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Fat Crush: Equal Exchange on Ethical Sourcing and Herbal Wellness
We fangirl HARD on mission driven businesses.
We have a crush on Equal Exchange the way we did on boy bands back in the day. With shrill screams, pounding hearts and sweaty palms, we celebrated each member of New Kids on the Block, N’Sync and Boyz II Men for their various qualities: hair, voice, style, dreamy stare from the poster taped on wall that seemed to look straight into our heart.
The power of these individual ‘throbs, when brought together, was faint worthy ecstasy.
Lisa Landry and Kevin Hollender are two wonderful humans who make up a part of an incredible, worker owned and operated business. Equal Exchange started in 1986, and has led the way in building long-term trade partnerships that are economically just and environmentally sound, fostering mutually beneficial relationships between farmers and consumers and to demonstrate, through their success, the contribution of worker co-operatives and Fair Trade to a more equitable, democratic and sustainable world.
EE is OG mission driven. Because they’ve cultivated relationships with farmer collectives for the last 30 years, their standards go far above the fair trade certifications that now exist.
We have partnered with Lisa and Kevin and Equal Exchange in sourcing the cocoa we use is our Lavender and Cocoa Dry Shampoo.
Not only is our Dry Shampoo non toxic, but the cocoa is sourced from farmer owned CONACADO and FUNDOPO co-ops in the Dominican Republic.
We continue to crush on Lisa, Kevin and EE as models for how human centric businesses can be powerful forces for good in the world.
Learn more about their mission and business model here.
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