So Orange sent me a text this morning stating that:

Hi, from Orange. We’re increasing the price of your monthly plan by 4.34% from 8 January 2012. For more information please visit orange.co.uk/planupdate

Other than the rather cheery greeting to pass on some bad news the text didn’t tell me why and so naturally annoyed me…clicking to their link I found this:

Why are Orange introducing these price rises?

We know that price increases are never welcomed by our customers. Unfortunately, with inflation at a 20 year high it has been necessary to increase our monthly service charges.

Can I cancel my contract because you’re increasing my monthly service charge?

This is especially exciting as the last thing I’d heard (over a year ago) was that Mars were signing up to Rainforest Alliance and certified Cocoa and not Fairtrade but the press release today suggests this is just a step to making more products Fairtrade (rather than Nestle’s ‘token fairtrade product’ nonsense).

Hopefully Mars will follow in the footsteps of Cadburys in expanding their Fairtrade range…I’m looking forward to a Fairtrade Mars bar!

Which Fairtrade Mars product would you like to see? Why not click here to contact Mars and suggest a product you’d like to see Fairtrade.

Here’s an exert from the press release. You can read the full release here

LONDON, UK (27 September 2011) — Mars Chocolate and Fairtrade International today announced an agreement to introduce the first Fairtrade labelled Mars product. As part of the initial phase of the agreement the first Mars product to carry the FAIRTRADE Mark will be MALTESERS®. The move, which will appear in stores in 2012 in the UK and Ireland, will contribute in excess of US $1 million in annual Fairtrade Premium funds for cocoa farmers to invest in their farms, business organisations and communities. MALTESERS® is the third biggest confectionery brand in the UK, and its switch will  represent more than a 10% increase in total UK Fairtrade sales.  (see Note 3 in Fairtrade Foundation section below).

At the heart of the agreement is a shared ambition to make commodity certification that supports sustainable livelihoods for farmers the norm in the cocoa industry. Over the long-term, Mars will explore how best to scale up its purchases of Fairtrade cocoa, and will support Fairtrade’s continued efforts to develop measures that would allow more confectionery companies to increase their commitments to purchase more Fairtrade cocoa with the aim of impacting the lives of more cocoa farmers than ever before.

This blog will also appear on my new Ethical Living UK blog – Read the ethical blog here

Here’s what I e-mailed:

Hello, When shopping in your store today in Brough and looking for hot chocolate I noticed that you are now the only supermarket not to have made their own brand hot chocolate Fairtrade. Is this something you are working on in the future? What is your policy towards making more of your own brand products Fairtrade? Thank You

And here’s their reply…

Thank you for contacting us regarding the Fair Trade products which we sell in our stores.

Morrisons were among the first major food retailers to sell fairly traded goods in 1994, including those of our own Morrisons label. Our current range includes tea, coffee, chocolate and bananas, and I am delighted to report that the company actually increased the number of Fair Trade products in the range by 27% in 2008, and we are continuing our efforts to expand the range further. For example, we have recently introduced 10 varieties of own-brand Fair Trade Ground Coffee. We also offer Fair Trade tea and coffee in our customer cafés.

In addition to selling ‘Fair Trade’ we have also have implemented our own Ethical Trading Code with suppliers in countries such as Asia and South America. The Code is designed to protect the rights of employees and covers areas such as employment being freely chosen, freedom of association, safety and hygiene, payment of living wages, working hours, and the prevention of discrimination and inhumane treatment. We were also the first major UK retailer to implement an inspection initiative with Fair Working Conditions (FWC), an organisation promoting, measuring and formally accrediting best employment practices worldwide.

In conclusion, we are firm supporters of fair-trade and are currently offering our support wherever possible.

Thank you once again for taking the time and trouble to write to us. We find feedback on such issues immensely valuable in our efforts to improve the products and services we offer.

For further information regarding our policy on Ethical Trading or any of our current policies please visit our website link http://www.morrisons.co.uk/Corporate/Corporate-Responsibility-2011/Policy-Guidance/ and there you will find our Policy Guidance list. From there you can also down load our full CR review which you may find useful.

The link they posted makes interesting reading…looks like they’re heading in the right direction.

Dear Mark

Thanks for your email about our Fairtrade products.  I’m glad to hear that you’ve been impressed to see a wider range of Fairtrade products in our stores, including our own brand chocolate.

We currently offer over 800 Fairtrade products across our stores.  We’re constantly looking for new ways we can convert more of our products to Fairtrade suppliers, but with over 30,000 products for sale in store and online you’ll understand that this takes time.  We want to make sure that the suppliers are genuinely paid a fair wage for their produce and their working conditions are good, and it takes some time to make sure that this is the case before we start selling any of their products.

