December, 2006
We
were recently the guest
Sports Blogger at the
Grist blog, aka the
Gristmill, hosted by Sarah Kraybill Burkhalter. Grist is the best source for poignent (and often hilarious) news and commentary on the environment, from a neighboring Seattle-based crew.
0 Comments Published by Scott James December 25th, 2006 in General, Our environmental impact, Sports balls: Fair Trade, What others are saying about us.
Don’t
you love it when people smarter than yourself say
exactly what you are thinking? Especially when they do it in just a handful of sentences.
“I got a soccer ball in the mail today. I don’t know from soccer, but as far as I can tell, it’s just like any other soccer ball.
Except it’s not.
It’s not… because it’s from Fair Trade Sports. They only use adult labor (which shouldn’t even be necessary to say) and they donate after-tax profits to kids’ charities.
Does it change the way you play soccer? Probably more than you know. Does it change the way the balls get sold? Of course.
A commodity is only a commodity if you treat it as one.”
4 Comments Published by Scott James December 20th, 2006 in How you can help, Sports balls: Fair Trade, What others are saying about us.
Should
you find yourself already on Amazon.com
doing some online shopping, now you can now throw your favorite Fair
Trade Sports soccer ball into that magical shopping cart as
well.Same great price. Same great service. Now with the convenience of 1 Click ordering. Add us to your Amazon Wish List today and be sure to check out the Amazon Reviews on our fairly traded sports balls!
0 Comments Published by Scott James December 9th, 2006 in Apparel: sweatshop-free, General, Sports balls: Fair Trade, What others are saying about us.
Another
international gift fair featuring Fair Trade items was a great success this past weekend. The
event - organized by Casey Romanick
and Jason Simmons from the South
Jersey Fair Trade Alliance - was a community-wide event to
educate area residents about Fair Trade and alternative gift giving. They made a great splash in the New Jersey news, including TV coverage from NBC Atlantic City on fairly traded gifts. Well done, team!
Do you have a Fair Trade Gift Fair happening near you? Contact us to bring our Fair Trade sports balls to your venue.
0 Comments Published by Scott James December 6th, 2006 in General, How you can help, Sports balls: Fair Trade, What others are saying about us.
Here’s
a quick primer on sports balls, the materials of which they are made,
and their environmental impact.
I’d suggest grabbing a hot cup of your favorite Fair Trade tea and then continuing to read below…
Sports balls consist of three main components:
- The outer shell (synthetic leather ~30%)
- The inner air bladder (rubber ~70%)
- The dyes (<1%)
The vast majority of outer shells are “synthetic leather” - also noted as “PU” (petroleum) or polyester.
- Bad news: this portion of the ball is a losing battle; no one makes any true leather sports balls anymore (for which we could pursue a “cruelty-free” certification process, work to minimize the environmental impact related to animals, child labor in tanning, chrome use in tanning, etc).
- Good news: this only accounts for 30% of the overall component weight for a typical sports ball.
- True leather balls are made, but if uncoated they are unsuitable due to water retention. For instance, for soccer the ruling body (FIFA) requires ~ 420g weight and a wet leather ball is easily double that. If the leather is coated, you are back to dealing with a synthetic product. There are one or two projects in Africa where they do make sense, because the leather is better able to deal with rough terrain and thorns, as does not have to face much rain.
About 300g out of the typical 420g full size soccer ball is rubber. And that’s a good thing when considering the environmental impact! Rubber is used both for the bladder (cheaper balls use artificial rubber: butyl) and for laminating the polyester plys onto the outer shell. We use butyl only for the little nozzle portion of the bladder - where you insert the inflation needle.
Our international group is pursuing Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification, which is required for source (plantation - manufacturer - trader) for the rubber portion of the sports balls. If successful, we will have FSC-certified balls by early next year. The rubber comes from trees, grown in plantations, and is processed into three distinct products:
- crepe (sneakers),
- RSS (tires and basketballs),
- high ammonia (anything dipped, including bladders for sports balls)
We are pursuing a chain of custody for this rubber. The problem is finding a source for high ammonia, which is not easy. Our partner in the UK, Dr. Martin Kunz (one of the originators of the Fair Trade movement back in the 80s), has been trying for two years now to find this source.
Of course, we not only source the rubber as FSC, but also as Fair Trade (in Sri Lanka and India the rubber sources involved are on the FLO tea register, since they are into both products).
After we solve the FSC rubber project, we’ll move on to work on other related environmental impact issues with sports ball creation.
1 Comment Published by Scott James December 4th, 2006 in Our environmental impact, Sports balls: Fair Trade.
