For the first time, McGill University’s downtown and Macdonald campuses have earned a joint Silver Fair Trade Campus designation, a milestone in the University’s sustainability efforts.
The honour, awarded in January 2026 by Fairtrade Canada, brings both campuses under a single Silver designation after years of being rated separately. The downtown campus first received Fair Trade status in 2013 and achieved Silver status in April 2024. Macdonald Campus was designated in 2019, but its status expired in July 2023 and was not renewed at the time.
This year, the two campuses combined their applications.
“Bringing everything together made the process more centralized and seamless,” said Göktuğ Bender, who leads McGill’s Fair Trade steering committee and serves as sustainability co-ordinator with Student Housing and Hospitality Services (SHHS). “We collect purchasing data, work with vendors and submit one application. It ensures consistency across both campuses and strengthens our overall commitment.”
Meeting the Silver standard
Fair Trade is an arrangement designed to help producers in growing countries achieve sustainable and equitable trade relationships. Certification in Canada is monitored by Fairtrade Canada, a national non-profit that assesses and improves the use of fair trade goods in businesses and institutions.
The model guarantees minimum prices, decent working conditions, no child labour and environmentally sound practices. It also includes a premium paid directly to producer communities to invest in local development.
At McGill, achieving Silver status required meeting rigorous criteria in product availability, policy integration and education.
“All of our coffee and tea at applicable locations are Fairtrade certified,” Bender said. “We offer fair trade bananas, sugar and shredded coconut in our dining halls and retail locations, as well as certified chocolate and snack options.”
Fair trade commitments are now embedded in food service agreements and procurement guidelines, he added, ensuring the standards are maintained.
Beyond products, the University marks Fairtrade Month each October with events, tabling and awareness campaigns.
“Students recognize the signage in dining halls and understand what it means to be a Silver-status campus,” he said. “That increased awareness is a major achievement.”
Student leadership at the forefront
Bender emphasized that student involvement was critical, particularly at Macdonald Campus.
“Student leadership played a very important role in gathering purchasing data and helping move the application forward,” he said. “It was a joint effort with SHHS, but students were instrumental. This designation depends on strong student engagement.”
Elea Demetriou, a second-year student at the faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and VP Equity and Sustainability for the Macdonald Campus Student Society, said the designation reflects values already embedded at Mac.
“We’re deeply connected to food systems,” she said. “Many students have hands-on experience working on the campus farms or come from farming backgrounds. Fair trade isn’t just a label for us. It reflects the ethics and global responsibility we study.”
Demetriou said fair trade is more than a symbolic commitment.
“Many farmers, especially in coffee, tea and cacao production, operate on very thin margins,” she said. “Fair trade helps stabilize agricultural systems that are already under strain. It’s less a designation and more a necessity.”
For Bender, the unified Silver designation signals progress, but not an endpoint.
“As a public institution with a strong sustainability mandate, our procurement decisions should reflect high ethical standards,” he said. “This is about making sure that we use our institutional purchasing power to support farmers and communities around the world – and about empowering students to be stewards of that change.”