We stock over 30,000 products so we can’t possibly have every requested item in all our branches, however if there is a high enough demand for an individual item, we will always strive to find space for it on our shelves.  With this in mind I’ve passed your request to our buyers who will look into the feasibility of stocking Tradecrafts fair break chocolate biscuit bars in our stores.  Your suggestion that we convert our Double take chocolate wafer biscuits to Fairtrade has been logged on to our system and this will be passed on to the relevant department for consideration.

We’re grateful to you for contacting us as your feedback helps us to understand the needs of our customers better.  We look forward to seeing you in store again soon.

The point is this blog is to encourage you to e-mail your supermarket (whichever you choose) about making more products Fairtrade. Give specific examples of products you currently buy which you’d like to see Fairtrade and encourage them to stock more Fairtrade (E.g. when Cadbury made Dairy Milk Fairtrade ASDA removed Divine from their shelves…Sainsbury’s has divine side by side with their own brand and Cadbury!).

Oh and I know my blog has been pretty quiet lately…we’ve been on holiday and I’ve been busy with a little project which I’ll blog on soon!

* Sainsburys – If you’ve bothered to read this * then perhaps you’ve thought that Sainsburys expensive…well actually I don’t think that’s true…Tesco have been sneaking up their prices and still ride on the back of their reputation for being cheap from the 90′s, ASDA are cheap but some of their Smart Price products lack quality whereas often Sainsbury’s Basics range is the same quality (or better) as ASDA’s own brand/’Chosen By You’…In comparison to Morrissons they’re about the same…oh and naturally cheaper than Waitrose!

Whether you know much about Fairtrade or not then watch the campaign video below. Also if you head to the Fairtrade Facebook Page you can take part in competitions this year to ‘Show off your label’ and potentially win prizes including a year’s supply of Ben and Jerry’s!

One reporter took a job at a manufacturer in Leicester where he was paid £2.5o an hour, made to work with unsafe equipment and wasn’t asked for any documents. During the reporters’ few months there he made clothes for Peacocks, C & A (Europe), New Look and BHS.

Whilst it is shocking that there are such places in this country the thing that shocked me the most was the blame shifting that the companies, when confronted seemed to do. Much like Nestle in Parorama’s chocolate programme or Primark (also Panorama) the blame was shifted to subcontractors who apparently weren’t meant to further subcontract.

The beauty of Fairtrade for chocolate, coffee and other Fairtrade products is that they have traceability which means the chocolate that arrives can be traced right back to the farm that originated…this means there is corporate responsibility and that those dealing with Fairtrade can’t just wave their arms and say ‘we didn’t know it was happening’.

I can’t help but feel that the reactions of New Look, Peacocks and Arcadia were nothing but corporate crap. Of course an investigation will be launched but will they really monitor things better as a result? Probably not.

It seems to me that for ethical clothing there’s a few options…

Number 1: Shop with companies who are ethical. Labour Behind the Label detail which high street brands are ethical and are a fantastic resource. Alongside that sites such as People Tree and Wombat offer ethical fashion (although at higher prices that Primark or New Look). Finally newly launched Fair Squared (click here to visit) offer a range of Fairtrade Products and plan to expand into the clothing business but currently only stock Fairtrade Converse-Style shoes…mine are on the way! (Their Fairtrade rice is cheap too!)

Number 2: The same way Fairtrade is an independent monitoring system for food produce and some fashion a similar label could be set up for clothing conditions…for companies to sign up and display the ‘badge of honour’ they must adhere to strict, independently checked practices.

Number 3: The Government should do something! The dispatches programme finished by suggesting that the government could make companies responsible for their supply chain…I’m sure that if you were to threaten companies with fines for irresponsible practices in their supply chain they’d soon enough monitor it properly.

Anyway just a few thoughts…comments always appreciated.

Since then and along with some conversations with Jo I’ve been thinking a lot more about ethical dilemmas…for example here’s an easy one;

Nestle Produce a Fairtrade KitKat…Should I buy it?

The answer is quite obviously no. Whilst it’s very nice of Nestle to agree to pay a small proportion of their farmers properly there is still child labour involved in the rest of their chocolate and their irresponsible baby milk advertising in the third world still makes them the most boycotted company in the world. (Read more about Nestle here)

However the Nestle dilemma isn’t what I wanted to blog about!

