Sorry for the lack of blogging - one thing I didn't think about when I signed up to NaBloPoMo was that I wouldn't be able to blog while I was away on training in Wimbledon, as has been the case this week.It was a good time, as is always the case, with some quality teaching. I usually come back from training feeling refreshed, as it gives me the rare opportunities to get a good night's sleep - I had 10.5 hours on Wednesday night.
On the journey home, we got to talking about fair trade - Adam said how he actively avoids buying fair trade because it's not 'fair' and you're giving money to a corporation. I'm not quite sure that I understand this logic, as surely it's better to be giving your money to a corporation that is paying their workers a fairer wage than other corporations...As we were discussing this and I was trying to put across the benefits of buying locally, I got a bit lost, and ended up thinking that this - buying ethically, the impact what we buy and where from has on the environment, businesses and people - is something that I really would like to be more knowledgable about. If anyone would like to share any information with me about any of these things, I would greatly appreciate it - I will of course also make my own efforts to find out more. For anyone who is interested in these issues, I came across the 100 mile diet recently, which I like the idea of...
Photo: Taken by the road on the way to the local shops...
2 comments:
The whole issue is, I think, very, very complicated. There's so much to take into account and the truth is that there is no best method of buying. There are broad rules - fairtrade is better than not (but there are varying degrees of fairtradeness and the logo doesn't necessarily mean much) Buying local is better than not (but then whole foreign economies rely on us not buying local). I think it's best to shop intelligently rather than going totally nuts about exactly what you're doing - don't by apples from halfway around the world but fairtrade chocolate is cool.
If you're interested in minimising your impact then No Impact Man (http://noimpactman.typepad.com/blog/) is an interesting blog (a good place to start is this post: http://noimpactman.typepad.com/blog/2007/02/the_no_impact_e.html)
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