Working to provide fair trade

Northland businesses, school offices and churches have embraced fair trade products, helping to advance some of the world's poorest countries.

Trade Aid Whangarei manager Rebecca McInnes said lots of offices, schools and churches were now stocking the company's fair trade coffee, hot chocolate and tea in their staffrooms.

Fair trade products are those obtained for a fair and reasonable price from the world's most disadvantaged producers, she said.

"Fair trade is all about helping people by ensuring sellers receive a fair price, therefore, giving them a better opportunity to help themselves," Ms McInnes said.

Trade Aid is New Zealand's own home-grown, not-for-profit fair trading organisation that purchases craft and food products from more than 80 trading partners, representing hundreds of thousands of small farmers and artisans in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific.

Trade Aid importers started 40 years ago and were the first in the country, with the Whangarei branch opening 25 years ago, she said.

Ms McInnes said a number of cafes and restaurants around Northland are also stocking fair-trade coffee and tea, which is positive for the movement.

This Saturday is World Fair Trade Day, and the Whangarei Trade Aid store will be celebrating with chocolate - one of the world's tastiest treats and most unfairly gathered products.

Ms McInnes said customers throughout the country will be treated to chocolate tastings, chocolate competitions and even chocolate music and videos.

"It's a celebration of the win-win aspect of fair trade that highlights the links between New Zealand consumers and the talented producers who make our products in developing countries around the world," she said.

The concept of fair trade is topical right now. A recent tragedy in Bangladesh is being blamed in part by the Western world's pressure for low prices, leading to employers making shortcuts with building safety. The death toll from last month's clothing factory collapse in Bangladesh has topped 700.

It's the worst in the garment sector worldwide, surpassing the 1911 garment disaster in New York City's Triangle Shirtwaist factory, which killed 146 workers, and recent tragedies such as a 2012 fire that killed 260 people in Pakistan and one in Bangladesh that killed 112, also in 2012.

Ms McInnes said a few items in their Whangarei Trade Aid branch come from Bangladesh. "But we [Trade Aid] do a social account where we can be sure that we are only making a positive impact on their [the sellers'] lives," she said.