Fairtrade Fortnight

I buy fairtrade – and I’m proud of it! I’ve even got a couple of clerical shirts made with 100% fairtrade cotton…

This year’s fairtrade fortnight theme is ‘Show Off Your Labels’ and it celebrates the amazing growth in the range of fairly traded items available after more than twenty years of campaigning. Back then you had to find a specialist retailer, such as Traidcraft, but now you can walk into most supermarkets and find a range of items that carry the fairtrade logo.

If you saw the BBC series called ‘Blood, Sweat and T-shirts’ you will know some of the terrible stories that lie behind so many of the products in our shopping trolleys. Chocolate that isn’t fairly traded may well be made with ingredients that include exploitation and violence. Most cocoa beans come from West Africa where tens thousands of children are traffiked and trapped into forced labour.

Not only is the fairtrade label a sign that its producers have received a fair price for their labour, it also ensures that children in these developing countries are educated rather than exploited. You can now buy some of your favourite bars, like Dairy Milk and Kit-Kat, with the fairtrade label on them. This is real progress, but all of the other bars manufactured by companies like Nestlé, Mars and Cadburys are yet to be traffik free.

We’re a registered fairtrade church which means that all of the tea and coffee we serve after our services carry the label. It also means that we regularly take part in campaigns to try and change this world for the better, including one (click here to visit 'Stop The Traffik') in which we sent postcards to one of these chocolate companies asking them to consider extending their faritrade provision.

Alternatively during this fairtrade fortnight, why not see what the ethical options are as you do your weekly shop? There are other labels, like ‘Rainforest Alliance’, which also indicate a supply chain that is kinder to people and to the planet. Often the prices are very similar to the unethical choices – and even if you do have to pay a few pennies more, isn’t having a clear conscience worth it?