Posts by Andy Redfern

I'm so optimistic that when I tilt my head I can see the shape of a jelly bear in this kiwi

So week one of my ESS challenge is successfully completed. For those of you who missed my first blog, I am trying to only eat and drink things that you can buy from the Ethical Superstore for the whole of Lent. My only relaxation is drinking water from the tap.

After 7 days things are going pretty well. I’ve lost a couple of pounds in weight and I’m eating much more healthily (well apart from the Divine Strawberry truffles which have gone past their best before date – lovely!).

Breakfast has been either homemade bread using the Dove’s Farm bread kit (cooked in my breadmaker – just add a cup of water and turn on) or Rude Health’s Morning Glory porridge. The latter was a little bit of  a shock – I thought it was just porridge. Turned out to be a mixture of seeds and grain plus porridge oats. A little bit of an acquired taste but I’m happy to say I have now acquired it; even when made with just water rather than milk.

Lunch has been soup, soup and more soup. Tried most of the Seeds of Change range and today began working through the Suma Soups starting with the Thick Vegetable. All very tasty.
The main meal has been tricky although the organic vegetable box has generally come up trumps. Vegetables used in casserole, stir fry and pasta have all worked well with the awesome Harrissa sauce working a treat to give even the most mundane looking plateful a zing of flavour.

Read the rest of One week gone and I’m still optimistic »

Will Cadbury's soon become Fairtrade like these chocolate chunks?

Rumours reach EthicalSuperstore HQ that Cadbury’s is set to announce that it is go fairtrade on all of its Dairy Milk range of products. This is the highest profile brand yet to go fairtrade.

When Cadbury’s bought Green and Blacks, we decided to hold fire on delisting them for a change corporate ownership while we decided whether Cadbury’s would negatively impact on G&B or whether it would be a postive impact on the whole company. (Green and Blacks the acceptable face of Cadburys?) It now looks like the positive approach to sustainable trade has had an impact on the whole Cadbury group.

So is this good news? I think on balance it is. Awareness of fairtrade will leap again as more people become exposed to what it is about through a product they are already buying. It also removes the age old quibble – “the fairtrade version doesn’t taste like my brand”. Now your brand is fairtrade so it really is a no effort switch. The volume of fairtrade cocoa will soar with direct benefits accruing for the producers.

Read the rest of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk to go Fairtrade »

Lunch on Day Two

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you will probably be currently thinking that the whole organisation has gone “Fairtrade Fortnight” and “giving things up for lent” mad.  You shouldn’t be surprised though – Ethical Superstore is largely staffed by optimists.  We don’t look at global poverty and climate change and shrug our shoulders. We believe that we can make a difference to these things even through something as mundane as the type of coffee you drink. So when Lent comes around many people in the team have decided to do things to make their lifestyle or the world a better place.

So in that context my decision for lent doesn’t feel quite so stupid – I’ve decided to only eat things I can buy from the Ethical Superstore range for lent. When someone first said it couldn’t be done, it seemed easy – I reeled off a long list of all the things we sell. However, as I begin my Lenten pledge it’s the things we don’t sell that seem more problematic – no milk, no margarine, no butter, no bread, no eggs. This is going to be an interesting six weeks.

So the rules I have set are quite simple, apart from water (and by the way we do sell water too!) everything I consume over the coming weeks will have all of the ingredients derived from the Ethical Superstore range of food products. Yesterday was day 1.

Read the rest of I’m not mad, just optimistic… »

All of us here at Ethicalsuperstore.com want to extend a heartfelt thank you to all who bought from us, all who told a friend about us, and all who gave us feedback about our service – the excellent bits and not so excellent.  We are a team of people who are always ready to serve you.  Without you there would be no us, and our 2009 pledge has at it’s core one key purpose – to  provide you the best possible service the UK (and for the matter the world) has to offer.

As we sat down to write our pledge for 2009 we intuitively knew that we needed to hear from you.  You are our best gauge for what matters most.

Throughout the year many of you gave us feedback on our service – please keep it coming.  Right now you have the chance to further influence the service we offer to all our customers.  It doesn’t matter if you tell us over the phone, send comments through the post or write on our blog.

Whatever your preferred method of communication, we’d love to hear from you.  Really truly this isn’t just marketing speak.  Talk to us please.

Read the rest of Our 2009 Pledge To You »

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?