So, now that your coffee, chocolate, and bananas are all Fair Trade certified (they are, right?), you’ll be excited to know you can now play socially responsible ball with Fair Trade Sports.  Fair Trade Sports offers a wide variety of athletic equipment, including soccer balls, rugby balls, basketballs, and clothing, (the list goes on) produced in a safe and healthy work environment by adults who receive livable wages.  They even have a frisbee for all of us hippies hanging out on the grass.  While buying local and organic products is important for the health of humans and the environment, if the workers are not treated fairly and adequately compensated, those efforts are in vain.  Just listen to Eric Schlosser’s thoughts on the issue of worker’s rights:

Fall is a perfect time to get outside, make some new friends and kick, throw, or gently toss in the crisp, cool weather, and now you can enjoy the great outdoors with a clear conscience.  And it gets better.  Inspired by Paul Newman’s business philosophy, Scott James, the founder of Fair Trade Sports, donates all profits after taxes to children’s charities worldwide.  At a time when tumbling towers of greed are threatening to crush our financial system, it’s refreshing to know there are companies comitted to economic, environmental and social justice.

takepart by ordering your sporting goods from Fair Trade Sports and find other Fair Trade goods at worldofgood.com.

Mother’s Day is a time to show your mother you love her, so you don’t want to give her a gift that is bad for Mother Earth. Luckily, you don’t have to give your mom a tofu souffle in order to give her a guilt-free gift. Here are the top 10 great Mother’s Day gifts that are good for your mother, good for mother earth, and good for your conscience. But you’ll have to order these gifts soon because they take a few days to arrive. Check back next week for last minute Guilt-Free Mother’s Day Gifts.

1. for Amnesty International with Organic Flowers. You don’t want to give your mom flowers filled with pesticides. So check out Fair Trade and Organic Bouquets. Choose the Amnesty International bouquet, and some of the proceeds will go to Amnesty International ($69.95).

2. for Amnesty International and human rights by buying The Jerusalem Candle of Hope, a rare joint venture product between Israeli and Palestinian women. The beautiful pillar beeswax candle crafted by Israeli women living near Nazareth is made with dried olive leaves and everlasting flowers from the region. The hurricane candle sits on a glass stand on which a small tea light is lit. This replaceable tea light arrives in an embroidered bag sewn by Palestinian women, living in Bethlehem ($36).

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“The Green” on Sundance Channel is the first regularly scheduled television programming dedicated entirely to the environment. Presented by actor and Sundance founder Robert Redford and hosted by Simran Sethi and Majora Carter, “The Green”, now in its 2nd season, provides Prime Time environmental news, tips, ideas and knowledge every Tuesday evening at 9PM Eastern. Slated for this season are 13 new episodes of the award winning “Big Ideas for a Small Planet”, environmentally conscious documentaries, and the new episodes of the series “Eco-Biz” and “Ecoists”.

This week on “Big Ideas for a Small Planet” the subject is Food, as the series explores how businesses and individuals are trying to nourish us in an environmentally friendly way. Next up on “Eco-Documentaries”, the episode “All in this Tea” is an adventure into the remote world of Chinese fair trade tea production. Then “The Sierra Club Chronicles: Episode 5 - Breathless in LA” delves into the unhealthy air that plagues Los Angeles.

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Today is Starbucks Free Coffee Day! We all love free stuff but instead of getting your cup of joe on the house today, you can also choose to go to Starbucks and order a cup of their Fair Trade certified coffee.

In 2000, Starbucks started a campaign promising that they will brew a pot of fair trade coffee for anyone who asks for it. Learn more about the Starbucks fair trade campaign here and here.

Visit Transfair USA to learn more and

Also, watch the amazing documentary Black Gold which explores the world of coffee and trade.

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Say Happy Easter by being  a good egg and giving good gifts. Even if you’re shopping last minute, it’s easy to find good gifts right away at stores open on Easter. Instead of buying chocolate made by child labor, choose from these chocolate brands that are fair trade and organic and are available in grocery stores, supermarkets and drug stores.

1. You can find Dagoba Organic Chocolate in Whole foods. Founder Frederick Schilling, explains “If true chocolate is to be kept in existence, we must encourage sustainable production of fine flavor cacao, through partnerships where farmers earn enough to do this.”

2. Luckily, you don’t have to go to Ithaca to find Art Bars (Ithaca Fine Chocolates’). They’re available at several stores throughout the country. Just click the Art Bars Near You link to see where you can buy these fair trade certified chocolates.

