What a minefield!

Its been just on 3 weeks since I started looking into Fair Trade. Perhaps naively, I had the notion that all that was required to make the world a better place, was to purchase some Fair Trade coffee and chocolate. Anyone can do that!

Wrong! Wrong! Wrong.!

That theory all fell apart the instant, the second, NAY, the moment I started looking at other products, which of course, involved different problems with varying organisations battling those concerns.

Is the product fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance, NoSweatshop, StopHumanTrafix, No hunger, organically certified? I had a severe case of information overload. Things needed to be broken down to few simple things that I could actually achieve without the associated headache.

So, as a consumer, Do I need it? If I do need it (or at least REALLY want it), does the purchase improve or lessen the quality of life for those people at the other end of the produce chain?

Thats it. Simplistic solution for a complicated topic. It certainly doesn't fix everything, but it is a step in the right direction