So I’m excited by Trade As One’s campaign this holiday season to encourage all of us to buy Fair Trade gifts this Christmas. We turn our traditions into a way to help and love others through such purchases. And if enough of us do it, we can make a big difference. They write – “Think about this: Just One Fair Trade purchase from every American churchgoer this Christmas would lift one million families out of abusive poverty for one whole year. Let’s make sure that when gifts are given, they speak of the sort of world that Jesus came to show us—one where the last is first, where the poor are included, the sick are healed, and the captive is set free.”

Fantastic idea. And they created this great video to help get the message out there -

There are numerous ways one can support Fair Trade or other justice causes this Christmas. We are excited this year to find a Fair Trade Chocolate Advent Calendar. And I take time with the kids to support families around the world by purchasing animals from Heifer International. But there are numerous places online where one can find Fair Trade items to give this Christmas. I’ve listed some of my favorite sites below. But all it takes is just a little tweak to our holiday habits this Christmas to help show love to people around the world.

Clothing and Accessories

• Be The Change Elements
• Earth Creations
• Ecoland
• Fair Indigo
• Greenheart
• Indigenous Designs
• Mata Traders
• No Sweat Apparel
• Rawganique
• Simple Shoes
• Tinctoria Designs
• Tom’s Shoes

Food, Coffee, and Gifts

• Cafe Justo
• Equal Exchange
• Land of a Thousand Hills Coffee
• Natural Candy Store
• SERRV
• Taraluna
• Ten Thousand Villages
• Trade As One
• World of Good

Other

• Fair Trade Sports
• Reusable Bags

So have yourself a merry little fair trade Christmas. Celebrate traditions and do some good while you are at it.

But I’m facing an ethical dilemma. What do I give? I refuse to support human trafficking and child slavery by buying chocolate from one of the big name distributors. And as the buzz around the new documentary The Price of Sugar raises awareness of slave conditions inflicted on Haitians in the production of our sugar, I don’t want to just go with pure sugar stuff either (and of course trying to avoid high fructose corn syrup as well). It would be easier to be a hypocrite, but that’s not sitting well with me. So that means I need to find fairly traded organic Halloween candy to give out this year.

Halloween is a $2 Billion dollar a year industry for candy and the average household spends around $17 each year on the candy supply to give out. To break it down – each piece of mini brand name candy costs you between 8-13 cents and the “fun size” pieces are between 20-30 cents each. Depending on the size of your neighborhood, that adds up. When I first started searching for fair trade Halloween candy a few years ago, the cheapest stuff I found in my search was $.50 a piece. I realized that attempting to have an ethical and green Halloween could really cost me. So at the time I turned to the internet.

Thanks to the groundwork done by the wonderful Candy Blog I found what I was looking for. While there doesn’t appear to be loads of options out there, there are some pretty good choices available. Apparently Global Exchange carries an entire Fair Trade Halloween Kit full of candy, decor, and info postcards. Pretty spiffy. I’m also a fan of their fair trade gold coins which will go well with the pirate theme Emma is insisting upon this year. Also available are Endangered Species Bug Bites. These mini-chocolate bars come in milk and dark chocolate varieties and are high on the yummy scale. I let Emma try one and asked if if she thought other kids would like them. She said, “no, just Emma, I eat them all.” We’re working on the sharing thing. Plus each piece comes with a bug trading card which I think are rather fun. If you are looking to avoid chocolate altogether, Yummy Earth carries organic lollipops and hard candy in a variety of interesting flavors (watermelon, pomegranate…). And of course, the Natural Candy Store carries all sorts of fairly traded, organic, and allergen free options.

But in addition to these online options, I am beginning to see some in store possibilities available this year. My local Whole Foods is offering individually wrapped organic gummy bear packages as well as large bags of the yummy Earth lollipops. Ten Thousand Villages carries bite size chocolate bars. It’s a start at least, and hopefully each year other stores will join in green Halloween offerings.