Dilemma 1: Local Supplies vs Local Produce

Ever since going supermarketless for lent earlier this year we’ve purchased all of our fruit and veg from a small, independently run farm shop half a mile from our house and from an ethical perspective this puts money back into the local economy rather than some rich businessmen. On a practice perspective we spend far less than we would if we went to a supermarket by getting the fruit and veg locally…add into the mix that it keeps far better and shopping locally is truly fantastic all round…however the farm shop doesn’t just source local produce but bring in a whole variety so occasionally have apples from New Zealand.

The ethical dilemma is this: Is it better to buy locally but with added airmiles (in the case of these apples) or better to buy supermarket french ones?

Dilemma 2: Tesco & ethical clothing?

As readers will know I boycott Tesco for a whole host of reasons including the way they bully councils and suppliers and even the way their business is run as a whole. However I have been informed that all of Tesco’s clothing is now completely ethical…sourced from a company that is renowned for having no flaws.

So the ethical dilemma is this: Is it better to buy ethically produced clothing from Tesco and in doing so put money towards the awful market practices and attitude of Tesco?

Anyway that’s just one thing I’ve been pondering…thoughts? Should airmiles and pollution be a priority above shopping locally? Does a companies shocking attitudes get canceled out when they support ethical issues in a tiny aspect of their business?

Comments???

You CAN make a difference!

Whilst it may seem like my dilemmas show that it’s very difficult to live ethically there are lots of simple things that do make a difference…buying Fairtrade chocolate, coffee, tea, sugar and other produce changes lives…it provides schooling and supports communities. So share your comments and buy Fairtrade!

In turn up until a few years ago the internet was very much static…you could make a website and get it hosted but the last few years have empowered millions of people to instant, search-able web publication and whereas at one point in time only the dedicated geek could make a ‘hate page’ for his least favourite brand pretty much anyone can easily vent a view point on a company instantly.

Take, for example my twitter account…I have 134 followers…my tweets update my Facebook on which I have 402 “friends”…if we allow some duplication that allows around 450 people who have the opportunity to read my views…not even taking into account those who read the twitter feed on my blog, iLike page, Reverb Nation page and various others.

So, when searching for some tasty Divine chocolate a few weeks back in ASDA and unable to find it I hit twitter to express my sadness to which the ASDA Service Team (a dedicated group of ASDA tweeters) got back to me to inform me that it was no longer stocked because it just didn’t sell. More and more companies are realising that social networking can have a big impact on their business!

Back in August I locked horns with Argos …our sofas which we’d had for 10 months had developed a problem whereby the zip on the back cushion (which was stapled down) had broke…Argos sent out a HomeServe upholsterer who (having phoned the wrong number twice) turned up on our doorstep…looked at the sofa and told me that he could stitch it up or get a new cover…I asked for a new cover…he told me I’d hear within 10 days and he left!

10 days later I phoned up Argos only to find that he had told them that it was accidental damage and I’d refused (which I hadn’t) to have it stitched up…I argued with Argos…spoke to managers and eventually wrote a letter all of which resulted in them saying ‘well the upholsterer’s report says it’s accidental damage so tough luck!

So I tweeted ‘Argos have the worst customer services ever’ (or words to that effect) and within 10 minutes Argos tweeted back…asked for my order number and said they’d get back to me.

In the meantime I continued to pester Argos and to cut a long story short we get new sofa’s tomorrow!

The fact is that companies can no longer afford to ignore customers because without even opening their mouths customer’s have access to hundreds of people who will glance at (and maybe even take in) a short sentence describing a company.

So tweet, facebook and myspace your frustrations away! It might just make a difference…it will certainly attract attention and see what happens!

(In other news turns out that Costa ignore e-mails…my 2nd send of my e-mail still has no response…good old snail mail next I think)

This bugs me because whilst Nero refuse to do anything remotely ethical Costa’s optional Fairtrade always gave me the choice to drink Fairtrade and gave me the glimmer of hope that one day they’d take the Starbucks challenge and go completely Fairtrade not Rainforest Alliance which whilst ok isn’t as good.

So I wrote to them…here’s what I said…I’ll post the reply!

Hello,

I just wanted to e-mail you to let you know how disappointed I was this morning during a meeting in your Kingswood branch in Hull to be told upon ordering a Fairtrade Americano that you no longer did fairtrade but everything was Rainforest Alliance certified.

Whilst your choice to make Fairtrade an option opposed to Starbucks complete transformation to Fairtrade has never completely satisfied me I’ve always liked that I could get a Fairtrade option in Costa. As you are probably aware the key focus of Rainforest Alliance is to protect the environment and whilst I am aware that the Costa Foundation looks after communities alongside this I personally feel that Fairtrade is a much more positive option as those who see the Fairtrade mark know that Fairtrade represents the best option for the farmers, their communities and also for the environment surrounding them.

