Say ‘pants…to poverty’

• May. 11 by Rachel Trinder (0)

British based ‘Pants To Poverty’ is the underwear company with a difference and a plan to help make poverty a thing of the past one pair of knickers at a time.

Since the company started almost five years ago, as part of the ‘Make Poverty History’ campaign they have helped to support close to 5,000 cotton farmers, mainly in India, with the sale of their fairtrade pants across the globe.

Although they only support cotton farmers and workers in India they hope to support people from Africa, Asia and the Americas the more pants they sell and the bigger their support base from people that buy them becomes.

Their pants can be brought in over 25 cities across 19 countries around the world, with the Birmingham Fairtrade Group being the stockists for us Brummies.

‘Pants To Poverty’ aren’t the only ethical believers in their pant manufacturing process, the factory that makes them, ‘Pratibha Syntex’, are also ethically minded.

‘Pants To Poverty’s’ main claim isn’t just that their pants are made and sold on a fairtrade and ethical basis, but that they help the environment in the process.

According to their website their pants are made in an environmentally friendly way because:

‘All dyes used are special low impact dyes and, in our pants, they are completely Azo free with no discharges into the environment’.

It also states that the factory that makes the pants is energy efficient because any:

‘Energy used is all natural gas but thanks to efficiencies they have reduced consumption by 30% and continue to plant over 200,000 trees to offset their impact’.

The ‘Pants To Poverty’ company is only very small and consists of only four full time employees.

According to Ben who runs the company:

‘We started off with us cobbling together £3000 and then pre-selling enough stock to pay for the order.

Within 6 months, we then sold 11000 pairs to fund all our Make Poverty History campaigning work and put some cash down for the next order.

We’ve had some support from Unltd to the tune of £20k but the rest has been from me giving up my life and a phenomenal amount of probono’.

Because ‘Pants To Poverty’ is such a small company they rely on the help of others greatly to ensure they can continue.

Some of the ways they rely on getting the word out about their pants is via campaigning, volunteers and fundraisers.

If you want to support the ‘Pants To Poverty’ cause and get yourself some fairtrade pants you can buy them from their official website or from their Birmingham stockist.

If you’re interested in other companies that sell fairtrade underwear check out ‘Life’s Not Fair…But My Knickers Are!’

For where to find the Birmingham Fairtrade Group, see the map below.

View Birmingham Fairtrade Group in a larger map