting parts of the world that may never have a chance to connect otherwise.

3. Your money goes directly to the artist

Unfortunately, it’s common for artists in developing countries to be taken advantage of by middlemen who offer them an unfair percentage of the profits. The fair-trade movement directly connects small producers with small businesses that rely on each other. Buying fair-trade art cuts out the middleman, so most of your money goes straight to the artist.

4. Fair-trade art is environmentally friendly

We’re all guilty of purchasing mass-produced home decor items from time to time, but it’s important to consider the impact manufacturing has on the environment. A staggering 10 million tons of toxic chemicals are released into the air, water, and land by industrial factories worldwide every year. Even if factory workers are paid a decent wage, the environmental cost of mass-producing items is too high.

Large manufacturing companies have little incentive to source their materials sustainably, which leads them to use materials that cannot be replenished. For a product to be labeled as fair-trade, it must be made out of sustainably sourced materials. Rather than using up precious finite resources, global artisans make art out of unexpected, everyday materials. A group of artists in Haiti make painted metal wall art pieces out of steel drums once used to transport oil. A collective in India crafts one-of-a-kind handbags out of up-cycled materials like jeans and fire hose. All around the globe, you can find examples of artisans using their creativity and ingenuity to make sustainable art.

5. You’ll own one-of-a-kind pieces

If you’re continually prowling for unique home decor pieces, fair-trade art will fulfill your interior design desires. Global artisans offer art pieces inspired by their respective cultures–you’ll have a tough time finding similar articles at your local Target. Not only this, but fair-trade art pieces are hand-crafted with care–meaning higher quality products that will last a long time. Each piece has slight variations so that yours will be the only one in the world exactly like it.

Fair-trade wall art pieces are an easy and beautiful way to elevate a blank wall in your home.

Next time you’re shopping for home decor, try to remember: by buying fair-trade, you’re doing your part in making the world a little bit better, one art piece at a time.