Fairtrade Fortnight

Fairtrade Fortnight starts on 25th Feb and lasts until the 9th March this year. One company, Cafédirect, is launching a new rich full-bodied coffee from the very best Costa Rican coffee beans, called Special Selection Costa Rica - a premium, 100% Fairtrade, instant coffee.

I’m, not a coffee drinker, but chances are a lot of you are. Apparently Special Selection is a new seasonal line in instant coffee that follows the different coffee harvests around the world, capturing the beans at their prime. Once Special Selection coffee beans are picked, “they are carefully hand selected by Cafédirect’s growers to create a coffee that is both unique in character and taste”.

Cafédirect is a company we’ve mentioned many times, firstly I used to work by their offices, but more importantly they pay fair prices for its crops, so you can rest assured that while you enjoy your cuppa, you also contribute to improving the quality of life for growers in developing countries. In addition Cafédirect reinvests its profits into tailor-made training and development programmes, working directly with its growers to develop their expertise.

You can pick up a 100g jar of Special Selection Costa Rica from Oxfam stores in the UK, for around £3.25.

Ewan McGregor travels the Long Way Down with Cafédirect

Cafédirect, the UK’s largest 100% Fairtrade hot drinks company sent us details of how they helped Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman have a regular caffeine fix as they travelled the Long Way Down through Europe and Africa.

They rode from Scotland to South Africa, through 20 countries. As part of their intrepid 15,000 mile motorcycle adventure, which started in May 2007 in John O’Groats and arrived in Cape Town early August, Ewan and Charley visited Uganda. There they met Cafédirect’s grower partners at the Gumutindo Coffee Cooperative – suppliers of Cafédirect Mount Elgon gourmet coffee beans. During their visit they mastered the art of coffee “cupping” (tasting) and learnt how to ‘shlurp and spit’ like professional tasters!

You can watch Ewan and Charley talking to Willington Wamameye, Manager of the Gumutindo Co-operative, on the BBC LWD website.

The adventure will be shown on BBC 2 and Fox TV, starting 28 October 2007. For more information visit: www.longwaydown.com.

Latest Green News

There hasn’t been a latest green news for a while, so here’s an extra long one for you to enjoy.

Marks & Spencer is to ban petrol-fuelled company cars, recycle more coat hangers and give its chickens more room to roam, according to new eco-pledges to be announced today. The 33-page report, contained in its annual corporate social responsibility review published alongside its annual report and accounts, makes 100 commitments to tackle climate change, cut waste, increase sustainability, encourage healthier lifestyles and make M&S a ‘fair partner’ to do business with.

Ikea is switching its entire UK company-car fleet to hybrid vehicles as a prelude to a possible company-wide shift to greener vehicles. The company said it would trade in its Skoda company cars for Honda Civic hybrids by next year in a pilot programme that it is considering extending to other countries.

The cost of organic fruit and vegetables could fall after the discovery of a new technique which extends the shelf life of fresh produce. Scientists have found that treating apples with short bursts of oxygen allows them to be kept in cold storage for as long as eight months without them developing any blemishes.

B&Q will this week pledge to abandon the sale of the endangered hardwood merbau at its Chinese stores amid criticism of China’s timber trade and mounting concern about the contribution of illegal logging to global warming. Executives from the company will hold a joint press conference with Greenpeace in Beijing on Tuesday at which they will outline plans to
abandon the wood which is currently used in flooring and furniture.

The Daily Express reported that Superfoods are not only enjoying a popularity boom, they are fuelling a multimillion-pound industry. Blueberries have enjoyed the biggest sales surge of all, up 132% in two years, with Britons spending 95m on them in the year to last month. Other foods renowned for their health benefits, such as broccoli, salmon and spinach, have also been selling strongly. The Evening Standard also reports that demand for organic and Fairtrade produce has soared. A poll has shown that the proportion of people agreeing that it is worth paying more for organic food has risen from 24.3% in 2002 to 33.4% this year.

The Guardian reported on a campaign to encourage shoppers and retailers to support the first ever national plastic bag-free Christmas. We Are What We Do has announced it plans this week to build on heightened public awareness about the issue to end the wasteful use of plastic bags and excessive packaging over Christmas. It hopes to persuade retailers to
tell shoppers that they will not automatically get a plastic bag, and to display a colourful logo saying “Plastic Ain’t My Bag”.

The government’s chief scientist Sir David King has advised that all food products should carry a carbon emissions label to enable shoppers to buy greener goods. He also called excessive packaging “a consumer tragedy”.

