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How did a furniture manufacturing business headquartered in Portland connect with an olive oil producer in the West Bank? Through a shared commitment to Fair Trade — to creating healthy, sustainable employment opportunities in areas of economic hardship.

Canaan Fair Trade gets its olives and other ingredients from Fair Trade cooperatives in the area around Jenin, Palestine. The company contracted with Tropical Salvage, based in Portland, Oregon, to provide custom furnishings for its new state-of-the-art olive oil processing/bottling facility, showroom and offices. The new 32,000 square-foot West Bank building was just completed in late November.

The furniture was built using 100 percent salvaged tropical hardwoods by artisans in Indonesia, where logging (both legal and illegal) threatens some of the world’s few remaining primary tropical forests. Tropical Salvage is one of the very few Fair Trade furniture-makers in the world.