Alongside this with many villages, towns and cities becoming ‘Fairtrade villages/towns/cities’ I believe you missed an opportunity to really be part of those communities and I know that for myself as a customer (mostly in Beverley) I shall now be looking to buy and drink my coffee in local shops that sell Fairtrade (or searching out a Starbucks in other places!),

I shall look forward to hearing from you on this matter,

Mark Tiddy

If you think this sucks too you can e-mail customer.relations@whitbread.com and tell them so!

Yes…I did just say that…I picked the mold off my bread. Not that my bread was completely green and fuzzy…there was no sandpaper involved in locating the bread under a carpet of mold…I simply picked off a couple of green bits.

As I was picking off this mold in order to make my sandwich I thought about the re-action of the last person who I casually mentioned this habit too who said ‘ewww that’s minging!’ and it got me thinking about the throw-away society we live in.

I know plenty of people for whom a best before date is gospel…magically the contents of their packet become away of the date and go off…just like that. Before midnight on the date it’s a nice yummy yogurt but the second after it becomes green fuzzy scum…leave it any longer and it morphs into a monster and takes over your house making you regret not listening to the best before date….of course I lie!

For example even in my lifetime I remember products that didn’t have dates but now we’ve got so health and safety conscious everything has a date and sadly we forget our common sense and just throw things away.

This throwaway society throwaway comes to mind again as I think of supermarkets…Jo works in a supermarket and is always telling me about the amount of people who refer to carrier bags as ‘throwaway bags’, people who have 2 items and put them in a carrier bag and people who say ‘oh I left my bag for life in the car…I’ll take a plastic bag’.

The problem is that if we didn’t throw so much away and just used a bit of common sense we could probably do a fair chunk for the planet. If you’re bag for life is genuinely in the car then why not keep your shopping in the trolly or carry it? If the majority of the bread isn’t moldy pick some off…if the milks not lumpy or funky smelling but is past it’s best before don’t throw it away.

I think we just need a little more common sense!

Perhaps one of the most unique things about Greenbelt is that it doesn’t have an exclusively Christian line-up…for example one of the headlining bands are The King Blues…this wider variety of music is something I’m really looking forward to…there’s only so many Matt Redman clones you can bare to watch!

Also in the musical line-up who I’m anticipating seeing is Luke Leighfield…a Ben Folds style musician from Southampton (Luke’s album ‘Have you got heart’ is free here and well worth downloading) and some worship being led by Andy Flannagan which should be a refreshing change.

The speakers include Mark Yaconelli and there’s also some interesting panels on the line-up including ‘Musician: how to do it yourself’ and ‘Is Meat murdering the planet’.

Alongside all this there seems to be plenty of other stuff going on…including a beer tent (the place I believe Jesus himself would be hanging out!). I’m really looking forward to the experience and being challenged but also having some time out to enjoy good music.

I’ll do a full blog round-up on Greenbelt after I’ve showered and reflected on the festival!

When I started the pledge to avoid supermarkets for lent I thought it would be difficult…and in many respects it has been. The thing is we’re creatures of habit and so to get out of the habit of thinking ‘I’ll just pop to Morrisons’ and escaping that mind set was tricky to start with but I’m now in a new habit…the local farm shop (half a mile from my house) sells all the fruit and veg I need, equally the butchers or farmers market works for dead animal requirements and whilst the milkman is not a financially effective option for milk (and doesn’t deliver until 11 which is annoying) the mini-mart works for milk and beer.

The most difficult things to get without supermarkets has been cereal because it is so overpriced locally it’s crazy so I’ve been using home bargains for cooking sauces and cereals which means a trip into Hull (although when I need it I tend to be going in anyway) but the cereals are cheaper than the supermarkets which is nice.

Cost Effective?

So is it cost effective to not shop at supermarkets? If you’re a heavy drinker then the booze cost will hit you but I’m not and so my answer is yes! I’ve spent far less on fruit and veg than I usually would and they’ve been far nicer. Meat is fractionally more expensive (unless I get it from the monthly farmers market) and everything else which I’ve used home bargains for has been cheaper.

Interestingly this church times article agrees that local stores are cheaper than supermarkets

Time Effective?

Back in 2008 following on from the comments left by Laura in my post about Tesco I posted a blog titled ‘Easy Ethical Shopping‘ and having now tried ethically shopping for a month or so I think that you spend less time buying stuff locally than you would in the supermarket.

