I went to see the lovely people at Pants to Poverty yesterday to talk through some film ideas. This organisation is really worth checking out if you haven't already. Born out of the Make Poverty History campaign, the idea of making, wearing and selling 'good pants' as a way of raising awareness about social and environmental issues has grown into an exciting and sustainable social enterprise.
Now selling three collections of underwear a year across 16 countries, Pants source the cotton in their pants from Zameen Organic, the world's finest farmer-owned marketing company for Fairtrade and Organic cotton. Based in Hyderabad in India, Zameen Organic is co-owned by the tribal cotton farmers in the Vidarbha region, where on average 26 farmers commit suicide every day due to unfair trade. Since Zameen has started its work, there have been no suicides amongst their 5,000 members and farmers earn approximately one third more than farmers of conventional cotton.
Pants use their influence, their products and their fans to campaign against 'bad pants'. The production of 'bad pants' embody all sorts of evils such as the pesticides used in cotton production which poison whole communities and the child labour used in garment factories. So Pants to Poverty hold pant-wearing protests, bad pants amnesties and lobby multinationals producing pesticides to effect change. Not only that, and this is the really clever bit, they demonstrate that the solution already exists - it is possible to produce cheap, organic, Fairtrade cotton, because they're doing it.
I love the fact that social enterprises like these ones are reinventing the way we do business, and having a lot of fun along the way. So now there's no excuse for wearing bad pants.
Naomi Delap, Managing Director, Inside Job Productions
To find out more (and buy pants) visit http://www.pantstopoverty.com/
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