A simple trip to the store to buy her son a T-shirt eighteen months ago changed Bronwyn Darlington's life forever.
"It was one of those moments when a light goes off," she says. "I realised that no one could answer the sorts of questions about the sustainability of the product that I expect from the mining companies I work with."
Unlike the English, Australians have not bought the fair trade concept. Knowledge of the issues is scant.
Comparing retail sales figures is startling. Fair trade in the UK is an extraordinary 100-fold larger than in Australia. According to the Fairtrade Foundation in the UK, estimated retail sales last year were equivalent to A$1.06 billion. By comparison, Neil Bowker, executive officer of the Fair Trade Association of Australia and New Zealand (FTAANZ), says Australian fair trade sales are less than $12 million.
Bronwyn's concerns led her literally up the supply chain where she found people working in "unimaginable sadness" and communities with poisoned water supplies from the pesticide usage on neighbouring cotton farms.
In the mining industry, where Bronwyn works as a sustainability consultant, cleaning up for the sake of the health of local people is a top priority. In the fashion industry it is out of sight and out of mind.
While Bronwyn's corporate background - she is still managing director of a sustainability consultancy working in the mining and construction industries - was important in pushing her to take the leap into fair trade manufacturing, equally critical is her Christian faith.
"Over the years [working in the mining industry] I was often confused about how God could use me. I could never understand why I was standing in a concrete factory talking about sustainability. I realise now that God was putting the pieces of the puzzle together for me…"
Bronwyn's new clothing company Rise Up Productions endeavours to be ethical at every stage of production. She uses Fairtrade fabrics made from pesticide-free organic cotton. Her local manufacturing is certified "No Sweat Shop".
Most importantly Bronwyn is concerned about the legacy in the communities where the products originate: all her profits go to support local development projects run by reputable charities such as TEAR, Compassion, Opportunity International and World Vision.
"It is our holistic approach that has made this endeavour unique," she says.
English fair trade explosion
The Australian Fair Trade peak body argues that the relatively small size of the industry in this country is due to its recent birth here.
"It is definitely still in its infancy," says Neil Bowker from FTAANZ. "Fair trade labelling didn't begin in Australia until 2003. In the UK it has been around since 1994."
Mr Bowker says Fairtrade is growing strongly in Australia with sales growth of 80 per cent last year. The English were early adopters, he says, because they import common fruits, such as bananas, from Africa.
However on closer inspection this argument does not completely hold water. Tradewinds Fairtrade tea was founded in Australia in the late 1970s around the same time as the key British Fairtrade organisations. Furthermore the range of Fairtrade products in the UK is huge: industry leader Traidcraft alone sells 450 products including rice, pasta, cereals, cookies, jams, honey, even wine.
There is no doubt that the fair trade explosion in the UK is partially the result of a close partnership that grew between British churches and the Fairtraders in the 1980s and 1990s.
Traidcraft has now become the UK's leading fairtrade organisation with an annual turnover of £16.5 million ($35 million). Established in 1979 by Christian students at Durham University, it retains a Christian ethos and leadership. Its strong market growth is undoubtedly the result of its church partnerships.
Last year Traidcraft had over 6000 fair traders " the individuals who sell Traidcraft products. Most are committed Christians. Over 90 per cent operate out of local churches.
"Without the churches there wouldn't be a fair trade movement, or not one as large as we see now," says Peter Collins, who heads Traidcraft's church relations.
In Australia, the resolutely secular Oxfam is the biggest player with its own growing Fairtrade retail chain.
So is there a link?
Jeff Atkinson, Oxfam Australia's fairer trade advocate, says its too "simplistic' to blame Oxfam, who will never partner with churches, for the stagnation of Fairtrade in Australia until a few years ago. In fact, he says, there is an argument that it was the churches who failed.
He argues that although churches have been selling Fairtrade since the 1970s, they never looked outwards, selling Fairtrade to the broader community.
"They never really mainstreamed it" The churches just sell to their own [internal] networks," he says.
