Posts by andy

People flee from violence in the Congo

During its years as Zaire and more recently as Congo, the people of this huge Central Africa republic have battled against many different types of adversity – everything from civil war to the eruption of Mount Nyiragongo that sent hot lava running through the streets of Goma. However, the new clashes between warring factions – once again on the streets of Goma – have led to thousands of people being displaced into temporary camps. Food is short. Water is contaminated. And there is the lurking nightmare that this might slip into a genocide reminiscent of horror that occurred just across the border in Rwanda during 1994.

While the international community decides whether it has the guts to intervene and prevent further violence and bloodshed, the aid agencies are rapidly deploying programmes of aid. To help fund those initiatives the Disaster Emergencies Committee (DEC) has launched a co-ordinated campaign to raise the much needed funds. For more information see our main story.

Well it’s official – we’re in recession. But what we’ll experience over the next few months will be nothing compared with what people in Zimbabwe will experience. While inflation here has reached a dizzying peak of 5% the current of rate inflation in Zimbabwe is more than 231million per cent! Just about the whole population is now a Zimbabwe dollar millionaire so worthless is the currency.

Amazingly, there are people making a success of being a business in Zimbabwe – even an export business. Dezign Inc prints t-shirts and bags in Zimbabwe using screen print techniques and traditional designs. Fair trade pioneer Traidcraft imports the products for sale in UK market. 15 years ago the business was thriving and supporting a large workforce and a housing project. Times are tough but the resilience of the team is amazing – they are still managing to export products.

So my Christmas challenge for everyone is why not buy a fair trade shopper from Dezign Inc for your aunt, uncle, dad, mum, sister, brother, son or daughter? Celebrity designer endorsed shoppers may save plastic bags in this country, but the Dezign Inc shoppers could genuinely be saving lives in Zimbabwe as well. The United Nations announced on Wednesday that it had cut maize rations to the 4million Zimbabweans who have no source food at present. Worse news is that there will be no rations after Christmas unless the international community steps in to pledge more aid.

You can buy the Market Scene Fair Trade Shopper for or the Nomad Shopping Bag for just £10. We’d like to sell out this week so we can get more ordered and advance payments out to the folks at Dezign Inc. Do what you can.

The Divine Chocolate company is 10 years old this week. Here at the Ethical Superstore we love the Divine range of products – tasty chocolate treats for every season. Advent calendars, Easter eggs, boxes of chocolates for Mother’s Day and a classic chocolate bar which tastes good on any day. Add in the cold winter nights cheered by a Divine Hot Chocolate or Cocoa and you never need to be many hours away from a quick Divine Chocolate treat.

To celebrate 10 years of selling chocolate, Divine is putting on an exhibition which tells its unique story. You’ll have an opportunity to see a collection of striking images giving an insight into the lives of Kuapa Kokoo farmers who produce the cocoa that forms the basis of all of the Divine products. The exhibition also tells the enterprising story of the journey that took Divine from being “a great idea – that could never happen” to an award-winning example of a more equitable trading relationship with smallholder farmers in Africa. The exhibition starts today (6th November) at the.gallery@oxo, Oxo Tower Wharf, Bargehouse Street, South Bank, London, SE1 9PH and runs until Sunday 9th November. The gallery opens from 11am to 6pm and it’s free!

Read the rest of 10 Years for Divine Delight »

Ugly Betty with our Candy Wrapper Bag - now that is what I call style

This is the first Friday for some time when I can really relax. You see I have a guilty secret that until two weeks ago I indulged in every Friday night. I have been worried for weeks that someone will ask me what I did on Friday night. I didn’t want to lie, but I wasn’t sure I could admit to my Friday night viewing habit. You see I am a big fan of Ugly Betty. And fortunately now the series has finished my secret is safe until season 4 begins. (That’s as long as you keep this between you and me…)

I’m not in Channel 4’s Ugly Betty “target demographic” nor do a care much about New York’s high fashion industry – but I do love Ugly Betty. It could be that I was lured into in the first series by the mild mannered man of wood Alan Dale (better known as Jim from Neighbours for all those who were students in the 1980s). Whatever it was I have become an avid fan.

But my secret became a little less guilty in series 3 when Betty got a new bag. Not just any bag but a recycled packaging bag from (and I’m guessing) the Philippines. Every episode she was seen carrying the bag to and from work. Even better is that we sell this exact same bag.

The Woven Candy Wrapper Shopping Bag (from now on known internally as the Ugly Betty bag) is made from strips of waste packaging and looks fantastic. It is manufactured by a womens’ cooperative group in Manila called Doy Bags. At less than £20 this has to be the cheapest style icon of the year. If only I had shirt like Mark for it to go with….

The acquisition of Green & Black's by Cadbury-Schweppes in 2005 was, and still is, a tricky question for all of us who want to do the right thing in what we buy.

On the positive side Green and Blacks has pioneered and developed a huge range of organic and some Fairtrade products and made them available to a mass market. While it was privately owned, they were clearly a "star" in ethical trading terms.

