That's the question I'm asking today over on SmartPlanet. Who else feels green and ethical guilt when shopping at supermarkets? And do you know anyone who manages to get all their food without going to a supermarket? Let me know...
That's the question I'm asking today over on SmartPlanet. Who else feels green and ethical guilt when shopping at supermarkets? And do you know anyone who manages to get all their food without going to a supermarket? Let me know...
I've got a piece over on the Guardian today on the top ten ethical chocolates in the UK - i.e. the best-tasting ones with the most scrupulous commitments to Fairtrade, organic standards and the environment. Obviously, any such list is going to be subjective, so let me know what your favourite ethical chocs are in the comments. One chocolatier that narrowly missed out on the list was Chocaid, which donates money to Save the Children. Update: Seventypercent.com has a very interesting response to my article here. If you ever eat chocolate, it's worth reading.
Green Ready Steady Cook - set your eco PVR to record on 4th Jan, as the frantic food show features Penney 'No Waste Like Home' Poyzer (in green pinny) and Tracey 'Downshifting Week' Smith.
People Tree 07 - next year's season from the ethical fashion label is all about 'change today, choose Fairtrade'. Expect a bigger menswear collection (at last!), new undies and a new brand called People Tree for Top Shop - for the first time, it'll be available to buy online at Topshop.com.
Goodsearch - the Yahoo-based, charity-giving search engine is now live. Grab the Firefox plug-in.
Fairtrade and fir-trees - an ultra local event tomorrow, two minutes from my house: St Paul's Church on Herne Hill (London SE24) plays host 1-3pm to Xmas tree sales and a Fairtrade food sale. No word on organic trees, but there's always 07, right?
Two very different 'ethical' drinks for you this week. First, Cocodirect, the new instant Fairtrade hot choc from the excellent CafeDirect. My tasting notes say 'good by water and sachet standards' (I'm a commited milk and cocoa man) and 'not too sweet like Cadburys and Galaxy, but also enough chocolate to prevent it becoming a malty, Horlicksy drink. Dissolved easy enough too.' Unfortunately, you can't buy this quality instant version in shops yet - it's just for caterers. The cocoa version - which you can buy - is here. Second up, Sheppy's medium organic cider, which is gorgeously rich - I'm not going to pretend I can describe it better than that - and also comes with the Soil Association's stamp of approval. You can buy it online.
My plants are dying with the arrival of winter, so I've been checking out independent London florist Imogen Stone today. It'll post these twelve Fairtrade roses for £10 + delivery. They're from Kenya, but the Fairtrade stamp means Imogen's suppliers are commited to 'increase... [the] environmental stability of their activities', so there should be none of the nefarious water-hogging that some Kenyan flower growers have been accused of. You are still, of course, creating 'flower miles' to fly them here, so for full greenie points, try Wiggly Wiggler's seasonal bunches (more details here).
Timely, cosy and fresh on sale in central London this week: fair trade gloves, hats and scarves from People Tree. The new toasty accessories - including the £15 hat on the right - are all made by KTS, a knitting team in Nepal who popped over to Topshop Oxford Street last week to promote their wares and flag up the good working conditions they've got back home. My day mag, New Consumer, was there to interview them, so - advert alert! - look for a feature in mag, out 15th November. You can buy most of the new People Tree/KTS woolens at Topshop on Oxford Street, snag this bonnet from Timberland on Regent Street, and buy them all online at People Tree. Direct links: £15 hat pictured; £14 gloves; £12 beret; £20 scarf.
...But only 17 per cent of workplaces serve Fairtrade coffees, juices and snacks, according to a YouGov poll out this Monday. Commissioned by the Fairtrade Foundation - naturally - the poll also asked British office and factory rats to list the ten things their workplaces could do to be more ethical and green. Fairtrade products came second with 38 per cent of votes, with carbon emission-cutting first at 45 per cent. 32 per cent wished their companies would recycle more and buy more recycled products. The ironic thing is that switching to Fairtrade stuff at work is easy for facility managers because it usually just involves ticking a different box in a catalogue. Still, some are dragging heels, so there's now a new Fairtrade at Work website to help persuade companies that what the Co-Op Bank, BT and KPMG have already done isn't scary. I've forwarded the site on to my employer, Haymarket, and I'm currently waiting to hear back.
Lily Allen may want to kick her, but I thought Geldof Junior came across as a decent enough - self-aware, at the least - lass in her documentary. Anyway. Peaches has just gone up in my estimation again by joining the flood of big names making fair trade (not official Fairtrade) jewellery for Made and selling it at Topshop. As well as this necklace - complete with recycled glass beads, natch - there are chokers and bracelets, all crafted by people in Masai, East Africa. You can grab a slice of the topically trendy trinkets in a fortnight's time (9th Oct) at Topshop Oxford Street and Topshop Manchester (in the lovely, not-quite-fully-gentrified Arndale Centre). 4th Oct edit: removed ref to Masai school project.
I'm an ice cream snob, so I usually look down my nose at Ben & Jerry's. This week, though, I'm looking up and admiring its new vanilla Fairtrade ice cream, the first in the UK. While you get a tub of summer, the Indian vanilla bean farmers in Indian and the sugar cane choppers in Paraguay get a decent better wage. Ben and Jerry's may be owned by Unilever - largely regarded as 'not good' - but it also runs the very worthy Climate Change College and this Lick Global Warming site.The ice cream's on sale now down at various Sainsburys and Co-Ops. [via City Hippy]
Old tidings for seasoned commuters, but hot news for occasional train travellers like me: alongside life-size balloons of Richard Branson and in-seat entertainment, Virgin Trains now sells 100 per cent Fairtrade hot drinks. Apparently the coffees, teas and hot chocs were switched way back in March for Fairtrade Fortnight. The £1.69 hot chocolate still tastes like low-grade watery Cadbury's gloop, but, hey, at least the people who picked the cacao trees got paid a living wage.
Recent Comments