FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 6, 2006

BUYER BE FAIR explores promise of product certification

Special is latest documentary from Seattle independent producers John de Graaf and Hana Jindrova

BUYER BE FAIR: The Promise of Product Certification
One hour
Thursday, March 30, at 9:00 p.m.
Sunday, April 2, at 1:00 p.m.; Monday, April 3, at 1:00 a.m. (r)

PUBLICITY CONTACT

Pat Mallinson
KCTS/Seattle Public Television
206.443.6798
pmallinson@kcts.org

SEATTLE - World trade is bringing all of us closer together. Never have so many products from so many places competed for our attention. But half of the world's people remain desperately poor. Their misery-and our appetite for resources-threaten land, air, forests, water, even life itself. But what if our purchases could actually improve things?

The one-hour documentary BUYER BE FAIR: The Promise of Product Certification takes viewers to Mexico, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Sweden, the United States and Canada to explore how 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 certified wood products. Produced by the Seattle-based team of John de Graaf and Hana Jindrova (Silent Killer: The Unfinished Campaign Against Hunger) and narrated by NPR's Scott Simon, BUYER BE FAIR has its world broadcast premiere Thursday, March 30, at 9:00 p.m. on KCTS Television.

BUYER BE FAIR begins in the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico, a land where a bustling capital city, stunning seascapes and dense forests exist side-by-side with poverty. There, once-flourishing coffee plantations lie abandoned, driven out of business by a flood of cheap beans from other countries that have caused coffee prices for all growers to plummet. But most coffee farmers are small growers; at the mercy of low prices and middlemen who take most of the profits, many are giving up coffee farming for other employment or cutting down forests to grow subsistence crops or raise cattle. "If things continue as they are," says Mexican ecologist Beatriz Avalos, "then what we will see happening is the total destruction of all of these forests, with irreversible damages to biodiversity, to the soil . to the aquifers . The immediate consequences of that may be very radical in terms of social and political instability."

BUYER BE FAIR finds a different story, however, in the Oaxacan communities of Xanica and Los Naranjos. There, the lives of small coffee growers are improving, thanks to "La Trinidad," a cooperative that, like many similar cooperatives around the world, sells much of its coffee for "fair trade" prices that are higher than those offered on the world market. Matt Warning, who teaches economics at the University of Puget Sound, has been studying the changes that fair trade has brought about in the formerly impoverished Xanica and describes them as "remarkable." Because the coffee is shade-grown, wildlife habitat also benefits.

BUYER BE FAIR examines the roots of the fair trade movement as it travels to the Netherlands for a look at how sales of fair trade coffee first got their start two decades ago, and to Garstang, England, which calls itself "the world's first fair trade town." Bruce Crowther, who started Garstang's fair trade movement in the 1990s, says, "I really do believe now that it is possible that one day, we will have . fair trade towns and cities throughout the world."

In the United States, interest in fair trade is growing. BUYER BE FAIR introduces successful U.S. businesses that offer fair trade products, such as Seattle's Caffe Ladro coffeehouse, whose owner, Jack Kelly, started buying fair trade beans when he learned thousands of small coffee producers were going broke; and Colorado-based Wild Oats Markets, whose CEO, Perry Odak, believes that "companies should not be making profits on the backs of small farmers."

Fair trade has become a big issue on college campuses. BUYER BE FAIR visits the University of Puget Sound, where students petitioned their food service to switch to fair trade coffee and where many of Matt Warning's students have become fair trade activists. Some also are campaigning for independent certification of the logging practices of timber companies such as Weyerhaeuser.

Turning its attention to wood-like coffee, one of the world's top-selling trade goods-BUYER BE FAIR introduces viewers to the Forest Stewardship Council, an international organization that seeks to improve timber management by certifying forests that are sustainably managed. In the United States, the Collins Companies were the first to have their forests certified by the FSC. The documentary visits Collins' California forest lands, where trees range from zero to around 350 years in age and there are old-growth trees on almost every acre. Since 1941, Collins has removed two billion board feet of timber from its California land-yet, because of the harvesting methods that are practiced, the forest still contains as much wood as it ever did.

FSC-certified wood can now be found in some of America's largest commercial outlets, such as Home Depot-although many U.S. consumers still don't know what "certified" means. In the Netherlands, however, nearly half of all consumers are familiar with FSC labeling, thanks in part to a series of public service announcements broadcast on Dutch TV and radio. "People don't realize what the damage is when they buy non-FSC tropical hardwood," says PSA co-producer Julia Samuel, who witnessed the damage, which she describes as "heartbreaking," while filming a documentary in Africa: "At this moment we are here, a football field of rainforest disappeared. I talked to the people of the forest. They were so desperate, they didn't have anything to eat anymore; they had no idea how to continue their lives."

While Europe has taken the lead in FSC forest certification, Canada soon may be catching up. Recently, several forest lands in Canada's interior were FSC-certified. BUYER BE FAIR visits British Columbia's Clayoquot Sound-once the site of an old-growth logging operation that led to massive protests in the early 1990s and now a biosphere reserve where a business led by Native people does limited, FSC-certified cutting.

BUYER BE FAIR reveals that despite some obstacles, such as the costs associated with certification, the FSC continues to grow and is opening offices in Africa and Asia. Says Eric Palola of the National Wildlife Federation, "I'm very excited about FSC, because I think it's going to really be the salvation of our forests, quite frankly."

Will consumers vote with their wallets for certified products? The results of a recent USA Today poll indicate they will; 9 out of 10 participants said they'd pay more for fair trade and sustainable goods. "We're all sort of a family coming together in a global movement that can create this paradigm shift to a better world," says Randy Hayes of the Rainforest Action Network. "That's the responsibility on our shoulders. And we need everybody to join that movement."

The BUYER BE FAIR Web site, at www.buyerbefair.org, will provide further information about the film and the issues.

Credits: BUYER BE FAIR: The Promise of Product Certification is produced by John de Graaf and Hana Jindrova in association with Fox-Wilmar Productions and the American University Center for Environmental Filmmaking. Producer/writer: John de Graaf. Producer/researcher: Hana Jindrova. Director of photography: David Fox. Editors: Diana Wilmar and David Fox. Executive producer: Christopher Palmer. Made possible by funding from The Ford Foundation.

ABOUT THE PRODUCERS

John de Graaf has produced documentaries for public television for 29 years, 24 of them as an independent producer at KCTS. More than 15 of his programs-including Running Out of Time, Affluenza and Escape from Affluenza-have aired nationally in prime time on PBS. His documentary Silent Killer: The Unfinished Campaign Against Hunger, co-produced with Hana Jindrova, premiered on public television stations nationwide in September 2005.

De Graaf is the recipient of more than a hundred regional, national and international awards for filmmaking and of the Founders of a New Northwest Award for his work in environmental media. In January 2006, he was honored with a new award created in his name by the Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival, the largest film festival of its kind on the West Coast.

De Graaf is the co-author of Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2001) and editor of Take Back Your Time (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2003). He is a member of the steering committee of the Simplicity Forum, a national think tank for the voluntary simplicity movement, and is the national coordinator of "Take Back Your Time Day" (timeday.org).

Hana Jindrova is a documentary television producer and a scientist. She holds an M.S. and a Ph.D. in physiology and cell biology. She has worked with John de Graaf since December 2000, serving as content editor and science consultant on his documentaries, Hot Potatoes, Beyond Organic and On Nature's Terms, and as co-producer of Silent Killer: The Unfinished Campaign Against Hunger.

Jindrova is originally from the Czech Republic. Her ultimate goal is to popularize science and critical thinking to the widest audience through public television and other media.