Butterflies
Buy Fairtrade
It’s the opposite of unfair trade, see.
If you’ve been here for more than about four seconds you’ll be aware of the official Zero position on late-stage capitalism: It’s dogshit. We’ve ballsed up whatever shot we had at living decently in this borderline paradise, choosing instead to kidnap humans for workers, screw the poor in sweatshops, keep people down and dumb and dirt broke, and set the planet on fire for lols. Happily, while waiting for the world’s conscience to kick in we can model a better way of doing things by buying Fairtrade.
The Fairtrade movement sets standards for trading with people in developing countries as an alternative to stripping the place like aliens invading the earth. It demands such novelties as decent working conditions, paying farmers enough to cover the cost of production, and a premium to invest in business or community projects so at some point people’s lives can actually improve.
Buying Fairtrade is a belter of a Butterfly because we get to change the world just casually trotting through the supermarket. We all remember the classic Sesame Street thing: “A loaf of bread, a quart of milk, a stick of butter and some sugar to radically change the lives of the world’s poorest people and show the developed world’s corporations we ain’t taking their shit no more.” It’s that easy, Butterfliers!
Here at Zero Towers we buy Fairtrade chocolate, sugar, chocolate spread, jam, chutney, bananas, oranges, apples, satsumas, grapes, sweets, brownies, cookies, cereal bars, socks, T-shirts, jeans and teabags. It takes no more effort to bung a Fairtrade banana into the trolley than it does your classic or “horribly immoral” banana but the difference is huge: Change lives or do harm. The tiny price difference – about 7p for a pack of seven bananas – is worth it and goes a long way. That long way being several thousand miles, to the farmers who can now afford to do the little things in life that make life worth living. Like actually staying alive. That’ll do until the world properly gets its shit together.
Buy Fairtrade
You'll pay people even to live on
We'll wipe out poverty forever
Zeroism
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