For example it takes me 10 minutes to get to the supermarket and I probably spend half an hour in there…that’s a 50 minute trip. If I pop to the butchers, bakers and fruit and veg shop I probably spend 5 minutes in each maximum and walking to them probably makes it the same time as the supermarket trip but I’ve been popping by them on my way back from places so it’s probably a half hour trip!

Will I be returning to the supermarkets on Sunday?

In short ‘no cos they’re closed on Sunday’…to answer the question properly I have to say yes and no. Supermarkets will cater for my beer, meat free mince (which I’ve missed more than I’d imagined), cereal etc but not for fruit and veg and maybe occasionally for meat! Whilst fresh bread has been nice I can’t eat it quick enough as one so I’ve wasted bread so I guess it’s back to supermarket bread!

So can we live without supermarkets?

That’s a whole blog post in itself! The problem is that supermarkets have rooted themselves too far into our society already, without supermarkets there’s many products we just wouldn’t be able to get because it’s simply not sustainable any more to have local retailers that sell all we need. If there’s a local butcher, baker or fruit and veg store then use them if you want to keep them but I don’t think you could have everything you wanted without supermarkets…but you can cut them out of whole chunks of your shopping.

And finally…

It’s been a very interesting experiment, I don’t feel like I’ve been enlightened by the whole thing…I’ve discovered local retailers I wouldn’t have known of otherwise but that’s it!

The program aimed to show us where the majority of our chocolate comes from and show how easy it is to get chocolate produced by children onto our markets and the program truly did this. It was both amazing and shocking to see how easy it was for them to find chocolate that had been harvested by children and even more shocking at how easy this chocolate was to get into the stream of chocolate heading to our big companies.

As a keen Fairtrade supporter it was interesting to understand the difference between Fairtrade and non-Fairtrade and that the big difference is traceability. This means that all plantations that supply Fairtrade cocoa beans can be traced and inspected and that these inspections have caused plantations to be forced to stop using children for labour and whilst the lady from the Fairtrade Foundation didn’t respond particularly well to the interview questions the programme highlighted the important role of Fairtrade in making cocoa beans traceable and in ensuring that children are not used.

The programme also challenged me over my chocolate buying habits and I’m seriously contemplating only buying Fairtrade chocolate because it doesn’t matter whether it’s Mars, Nestle or Cadbury the chances are unless it’s Fairtrade children have been used to produce it…plus Divine Coffee-Chocolate is yummy…the only thing stopping me is a like of Mars…my current thinking is that as Cadbury aim to make their product range Fairtrade I’ll buy Cadbury and Fairtrade.

Interestingly the programme also produced some ‘Children definitely used in production’ chocolate and showed it to the public who were appalled and said they wouldn’t buy it…which highlights the importance of making people aware of where their products come from so they can make educated consumer choices….if everyone knew I bet firms would be leaping to go Fairtrade or ensure they didn’t use children!

Finally the programme also managed to find some Nestle farmers using children…brilliant - join me in a Nestle free Easter

Whilst the Christian section was a bit naff the rest of the shop was amazing…containing hundreds of books with a nice ‘booky’ aroma about the place I spent quite some time browsing and was especially impressed with the CD’s which seemed to consist of all the singles I owned as a child and their shelf upon shelf of Christian books.

I left the shop having spent £5 on a CD single of ‘You only get what you give’ (New Radicals), a beasty New Bible Commentary Revised and individual commentaries on Revelation (part 1), Revelation (part 2), a commentary on the letters to Timothy, Titus and Philemon, a commentary on the letters to James and Peter and a commentary on the letters to John and Jude…plus a book containing 44 John Wesley sermons….absolute bargain shop!

The farmers market is held in the playground of the school and attracts a range of local stall holders selling everything from how-made jewelery and bird boxes to meat and vegetables with the odd cake-selling Scout group thrown in for good measure.

It is very much a community thing and within 30 seconds of arriving I’d already seen and chatted to some folk from church…I bumped into a few more as time went on and some young people and in between all this managed to pick up a stupidly large cabbage, some meat and some fish cakes (I’m not going to give a full shopping list!), all at very reasonable prices.

It gave me a chance to reflect on the way home at how this no supermarkets pledge was going on an expenses side and I think that so far I’m probably spending less than I would if I did a regular trip to Morrissons or ASDA…fruit and veg at the farm shops I’ve visited have been considerably cheaper and meat although a tiny bit more expensive is much better quality.

I may never use supermarkets the same way again!