(this is a revision of a post that first appear at onehandclapping)

ReusableBags.com has put together a fantastic guide to how to pack a waste-free lunch and what the benefits of doing so are -

From brown-paper lunch bags to plastic wraps and baggies to the unnecessary packaging of single-serving foods, our addiction to fast and “convenient” lunch products adds billions of tons of trash to landfills each year, not to mention the enormous waste of money and natural resources required to produce and dispose of packaging. (EPA and U.S. Census data)

Adopting a waste-free lunch lifestyle is a simple way to reduce consumption – literally on a daily basis. Making lunches more sustainable cuts down on thousands of use-and-toss items, while saving money in the long run.

Using lunch-related “reusables” fits right into our overall lifestyle philosophy of “reduce, reuse and save.” Smart, reusable lunch options like fabric lunch bags, reusable sandwich wraps and snack bags, and reusable bottles, reusable food containers and accessories (like reusable napkins, straws and utensils) reduce the amount of paper and plastic lunch waste that goes into our landfills. They also save you money, by avoiding the rip-off of single-serving foods and minimizing or eliminating money spent on throwaway bags, wraps and containers. Plus, by choosing lunch containers made out of high-quality materials such as stainless steel and cloth, you can reduce your exposure to harmful chemicals like phthalates and BPA as well as lead in lunch boxes. (Check out our buying guide for help selecting the right waste-free lunch tools for you.)

Our Top Facts: Why Are “Use-and-Toss” Brown-Bag Lunches So Wasteful?

• Close to 2.7 billion juice boxes end up in landfills every year. (Container Recycling Institute)
• Each child who brings a brown-bag lunch to school every day will generate 67 pounds of waste by the end of the school year – that’s 18,760 pounds of lunch waste for an average-sized school! (EPA)
• According to the 2004 U.S. Census data, there are 36.4 million elementary school-age children and 16.8 million high school-age children. If every child adopted a waste-free lunch (including finishing all of their food), we could divert more than 3.5 billion pounds of trash from our landfills each year.
• Each year the U.S. consumes over 380 billion plastic bags, sacks and wraps. (EPA)
• Lunchtime trash is second only to office paper as the leading source of school waste. (Green Teacher Magazine, Fall 2004)
• A disposable lunch costs $4.02 per day, versus $2.65 for a waste-free lunch. That translates to a savings of about $246.60 per child per year. wastefreelunches.org

Tips for Packing Waste-Free Lunches

Do pack:

• Reusable fabric lunch bags or lunch containers
• Sandwiches in reusable wraps, bags or containers
• Drinks and soups in reusable containers, such as a thermos, or recyclable containers, such as cans or glass bottles
• Snacks purchased in bulk and packed in reusable containers or bags
• Whole fruits without packaging
• Cloth napkins
• Stainless steel or glass straws
• Stainless steel or bamboo reusable utensils

Don’t pack:

• Paper lunch bags
• Plastic baggies that are not reusable
• Individually- wrapped snacks, meals or desserts
• Juice boxes
• Disposable forks and spoons
• Disposable straws
• Paper napkins

Not sure what tools you need to pack a waste-free lunch? Check out our helpful buying guide.

Other tips:
While single-serving options are great for boosting food companies’ profits, many are just a plain waste of your money. Think bulk, not single-serving. You’ll save money by buying in bulk, natural resources by opting out of wasteful and excessive packaging, and divert trash from our landfills:

• Instead of buying individually-wrapped granola bars, chips, cookies or cheeses, buy in bulk and pack in reusable bags and containers.
• Do the same for yogurt, pudding and applesauce – pack in reusable jars or bottles, rather than buying single-serve portions.
• Purchase (or make your own) large quantities of beverages and soups, then pack in reusable bottles and thermoses.
• Cut sandwiches into quarters to fit inside of any container.

Our 5 Steps to a Waste-Free Lunch: