Fairtrade Fortnight is a yearly event celebrating Fairtrade products, and encourages as many people to make the switch from standard items to fair trade. This year, it runs from 22nd Feb to the 7th March 2010.

Fair trade items have constantly been growing in popularity and range. They aim to give the farmer or producer of the base item a good price, ensuring better working conditions, living environment and support for their family. While many farmers and producers are given a very low income for the goods they produce, any item which is certified as Fairtrade ensures that a good price is paid for the hard work gone into making it. Fairtrade also encourages a more ethical production as environmental standards are monitored, with sustainability of the local environment a priority – fairtrade producers need to adhere to a set of environmental rules regarding the local environment in which the products are grown.

Fairtrade items are mostly known as food and drink, namely the base ingredients such as cocoa, sugar, coffee, tea, rice and pulses, and spices. Nuts and exotic fruit such as banana and pineapple can also be counted. Many supermarkets, coffee chains and well known brands are already switching to Fairtrade ingredients. While the quality of the product is often better, the cost to the consumer is often not increased significantly and people can enjoy their products knowing that they were ethically sourced.

Less well known, fairtrade items can also be household goods. Clothes can be produced from fairtrade cotton, or entire products like handicrafts can be assembled and manufactured in fairtrade. In this situation, the person who is assembling and creating the item is guaranteed a fair wage for what they are producing, and the same environmental standards are applied to the manufacturing process. Fair trade goods can range from handicrafts such as photo frames, toys, and ornaments, and functional items such as footballs and rugby balls, scarves and cutlery.

Make the switch to Fairtrade today to improve the life of producers – and the environment – around the world.

For great ideas of Fair trade gifts to celebrate Fairtrade Fortnight, please click here

For information about a Fairtrade tea and coffee offer from The Consortium, please click here

For more information see The Big Swap website

Fairtrade and the Fairtrade logo are © 2010 Fairtrade Foundation

Here are five easy eco tips to make your office greener:

Easy notepads:
If your office uses a lot of paper, before recycling build a stack of about 50 sheets, then cut into quarters leaving 4 smaller stacks of paper. Attach a bulldog clip to the top, and you have your own eco-friendly notepad, sketch pad or jotter. You won’t need to buy any more and you can re-use the clip afterwards. When finished, recycle the paper as normal!

Reuse padded envelopes:
If you receive a padded envelope through the post, instead of tearing them carefully open the top, being careful not to rip the paper too much.  The envelope can then be reused again. Simply put a label with the new address over the old one, stick a layer of tape over the opening at the top. Once secure you can post it again. This can be done several times!

Ditch the plastic cups:
By that we mean the disposable throw-away cups- the type where you drink a coffee then throw the cup away. This can produce an extortianate amount of waste as hundreds of cups can be thrown out every day.  The simple solution is bring your own cup! If you have a vending machine, most will allow you to put your own cup when the drink is dispensed so the plastic cup won’t appear. You’ll get a bigger hot drink,  and a nicer looking mug.

Switch Off: Energy usage of many companies and households is sky-high, yet so many computers are left on overnight unnessecarily. If they are not used overnight, give them – and the environment – a break by switching them off overnight when you go home. Turn off photocopiers, printers, monitors and lights, and make sure phones and chargers are unplugged to save more energy. Remember lower energy bills also mean more savings. It is said that a computer left on overnight produces the equivelant of enough carbon dioxide ( CO2 ) to fill a double decker bus.

Turn down the heat: Your heating costs will go up by 8% each time you increase the temperature by just one degree. A 2°C increase in office temperature creates enough CO2 in a year to fill a hot air balloon. Turn down the heating, put on some warmer clothes if you feel cool and you’ll see your bills – and environmental impact go down. Never ever have the heating on and windows open at the same time- it is one of the worst wastes of energy possible.

People living in the UK throw away well over 28 million tonnes per year of rubbish from their homes, the same as three and a half million double decker buses. Unfortunately, only around 27% of this waste is recycled while most of the rest is tipped into landfill sites – better known as rubbish tips, large holes dug into the ground to store it. The rubbish stays in the ground for a long time because it does not decompose easily, and it releases poisonous materials,  greenhouse gases such as methane and carbon dioxide and the trash itself can be a hazard to humans and wildlife. The space left for landfill is running out– and more landfill sites will need to be created.

So, we want to encourage you to recycle and reuse as much as you can. At school, buy recycled or sustainable products such as BE books and Tru-Green envelopes, re-use unwanted print-outs as sketch or note paper and then recycle them, Buy equipment in bulk to reduce packaging and deliveries, and set up a recycling scheme for all those lunch time bottles and cans.  We welcome any more ideas you might have to reduce, reuse and recycle.
Wildlife Watch is a great website for kids and grown ups to learn about how to reduce wastage and rubbish by playing games and checking out some great eco facts. Take a look today!

Here are some more of our favourite eco-tips with our responses, this time to do with an eco friendly lifestyle! We have many things here from picking fruit, not taking the car,  re-using shredded paper and encouraging children to recycle. So have a look and once again a BIG thank you to everyone who submitted these tips to our quoits competition. Simply click the link below to view them! Next and finally on friday we’ll post up our best gardening eco tips. For the meantime, click the link below and  enjoy!

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We would like to say a big thanks to everyone who suggested an eco-tip to us in our competition to win one of three rubberwood Quoits sets. We’re sorry if you didn’t win, but we had a hard time choosing our top 3 as there were so many excellent tips! The three winners of our competition are:

“Use empty plastic bottles to protect your seedlings from slugs and also provide a warm environment. Simply cut off the bottom of the bottle and place it over the plant. On hot days remove the cap pf the bottle. As the plant gets bigger cut off the top of the bottle.”
By Linda

“Use vegetable oil instead of smelly yucky chemically paint thinner to remove paint from your hands and skin. It works and its kinder to the skin and the  environment.”
By Sandra

“Make dandelion jam in spring. Dandelions are free and abundant. One bowl of washed dandelion flowers added with one cup of sugar, juice of a lemon, a  sprinkle of ginger, then make the jam in the usual way. It makes a good topping for ice cream.”
By C Brown

Go here to see what we thought of our winners!

Below are some more of our favourite household eco-tips submitted by you that didn’t quite make it but we loved them all the same. We will add more in the next few days!

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