THE LIVING ROOMS

Eco Echo column February 2010

SWAP SHOP

Jill Roberson, partner in Norfolk’s largest ethical trader, The Living Rooms in Poringland, introduces the swapping into shopping.

Watching the climax of Strictly Come Dancing before Christmas with my family, I suddenly realised that when an entertainer is long-lived – such as Brucie himself – they gain recognition from a whole new generation for something new.  For my parents’ generation, Bruce Forsyth will always be associated with Sunday Night at the London Palladium; for me, he is Mister Generation Game; for my children, the slightly doddery one off Strictly.

He is not alone in this, of course.  Anyone under 30 will know Noel Edmonds as the presenter of a show in which people have the onerous task of opening boxes.  But for my generation, he will always be associated with the apogee of Saturday morning TV: Multi-Coloured Swap Shop.

My mind was taken back to that genuinely ground-breaking programme when I saw the theme of this year’s Fair Trade Fortnight, which runs from 22nd February to 7th March.  Why?  Because the theme of this year’s campaign is ‘The Big Swap’.

The premise is simple: for two weeks, everybody is being invited to swap their usual stuff for fair trade stuff, whether it’s their tea bags, their cotton clothing, or their bananas.

Not content with coming up with a great idea, the people behind the campaign have set themselves an ambitious target: they want one million and one people to make a positive choice to swap something in their shopping baskets, and to register it online (at www.thebigswap.org).

Each individual action help producers in the developing world get a better deal; but the point of this idea is wider than that.  It is about proving that the people of the UK want them to get a better deal, and that they are prepared to make a positive choice in order for that to happen.  If they succeed in reaching the target, they will have sent a powerful message to politicians, retailers and consumers, that fair trade is an important and growing movement in the UK.

Of course, if each of those one million and one people who make a swap in Fair Trade Fortnight carry on with that change throughout the year, it will have an even bigger effect, both for those producers, but also in the powerful message it sends to those who run our High Streets.

Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, launched in 1976, revolutionised children’s TV, becoming the first truly interactive TV programme.  Wouldn’t it be nice to think that in 30 years time, people will look back on our campaign in 2009 as the point at which fair trade moved up to the next level.

All you have to do is get swapping!

Article published in Eco Echo January 2010