3. Newman’s Own Organics chocolate bars are made on child labor-free Latin American farms where nobody “owns” anybody. But if you want to buy, give or own any Newman’s Own chocolate, choose among these stores, including Whole Foods and Henry’s/Wild Oats. Eat like stars (Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward)!

4. Green and Black’s chocolates are green-friendly and slavery-free and available at Whole Foods, Henry’s/Wild Oats.

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eBay and World of Good Inc. have teamed up to help to change the world for the better through people-positive and environment-positive commerce strategies. As people have become increasingly more aware of how their shopping choices impact the planet, there has been a growing demand for transparency in how and where their products are made.

World of Good’s aim is to provide for the eBay community the resources they need to make socially conscious shopping choices that help to alleviate poverty and protect the environment by working with wholesalers and retailers who are working toward the same aims. The site supplies tools to help ensure that producers and buyers have access to information on how to support fair trade wages and improve the economic conditions of artisans and their families, many of whom are living off less that four dollars per day.

For more on World of Good’s social commerce community, and to learn about how to empower producers and shop responsibly, visit their website at www.worldofgood.com. You can also and learn about sweat-free shopping at GlobalExchange.org.

Roses in honor of Rosa Parks make a great gift because it allows you to give someone something beautiful, support a beautiful cause, and honor the legacy of a beautiful woman. Organic Style, an eco-friendly, socially responsible, Fair Trade on-line boutique, is selling the Freedom: Rosa Parks Rose bouquet, and donating a portion of its proceeds to the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development, which Rosa co-founded. The Institute’s youth leadership “Pathways to Freedom” program teaches students the stories and values of the civil rights movement, and encourages them to engage in social justice and, in turn, encourage social justice in their own communities, as they do in the video above made entirely by students in the Pathways Program.

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If you love someone, you probably don’t want to give them a gift made under hateful conditions. Sadly, most common valentines day gifts– flowers, chocolate, and jewelry– are likely to involve child labor, child slavery, violence, human rights abuses and environmental degradation. But don’t worry. You don’t have to swear off of gift-giving. Nor do you have to give your valentine a handmade dream catcher, a hemp hacky sack or a recycled nalgene to say I love you guilt-free. Instead, say I love you– and children, and the earth, and workers– by buying fair trade chocolates, flowers, and jewelry. Buy something your valentine can really love you for. And come back next week for my valentine gifts with heart top 10 list.

1. If your valentine is sweet, buy them fair trade chocolates from Global Exchange.
2. If your valentine is full of life and color, buy them pesticide-free flowers or roses from Organic Styles
3. If your valentine has a heart of gold, buy recycled gold jewelry from Green Carat
4. If your valentine is expecting something more than just a valentine, buy them a conflict-free diamonds from Brilliant Earth
5. Now give yourself, and the world a gift and check out Oxfam’s Make Trade Fair Campaign, to see why Coldplay’s Chris Martin is a supporter and made them the music video above. And see how you can by joining Chris Martin and other activists in calling on world leaders to make trade fair!

A European-based company is creating versions of your favorite classic board games, like Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit, but with one delectable twist - they’re made out of chocolate! Sadly, they don’t have a distributor in the US, but I did happen across another website that sells chocolate Scrabble letters. Talk about having trouble getting through a game, but at least you’ll know where all the pieces went!

How could chocolate be any more delicious than it already is? When it’s made under fair trade conditions. by learning more about Global Exchange’s National Valentine’s Day of Action and support fair trade cocoa production in West Africa.

Starbucks is blaming a decrease in US consumer spending for their first ever fall in traffic. Shares also fell as the company has announced that they will open less stores in 2008 and start their first ever televison advertising campaign.It’s interesting that Starbucks is actually starting to falter just as consumer’s are becoming more informed about fair trade coffee and Starbucks lack of it from movie such as the Francis’ brothers Black Gold and from more exposure in the news.One person that will no doubt be happy by this news is Reverend Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping. Not only is Reverend Billy against consumerism but he has a particular distaste for Starbucks. Check out the Reverend himself speaking out against Starbucks history of using non fair trade coffee and union busting when their employees decided to organize. Want more of the Reverend check out the trailer for his new movie What Would Jesus Buy? and what happened when he brought the film to South by Southwest almost a year ago. You can catch the film in New York now and in LA starting November 21st.