Internet Recreation

Stroll through your local branch of Sainsburys, and you’re looking at the benefits of a global market. You can buy practically any product at a cheap price. Whether it’s dragon fruit from the Philippines or rum from Brazil - it’s procurable throughout the year. There’s never been a better time in human history to be a shopper! This has happened through just in time stock control, large scale production, powerful competitive forces, and possibly most significantly, the fact that many produced goods are located, and frequently produced, in second and third world nations.

That final reason is rather crucial, and controversial. While western consumers are purchasing clothing, food, drink and other items produced from the poorest countries at cheap cost, workers and commercial enterprises in these manufacturing countries are often short-changed in the process, and haven’t any true sustainability as they are the last stop of a very lengthy line of middle-men who determine what they produce, how much, and how often. This extended string of middle-men all receive their cut too - so there’s not much cash for the actual producer.

Even so, there’s assistance for these desperate workers and companies. Fairtrade is a movement which seeks to give some power to these end-producing business organizations in the poorer nations of the planet. It seeks to banish these middlemen, and pay the end-manufacturer a decent price for a product in a much more direct way. You may have seen Fairtrade items in your nearest super market. Sometimes they’re a tad more expensive, but by buying such ethical products or even ethical gifts - for instance fair trade gifts - you will be pleased to realise the manufacturer is operating in a sustainable way that not only pays them evenhandedly via a much more direct revenue flow, but it also allows them to put this extra money into their company through greater earnings, which genuinely contributes in a positive way toward these poorer areas of the planet.