Former CMS missionary in Nairobi's slums, Dr Max Collison agrees local Christians have dropped the ball. "Cocoa pickers are made in the image of God " and many are Christians," Max says. "What voice will we have to the 600,000 child labourers in the Ivory Coast if we aren't involved in their emancipation?"
Of the Australian list of registered Fairtrade organisations, only 15 are churches. Only two are Sydney Anglican: Leichhardt and Wentworth Falls. Dr Collison's dream is for all churches in the Sydney Diocese to drink only fair trade tea and coffee.
"Sydney Diocese is really respected worldwide," he says. "It would make a huge impact if it went Fairtrade."
St Paul's, Castle Hill member Frank Van Rees says Max was the "catalyst" for his home church's development of its own fair trade coffee: Malacci. Mr Van Rees approached a local supplier who agreed to make up a special St Paul's blend.
St Paul's buys the coffee wholesale and sells it at normal price, giving the profits to Beacon of Hope, an African ministry to HIV/AIDS-affected women. Malacci is used at a weekly café after church, and packets are sold within the parish. However Max says the response to fair trade in the diocese has been lukewarm.
Bronwyn Darlington says she has been "surprised by the amount of people who just don't care". Asked if such apathy was better or worse within the Christian community, she said it was "hard to tell".
Missionary movement
There is evidence that a church-based fair trade movement is germinating in Sydney, thanks to two other former CMS missionaries, Grant and Mignonne Murray, who operate the Fairtrade online store Tribes and Nations.
Grant believes the UK church has taken the rebuke of Isaiah 59 seriously in a way the Australian church has not. He suspects that this is because of their historic link to British colonisation.
"The average Aussie is close to completely ignorant on Africa. Maybe the fact we were once a colony makes us more inclined to see ourselves as victims."
Grant believes local sentiment towards East Timor "as a little brother" getting ripped off at our own back door" is challenging this self-perception.
Grant's passion for this issue was the spark that ignited All Souls, Leichhardt to become one of the most committed fair trade parishes in the diocese.
Hester MacMillan who coordinates their weekly Fairtrade Fair says she now sees "the injustices in the world that many of us unwittingly support on a daily basis".
"That is confronting and has made me think more about the nature of sin as well as how important it is to take steps to actually "live out' Christian love."
Is the price too high?
Although Bronwyn currently attends Hillsong Waterloo, she is very much a child of the Diocese of Sydney. Her father was the long-time Anglican minister at Campbelltown who founded Broughton Anglican College. After her father died, her mother Diana went as a CMS missionary to Dodoma in Tanzania. The family are still strong supporters of CMS.
Bronwyn says she has received more encouragement from corporate executives at companies like BHP Billiton and David Jones compared to inside the church. David Jones is very keen to take her line of fair trade kids' pyjamas, while BHP Billiton are including her products in their promotional catalogue.
Bronwyn says she understands that it is difficult for ordinary Christians, struggling to make ends meet to buy fair trade when these products, by their nature, have to be priced at the premium end of the market.
"The Christian community is struggling to pay for what their conscience demands" People tell me, "I'd love to buy from you but I can't afford the money'. The problem is that we can do nothing to benefit the poor farmer with good intentions alone."
One option, says Bronwyn, is to take action, encouraging mainstream retailers to stock Fairtrade so volumes increase. This should lead to a fall in prices.
Yet, in the end the answer is spiritual, admits Bronwyn: "Christians need to be challenging consumerism " do we really need five shirts at $50 each? Buy a few T-shirts made from Fairtrade cotton instead."
All Souls' rector Tim Foster says the weekly Leichhardt Fair Trade Fair "has had a more dramatic impact than I would have anticipated" on his congregation.
"It has forced people to really think about how their buying choices are actually spiritual decisions. It has led to very generous and active projects that serve the poor."
Grant Murray from Tribes and Nations finds it hard to believe people can't at least afford fair trade tea or coffee.
"We baulk at spending $1 or $2 more on packaged Fairtrade coffee but then spend twice that on our next take away coffee," he says. "The key thing to think on is what is important. Do we really think children should not go to school or get adequate medical help?"
