Fairtrade fortnight....

Excellent post, grannyactivist. I hadn't realised it was fairtrade fortnight.
I always buy fairtrade when it's available, particularly coffee and wines.

There is a company called Ecological Superstore which stocks many fairtrade items, including Traidcraft.

I can thoroughly recommended Fairtrade Dark Peruvian Chocolate. The smoothest, tastiest ever and in a bit of an expert in this field

in a iPad speak for 'I'm a...'

Interestingly my brain registered 'I'm a...' anyway Anya.

I should do more about this really.
Thank you for the reminder.

I think I have the daft mentality of being happy to put money to charity, but when I do my supermarket shopping, I am all out to spend quite frugally.

I buy Fairtrade coffee, bananas, tea and chocolate as often as I can. Need to see what else is available.

I dont like my bananas being in packets. They dont seem to last as long.
I am fussy about my tea.
Not sure I have ever had fairtrade coffee. I can certainly try some of that. I didnt much like the fairtrade chocolate

Lots of chocolate is fairly traded soontobe, including cadburys dairy milk, divine, Green&Blacks, Hotel Chocolat...and lots of supermarkets have their own brand fairtrade chocolate. Perhaps looking at this will encourage you to keep trying and make a difference.

Which fairtrade chocolate didn't you like soontobe?
It's difficult to avoid fairtrade chocolate in supermarkets. At least I can't anyway, as there are so many, as grannyactivist said.

One thing with buying coffee is that there are so many other schemes that are not quite fairtrade, i.e., they do not give as much money to the growers as fairtrade.

Looking at the list, it was probably a co-op one I tried.
I may have chosen a dark chocolate one?
I have since decided that I dont much care for dark chocolate of any sort.

That's a shame, it's much better for you.
Have you seen how many dark chocolate flavours Green and Black's make?

Dont know. Dont care!

They also do fairtrade milk chocolate of varying strengths and flavours. It's the fairtrade you should bother about, not whether it is plain or milk.

Yes true. I will have a good look tomorrow.

We buy a lot of fair trade food as we have a local shop which sells it. Fair trade bananas in Tesco's and, I think, Sainsbury's, are also organic, so not only do the producers get a decent rate of pay for them, they are also not exposed to so many chemicals. (I understand that bananas which are not organic are pretty horrible from the point of view of workers' exposure to agricultural chemicals.) Also, they often come from the Dominican Republic, which needs support in competing with the big producing countries. And they taste relly good. Seems like a win-win to me.

Have you tried Divine chocolate soontobe? I run a Fairtrade stall with a friend and it seems to be the chocolate that everyone likes, you can buy it in Oxfam shops if it isn't stocked in your local supermarket or on line from the Traidcraft website.

No. I will have a lookout for it.

My husband's not a great chocolate eater, but he will only eat fair trade chocolate and his favourites are Divine and Green & Blacks.