The downside of the acquisition was two-fold. Now the profits would go to Cadburys - a company who has so far refused to take seriously the environmentally friendly and fair trade aspects of its own supply chains.

We made a decision after the acquisition to wait and see what the impact was.
If we felt that the corporate Cadburys influence was having a negative impact (e.g. dumbing down products etc) on Green & Black's then we would stop selling. However, there was always the chance that influence would go the other way with Green & Black's approaches becoming influential on the whole of Cadburys products.

The evidence to date is neutral in my personal view. There is no perceptible change in Cadbury's corporate practice and Green & Black's's influence on the organisation seems negligible to date. However, there have been some positive outcomes from an ethical product perspective. Green & Black's has more working capital and seasonal products seem especially well resourced - this year's range of Easter eggs, for example, is stunning.

So why are we still selling Green & Black's?

The key factor that tipped us over the edge to maintain the product sales was Green & Black's long term relationship with poor and marginalised cocoa and sugar producers around the world.

It seems very unfair to penalise the fairtrade cocoa producers in Belize just because a corporate board room change in the UK.

We'll keep watching Green & Black's to see what happens. We always appreciate your feedback, so if you want to let us know what you think, leave us a comment below.

Flooding by marilynjane via Flickr

With threats of floods this weekend and many parts of the UK set for a rainy spell, do we really need to save water? My Dad has always argued that saving water when you live in Manchester is a waste of time. Water is everywhere – why are we trying to save it?

Well the answer is more complex than you might think. To one degree my dad is right – we often have more water than we know what to do with. However, the environmental impact of water goes way beyond its use as a raw material.

Consider the cost of actually pumping water around. While some places in the UK have gravity fed systems – large parts of the South East, South West, Midlands and East Anglia use pumps to move water around. More water used, more power required to move the water.

Consider the cost of handling and treating sewage. According the Environment Agency, 10 billion litres of sewage are produced in the UK every day. The treatment plants use energy and require the delivery chemicals, sand and gravel to make the process work. The resulting sludge often gets taken away by the lorry load for landfill, land reclaimation and farm usage. (Of course it could be used as the input to a bio-gas system – but not much sign of that happening in the UK yet!)

Consider meeting our UK obligations under the EU Habitats Directive where the UK committed to reduce the water usage around the Natura 2000 protected sites by an equivalent amount of water as used by 1.5million people. There are 414 sites in the UK where flora and fauna will be endangered if we do not reduce the ground water abstraction. Back in 1992 the targets for 2010 probably looked easy to achieve – now in 2008 – things look a little tougher.

So it may be chucking it down for all of January but there is still a whole host of good green reasons to save water. If you’ve got an old style cistern on your loo, why not take advantage of the special offer on Hippo the Water Saver at Ethical Superstore?

The postal strike is having an impact on EthicalSuperstore.com but I worry that the real loser in this will be the environment. We’ve had to suspend our cheapest delivery rate, but generally most parcels are being delivered by our friends at Parcel Force. However, the long term implications of a weakened Royal Mail are definitely bad for the environment.

Our postie—she’s actually a young woman—drops our letters and small packets off every day at home around 9am. She walks from the delivery depot with a small sack of letters and then collects the rest of her letters from strategically located pick up points round her route. It works because all letters in the UK outside of London are still delivered by the Royal Mail. She passes every house every day.

Now imagine a world where Royal Mail is weakened to the point where they no longer deliver to every house every day. Either we’ll all be driving to the sorting office to pick our mail up – 500 houses on our postie’s route might mean 500 more journeys each day by car!!!! Alternatively, lots of new van or car based delivery schemes get launched and we all get multiple deliveries each week from multiple companies. May be slightly less impact than us all driving places but ultimately much worse than the system we have now.

Postal delivery is an environmental issue. The government—the current owner of the Royal Mail—needs to focus less on preparing to sell it and more on building the service it has to be truly world class. We have cost effective, environmentally sensitive delivery to every home in the UK – do we really want to squander it?

The time has come to put a stop to this completely unnecessary waste of resources. Manufacturers and retailer’s main incentive for over packaging their goods is branding and marketing. Most modern consumers have grown used to this overpackaging and in the case of supermarket fruit and veg actually prefer to buy the more heavily packaged items as they are perceived to be “cleaner” than the unpackaged ones. The purpose of this campaign is to raise awareness of this unnecessary waste and put pressure on manufacturers and retailers to use more environmentally friendly and cut the amount of waste we produce.

Loving your bike may seem like an odd object on to which to place your affections, but Manchester Friends of the Earth and the city council want us to do just that!

Now I do actually in general quite like my bike. I’m in the fortunate position of having a route to work which is now 80% off road. On a warm summer’s evening the trip along the Tyne is a pleasure.

However if you hate the thought of even having a bike, then the FoE and Manchester City Council are keen to change your mind. The site has lots of general info on why cycling is good for you - if you truly love yourself, you’ll love your bike. There is also an interactive site showing safe routes to and from the city centre plus a neat blogging\mapping feature so you can identify good points and danger areas on the routes. Nice if you live in Manchester.

Visit this site and then challenge your city, town or district council to do the same.