The Financial Times today reports that Europe’s agricultural ministers have agreed on a compulsory logo for organic food as new figures have revealed that an increasing number of farmers are switching to the production method in response to consumer demand. The logo will be used from 2009, however some producers have stated that standards have been set too low as they permit genetically modified material that accidentally enters the food chain.

Royal Mail, the UK postal services company, is to conduct trials of electric vehicles after awarding a contract to Tanfield. Royal Mail, which boasts a fleet of over 33,000 vehicles, has taken a single 7.5-tonne Newton electric truck and a single 3.5-tonne Edison van on trial. A successful trial could see Royal Mail place an order for more electric vans in a deal
that could potentially be the largest signed by Tanfield.

The Sunday Mirror today reports that sales of organic food have reached over £1b-a-year for the first time, increasing by 9.3% in the year to March 2007. A new report has revealed that the food has grown so popular that it is leading to new supply shortages. Dairy goods and fresh produce were the biggest sellers, with milk accounting for 19% of organic sales growth. Sales of organic poultry, fish and meat also rose by 11.5%.

The Evening Standard City Spy claims that Marks & Spencer’s new plastic bags, made with 20% recycled material, do not work. The article claims they are thinner and flimsier than the old bags, meaning that customers are forced to ‘double-up’.

The price of organic food could increase because of new rules about GM labelling, campaigners warn today. The Soil Association and Organic Farmers and Growers have pledged to keep their criteria of accidental GM contamination at 0.1%, despite EU agricultural ministers agreeing that 0.9 per cent should be the cut-off point for GM-free labelling. Maintaining this standard could incur extra costs to farmers and growers which would in turn push prices up.

Waitrose has started selling milk in plastic pouches after campaigners complained that the sale of millions of plastic milk bottles was threatening the environment. The pouches will be sold alongside special jugs to use them with.

All news is copyright of it’s original owner and reproduced for information only.

Fairtrade Shopping Links

There are a wealth of fairtrade stores online, Adam has previously talked about Fairtrade on eBay. Here are a few more links that I have found on my travels in the UK.

• Fifi Bijoux (jewellery).
• Beyond Skin (shoes).
• Enamore (fashion).
• Marks & Spencer (fashion).
• Fair Indigo (fashion).
• Junky Styling (recycled fashion).
• Equa (fashion).
• Katherine Hamnet (fashion).
• People Tree (fashion).
• So Organic (beauty and body care).
• Pap Organics (stationery).

If you have any experience with any of these sites and/or wish to be added to this list then please let us know via a comment or the contact us form.

Providing Better Prices For Tea Farmers

Based just around the corner from where I work in London, Cafédirect is the UK’s largest 100% Fairtrade hot drinks company, with a 35% share of UK Fairtrade tea and coffee sales.

They have just launched Teadirect, a unique minimum pricing scheme that means growers are always protected from the extreme lows of the commodity market.

Cafédirect has recently increased its minimum price to ensure that all growers supplying Teadirect are rewarded for the quality of the tea that they produce. This way they can make a decent living from their crop and you can enjoy a decent cup of tea. Teadirect is available in packs of 40, 80 and 160 tea bags and for those who wish to cut down on caffeine there is also a decaffeinated version. Expect to pay around £2 for a box of 80 Teadirect tea bags.

Cafédirect’s range of teas, coffees and drinking chocolate is 100% Fairtrade and is available from most supermarkets, Oxfam shops, Traidcraft mail order and independent wholefood retailers. You can also enjoy Cafédirect and Teadirect away from home, as more and more offices and public places stock the range.

Cafédirect’s new minimum tea pricing structure consists of three elements:

1. A base price, which covers the total cost of production for most of Cafédirect’s tea partners.
2. A sustainability allowance, which covers any remaining costs of production and for the most efficient groups, provides a business income. This is used by the factories to further strengthen and stabilise their businesses through investment in infrastructure such as buildings, human resources, systems or additional payments to the farmers.
3. A quality differential, which differs according to the standard of tea produced. This is to provide an incentive and reward to the growers for continual improvement in the quality of their crop.

For further details check out Cafédirect.

Fairtrade on eBay

Being ‘green’ also includes choosing where you buy things from. Life Goggles has mentioned Fair Trade before, but you can also now buy Fair Trade products off eBay. It has it’s on landing page here and includes shops such as People Tree, Shared Earth and Hug.

The shops sell a variety of stuff from tea to candles from necklaces to duvet sets. It seems to be gaining in popularity with more products for sale all the time.

On the subject of Fair Trade, the Hay Festival of Literature and the Arts in Hay-on-Wye, Herefordshire recently held a ‘No Cows=No Countryside’ debate. The premise being that there should be a set minimum British farmers are paid for their produce and buying local, organic produce is green. You can read more about it here.