A body care brand that cares about fairness across the supply chain? Meet Fair Care.

Fair Squared is a German-based body care company that has developed more than 500 products since its inception in 2012—and under their newly crafted Fair Care brand, they’re now available in the US! Read on to learn the ins and outs of Fair Care’s deep commitment to vegan cosmetics, ethically minded consumers and fair trading terms.

Please introduce yourself – what is your role with Fair Care?

My name is Oliver Gothe, and I am proud to have been working with Fairtrade International since 2010 through my job in product development at Fair Squared. I specialize in developing products from fairly traded raw materials that bring real added value for ethically minded consumers. The great thing about my job is that I regularly get to visit our Fairtrade producers in many beautiful countries and maintain friendships with lots of great people there.

I really enjoyed developing the new Fair Care cosmetics line.

Tell me about your company. What’s your mission?

Fair Squared is a relatively small company based in Cologne, Germany. All of our products are Fairtrade certified, and we currently sell hygiene products (condoms, lubricants, menstrual products) and cosmetics under the Fair Squared / Fair Care brand. We also sell garden and household products (under the brand Fair Zone), flip-flops (under the brand Waves).

Fair trading conditions, environmental responsibility and a strict no to both child labor and animal testing are core to our mission– fairness for us is something which should be connected to all areas. Other important aspects of Fair Squared? We are a multicultural team strongly committed to making the world a better place.

What is the story behind Fair Care’s product line?

Before we can talk about Fair Care, we need to talk about Fair Squared.  Many years ago, student groups in the UK market asked us whether we could produce lip balms from Fairtrade raw materials. We did! These can now be found all over Europe. But we didn’t want to stop at lip balms, so since 2012 we have developed over 500 different cosmetics and hygiene products for European consumers under the Fair Squared brand.  And we didn’t want to stop with Europe! So we’ve begun the Fair Care cosmetics line to access the US market. We will initially offer our products exclusively via Amazon. Fun fact: all products in our Fair Care line have packaging made from recycled plastic (rPET), which is very light and consumes little CO2 during transport.

What makes Fair Care unique?

We procure Fairtrade raw materials (like olive oil, almond oil, lime extract, coconut oil and apricot kern oil) from all over the world and process them into cosmetics in Germany. Also, the formulas for our cosmetics are made from 100% natural ingredients, and we do not use any animal ingredients. We are one of the first cosmetics producers to be certified by the Vegan Society in England (and have been since 2015).

What excites you about Fairtrade? Why did you choose to certify your product Fairtrade?

Through my regular visits to our Fairtrade partners, I can see what Fairtrade Premiums can achieve. Fairtrade is the only sensible way for my company and me to work with producers who are disadvantaged by global trade. If we don’t pay fair prices for crops, people will eventually stop producing for us. If farmers can’t provide their children with an education or health care, large sections of the population will start to move and try to come to our countries.

Fairtrade is the smarter and more sustainable economic model. And it’s fun because it brings clear benefits for producers, importers and customers.  We are convinced that Fairtrade should be a matter of course and should apply to all product groups.

What’s something about one of the Fairtrade commodities that Fair Care works with that surprises you?

Did you know that we had to change our Fairtrade producer for coconut oil some time ago? In Thailand, coconuts sometimes hang so high in the palm trees that the farmers there use monkeys to harvest them. As the monkeys there do not voluntarily pick the coconuts for the farmers, we now have a new partner in Sri Lanka. The palm trees there are not quite as tall, and the harvest takes place without the help of monkeys. We like to use coconut oil as a base oil in some of our products.