Fairtrade: Shopping with a conscience

Virgin. Marks & Spencer. Topshop. The Tories. Suddenly some of our biggest names are supporting ethical trading in response to popular demand. How did that happen?

The bandwagon leaving from platform nine has a Virgin logo on the side. The train operator today becomes the latest high-profile company to declare itself in favour of ethical sourcing. From now on, every hot drink on every journey will be made with ingredients that carry the Fairtrade symbol, the yin-and-yang shape with a flash of green that guarantees the producers have been paid a fair price.

This is the start of Fairtrade Fortnight, a time when churches, unions, community groups and activists traditionally try everything they can to promote ethical goods. This year is different. Fair trade has gone mainstream. From being the minority concern of the right-on and religious, it has suddenly become an idea everyone seems to agree on. Few dare speak against it. And the shops are cashing in.

Marks & Spencer begins selling Fairtrade clothes from tomorrow. Sainsbury's has ordered 200,000 T-shirts and is to make all its rose bouquets from flowers grown by Fairtrade farmers in Kenya. Even Topshop, iconic leader of fast fashion, will start selling ethical clothing tomorrow - including tops from Gossypium, super-soft jeans from Hug, and cotton blouses from People Tree, the favourite label of the actress and gossip-column-filler Sienna Miller. She may well be there on Tuesday night when Vic Reeves and Jemma Kidd will be among the famous "revealing their shopping habits" at a photographic exhibition at the Oxo Tower in London.

Then there is David Cameron. Imagine a die-hard Thatcherite being transported from the early Eighties to hear these words - "We will fight for free and fair trade, increase international aid and press for further debt relief" - coming from a leader of the Conservative Party. But fair trade is now so much a part of the consensus that it was among the least contentious of the aims and values set out by Mr Cameron last week.

A Mori poll says more than half of us recognise the Fairtrade symbol. In 2003, there were 150 products carrying it - now there are more than 1,500. What is going on?

"There was a major shift in people's attitudes last year with Live 8 and the Make Poverty History campaign," says Harriet Lamb, executive director of the Fairtrade Foundation. "They put the issues of global poverty firmly on the map. Millions of people wanted to be part of the movement in some way, whether it was watching the concert, wearing a wristband or lobbying their MP. It changed the backdrop against which we are all working."

Make Poverty History wanted to break the global trade structures that keep people in poverty, with many producers being forced to sell their goods for less than it costs to make them. Drinking a cup of Fairtrade hot chocolate enables you to feel good about helping such people directly, says Ms Lamb. "There are villages in Ghana that have been producing the best-quality cocoa in the world for 100 years, and they still don't have clean drinking water."

For shopkeepers, a product that makes us feel that level of emotional attachment is something like the Holy Grail. "This is not about charity," says Ms Lamb. "It is about good business that works for the public, works for the farmers who produce the food, and works for the businesses that sell it."

The first product in this country to carry the Fairtrade label was Maya Gold chocolate in 1994. The Fairtrade Foundation is run by Oxfam, Cafod and several other British charities, including the Women's Institute, and is one of 20 such organisations across the world that issues licences.

So how does Fairtrade work? If you want to sell cotton clothes and believe a Fairtrade logo will attract the right sort of customers, then you pay a fee to the foundation and agree to buy cotton from one of its registered producers. Your payments must enable the workers to have a decent living, plus a premium that can be invested in the local community - for building up the business or for essentials such as clean water and schools. You must also be prepared to sign long-term contracts, allowing the producers to plan ahead, and pay some money in advance if requested.

The farmers supplying the cotton may only have three or four acres each but will act together as a co-operative. The registered factories will have agreed to pay proper wages and provide housing where needed. They must also meet environmental standards, such as not using dyes that will pollute the local water supply.

Khima Ranchod lives on a small farm in Gujarat, India, with his wife and four children. He has farmed cotton all his life, as did his father - but prices have nose-dived as US and European cotton produced with heavy subsidies has flooded the world market. Mr Ranchod could not afford to send his daughters to school. After joining the Fairtrade scheme he gets a higher price and his income is stable. "We will benefit economically," he says, "but more than this we will be able to improve the education of the children in the village."

So everyone's a winner? Not according to those economists who are sceptical about Fairtrade. To say so on the record just now would be like eating kittens live on TV, but some believe the scheme props up markets that should be allowed to collapse or adapt. They also outline a problem with the way products reach us: pay a pound for a piece of chocolate and the cocoa grower will only get pennies. The rest will go on processing, packaging, distributing and promotion, work that is done here and benefits our economy, not those of the developing world.

There are also rival labels, such as the Ethical Tea Partnership funded by 18 tea companies including Tetley and Twining. The trouble is that the more logos, the more confusing it is for customers.

Safia Minney is a leader among the young, socially aware entrepreneurs who are changing business. She founded the fashion label People Tree after moving from England to Japan 12 years ago. The firm grew by 40 per cent last year, and will now supply clothes to Topshop for a month. "Let's hope the tipping point has come," she says. "This marks the beginning of a big change in the fashion industry and the unfair structures that have such a detrimental effect on millions of workers."

But the success of Topshop depends on reacting quickly to shifts in fashion, which must make it unlikely to give long-term promises to producers. Ms Minney believes industry must decide whether it is serious about having a conscience. "I am still shocked at the low level of awareness I found among CEOs at the economic forum in Davos," she says. "Many seemed to see corporate social responsibility programmes as a form of window-dressing."

But companies that use Fairtrade as a fig leaf may be heading for trouble. If customers become more involved in what they are buying, because they feel their blouse is helping Mr Ranchod's children, for example, won't they start asking awkward questions about how other products in a shop are made? The ones that come from sweatshops using child labour, for example?

