Go Fair Trade At The Office
Fairtrade is about better prices, decent working conditions, sustainable development, and decent terms of trade for farmers and workers in the developing world. By switching your workplace to Fairtrade certified tea, coffee and other products, you make a positive difference to the lives of farmers and workers in some of the world’s poorest countries.
So who’s the person whose job it is to stock up with tea and coffee at the office ? Or bananas and biscuits. Talk to them about switching the products they stock to fairly traded ones. True, it might be more complicated than finding one person to make that decision (it usually is) but ask around, find out who really decides and whether anyone has a problem with making the switch. Maybe donate some fairly traded products yourself – so people can discover for themselves they taste just as good.
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Sheffield, GB , 12 May 2008
I found this one surprisingly easy – we needed someone to organise the buying of tea and coffee, and I said I’d do it as long as we committed to only using fair trade products.
London, GB , 14 May 2008
When I was working in a large office 3 years ago, I asked the catering manager about sourcing Fair Trade products for the coffee bar and canteen. Initially he was reluctant because of supplier contracts, but he was persuaded to give it a go over Fair Trade Fortnight. He got so much positive feedback from people in the office that after that he did then go on to stock Fair Trade teas and coffee alongside the ‘unfair’ products. So, a partial success. But it raised the profile of Fair Trade brands with all the office workers.
Godalming, GB , 27 May 2008
I tried this. The people who run the tea club seemed to agree.
I bought an initial supply of FT tea and coffee, and sugar, I think, but after that there were excuses why they couldn’t buy FT tea and coffee.
However there are only a very few people in the tea club. I don’t drink hot drinks at work as a rule so don’t belong to the tea club myself.
Cardiff, GB , 17 Jul 2008
Very easily done. Our teaclub is now 100% fairtrade for Tea, Coffee & Sugar.
We got so excited about this we took it a lot further than we originally planned. Our milk is Soil Association “Ethical Trade” local organic milk.
We also have fairtrade organic drinking chocolate, organic fruit teas, organic fruit squash, fairtrade decaff tea & coffee, etc. for our members and we bank with the co-op. The club now has 3 times the number of members it’s “unfair” predecessor had and subs are the same.
The trick for this sort of club is making it simple to be a member and simple to run.
We’ve been running very smoothly for over 2 years now.
Drop me an email if you want more details.
17 Aug 2008
I’m glad the above have had success with this. Has anybody found this hard to do? Every year for the past 5, including this one, I have taken fairtrade tea, coffee, hot chocolate, sugar even chocolate bars into work during Fairtrade Fortnight, left them on the surface in the kitchen and emailed to everyone to help themselves with a link to the Fairtrade web site. h chocolate always goes! People do try it but it seems that people’s taste buds are so manipulated to the Nescafe taste that everything else seems taboo! There’s still a sad little jar sat on the side but the posters have remained up, together with a ‘Buy Organic’ one. At least people are now aware of it and perhaps they have Fairtrade at home?
Cardiff, GB , 18 Aug 2008
I think the world view of the office – perhaps even the “mission” of your workplace has a lot to do with this…
However, if appealing to peoples morals etc. doesn’t do the trick, you can always fall back on their laziness.
It does mean you have to do most of the work – which is only really possible if you can find a like-mindsd friend.
If you’re clever you can run an ethical tea club with a fraction of the effort it takes to run an unethical one. I’ll try and write a tip…