The Fairtrade Foundation this week launched its annual Fairtrade Fortnight campaign, which takes place between 27 February and 11 March, with news that sales of Fairtrade continue to outperform overall commercial trends.
Estimated retail sales of Fairtrade products reached £1.32bn (€1.56bn) in 2011, a 12 per cent increase over 2010, and continued growth is expected in 2012.
The theme for the 2012 campaign is ‘Take A Step For Fairtrade’, calling on the UK public to take 1.5 million steps for Fairtrade – one for every farmer and worker the Fairtrade system hopes to work with – by the end of 2012.
A special ‘step-o-meter’ has been set up on the Foundation website so that these steps can be logged, including the Co-op’s decision to switch all its bananas to Fairtrade.
“Fairtrade is an example of responsible capitalism in action,” says Harriet Lamb, executive director of the Fairtrade Foundation.“The commercial reality is that forward-thinking companies are showing leadership in committing to Fairtrade, realising that, as well as it being the right thing to do, they need to invest in smallholders, developing better, longer-term relationships, to ensure the future supply of commodities like cocoa, coffee, sugar, tea, fruit and more.”
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