Most people will be familiar or at least have heard of the good work that Fair Trade tries to do around the world. They are one of the very few organisations who attempt to enable us all to make a difference in our daily lives not be money donations or projects abroad that we will not be apart of and never see, but rather by giving us a choice about what we eat and drink and by helping us to decide on how the produce that we buy is sourced.

So what does ‘Fair Trade’ mean exactly? A vast amount of the products that we buy from our local shops or from supermarkets were sourced from foreign countries, often because the labour there is much cheaper and companies can reap far more profit. This is done through the utilisation of extremely low wages and low cost production in comparison to what they would have had to spend in countries from the western world. Whether it’s coffee beans or bananas, Fair Trade only puts their stamp on products that have been sourced fairly and where they have made certain that workers were paid fair wages so that companies were not taking advantage of cheap labour.

The above video shows a woman being typically ‘unfair’ at a coffee stall. The lady, who pushes past customers queuing in front of her, rudely and unfairly tries to get her coffee by skipping the queue. The onlookers are naturally mostly shocked at her behaviour. The scene is meant to make you think about unfairness in general and how pushing past someone in a queue should provoke the same reaction as the exploitation of workers in foreign countries provokes. At the end of the video there is a test you can take to assess how ‘fair’ you are and if answered honestly, you might be surprised to learn that you are not as fair as you might think. That isn’t to say that we are all unfair, but how many of us would have qualms about using the disabled toilet if the queue to our own toilet was too long? There are small things we can all do everyday to make the world a fairer place and Fair Trade makes this easier for us. Look out for their sticker on the produce you buy so that you can be assured that you are not indirectly involved in exploiting someone far worse off than you on the far side of the world.