The front page of Waitrose.com is devoted to Fairtrade fortnight. They have fairtrade recipes, a podcast discussing the Fair Trade debate, and highlighted products.

The Abingdon shop also gives Fair Trade an important place, with a billboard advertising pink Fairtrade roses from Kenya, and this display as you walk in.

Tesco are into Fair Trade in a big way. They currently have extra clubcard points for buying Fair Trade products. The Tesco corporate website says “Tesco strongly supports Fairtrade which guarantees that developing world farmers are paid a price that covers the cost of production, plus a premium to be spent on community projects such as better healthcare, sanitation, education”

Tha Abingdon Traidcraft group have been selling Fair Trade goods from this charity shop in Bath Street for about seven years. But they are no longer there and apologise saying” “We regret that owing to a drop in sales in the last six months, we will cease to sell Traidcraft products from the Bath Street shop from the end of February.”
But they are carrying on elsewhere, at 35 Ock Street, and at various functions and fetes, and from most of the churches in Abingdon. Here they are at Trinity, as advertised on the screen

and seen here. Or see their website for a full list.

I went into Oxfam and got myself a red nose. Red nose day is not until March 16th but I’m sitting here with it on, trying to do this post, and it hasn’t helped ONCE yet.

Next to the red noses, there was a huge range of Fair Trade goods on one side.

and on the other side of the red noses were even more Fair Trade chocolates and bars and biscuits and jams and more serious things like coffee, tea, fruit juice, and leaflets explaining about Fair Trade. Oxfam were also giving away free samples, like little sachets of Fairtrade tea coffee and sugar, and broken bits of biscuits.