For all the goodwill, Fairtrade products are still only a very small part of the market. Ms Lamb wants us all to buy them as a habit and not a spontaneous gesture. But even small changes are sending big messages. "People do want an end to poverty," she says. "The public are leading the way at the moment, and they want companies and governments to follow. We need all world trade to be made fair, but in the meantime we can get on and show how it might be done."

One fair day: There are now 1,500 products on the market in Britain that carry the Fairtrade label, which makes it possible to spend a whole day eating, drinking, wearing, carrying or kicking them

07:00: Eat breakfast

Fairtrade muesli from the local Co-op supermarket at £1.99 a box. Top it off with a sliced Oke banana from Ghana, bought at the same shop for £1.25 per kilo.

Drought, disease and storms have battered banana farmers near the Volta River in Ghana, but Fairtrade contracts allowed 520 workers to keep their jobs. The local price of $2.35 (£1.35) a box is well below the cost of production, but Fairtrade exporters pay $9, plus a dollar to be invested in the community.

08:00: Pull on jeans

£90 for a ladies' pair of the UK's first Fairtrade jeans, made with soft, hand-picked, organic, long-fibre cotton. Online from the Hug company, and in Topshop.

The cotton is grown without pesticides in Chiclayo, in the north of Peru, by farmers working on small plots of about three acres. Bought for a fixed price that allows them to plan for the future, it is processed in a factory where maternity and other rights are guaranteed.

09:00: Feed the baby

£1.99 for two 100g pots of Plum Baby mango and banana flavour, the first baby food in the world to carry the Fairtrade mark. Available in Sainsbury's from tomorrow.

More than half the ingredients in a food product must meet the Fairtrade criteria if it is to carry the label. Plum Baby uses the protein quinoa plus bananas and Tommy Atkins mangoes from Ecuador, all of which are Fairtrade. It also uses organic Alfonso mangoes, which are not accredited yet.

10:00: Snack at the station

£1.10 for a blueberry muffin from one of the AMT stands on platforms around the country. All coffee served by AMT now carries the Fairtrade label.

Sugar in the muffin comes from southern Malawi, where a co-operative helps farmers who could previously barely feed themselves. "We don't want to become beggars," says Brian Damata. Fairtrade income will provide clean water in three villages, a school and a health clinic.

11:00: Coffee on the virgin train

£1.59 for a regular cappuccino. From today all hot drinks on Virgin trains will be made with fairly traded ingredients.

Chocolate in the sprinkles on the coffee comes from the Dominican Republic, where it is produced by a confederation of 9,000 small-scale cocoa farmers. Fairtrade income was used to set up a plant nursery, so that farmers living on low incomes could grow some of their own food.

12:00: Visit Garstang

The market town halfway between Preston and Lancaster was the first in the world to declare itself for Fairtrade. Ninety per cent of shops there display the label. Oxfam campaigners in the Lancashire town came up with this idea in May 2000. It has since been taken up by 121 communities across the country, including cities such as Bristol and Liverpool. More will declare this week. The title means local shops and the council support fair trade.

13:00: Rice and curry for lunch

£1.69 for a 500g pack of white Crazy Jack Himalayan Basmati, the first rice to be certified by the Fairtrade Foundation. For sale in the organic section at Tesco and Waitrose.

Rice growers in Khaddar, north India, used to sell individually to agents at a local market, but low and unpredictable prices did not cover the costs of production. Now 572 small-scale farmers have agreed a minimum price plus a "social premium" that has built roads and bridges to villages inaccessible during the monsoon season.

15:00: Kick a football about

Work off lunch with a Fairtrade ball at £9.80 from an Oxfam shop. Rugby balls, volleyballs and basketballs are also available from the Fair Deal Trading Partnership.

Sameena Nyaz is an 18-year-old ball stitcher in the village of Chak Gillan, Pakistan. She belongs to a health-care scheme made possible by Fairtrade payments, which meant that all the costs of her recent thyroid operation were paid for. Without the scheme, she would still be ill and unable to earn a living.

17:00: Go shopping at Topshop

The Spring Leaf Scoop Neck cotton T-shirt by People Tree, Sienna Miller's favourite label, costs £29. In Topshop from tomorrow, for a month.

The organic cotton is grown in Gujarat, India, using only natural pesticides, then coloured with dyes that do not pollute the local water supply. The cloth is tailored by Assissi, an Indian project for "deaf, mute and marginalised women" who are educated by nuns and taught how to manufacture clothes.

20:00: Wind down with wine

Somerfield stocks Los Robles, a merlot from Chile, at £4.99 a bottle. Most other supermarkets also sell their own wines with the Fairtrade label.

Wine-making co-operatives started in Chile in 1939, when an earthquake wiped out many factories. Los Robles provides a canteen and housing for some of its workers in an area of extreme poverty, where there is no other industry, little rainfall, the soil is not very fertile and the river sometimes overflows.

21:00: Spoil yourself with chocs

A Dubble Bar from the Day Chocolate Company costs just 35p. Blockbuster Video, Spa and Woolworth's sell them, as do the big supermarkets.

Kuapa Kokoo means "good cocoa farmer" in Twi, the language spoken at the company in Ghana. It represents 48,854 farmers working an average of four acres at a time. Drinking water, sanitation and schools have been provided for families such as this one, who previously struggled because of very low cocoa prices.

22:00: Retire to bed

An extra large appliqué duvet cover in Fairtrade cotton can be bought by mail order or online from Bishopston Trading of Bristol for £49.90.

Ultra-low prices caused by cheap US and EU cotton meant Khima Ranchod could not earn enough to educate his daughters. Now he earns a higher, stable living by selling the crop from his two acres in Kutch, India, to a Fairtrade company called Agrocal, which works with 20,000 small-scale farmers across six states.