Ethical economies of scale – can they really work?
Ethical grocers offer an alternative to supermarket chains, but can they hope to expand while maintaining their principles?
Absence has not made my heart grow more fond of supermarkets, but there are times when I miss their sheer convenience.
Since I gave up shopping in them almost a year ago I have halved my grocery bills, wasted less food, cut down on packaging and avoided eating horsemeat.
My routine now involves going to the local high street for fresh produce, making regular online bulk-buys and growing my own vegetables.
In busy weeks, not being able to buy everything from broccoli to bleach in the same place can seem a bit time consuming. What I would like is to be able to shop in a larger, affordable grocery. A supermarket, if you like, but one with an ethical policy.
Such places do exist: I'm thinking of the Unicorn Grocery in Manchester, the Real Food Store in Exeter, the True Food Community Co-op in Reading, London's The People's Supermarket, and The People's Supermarket in Oxford. These are places where you can get a week's worth of groceries, including wine and washing up liquid, and not pay inflated "artisan" prices for the privilege.
The models of these shops vary slightly, but at their most basic level they work a bit like a large scale buying group. Set up as social enterprises rather than profit-driven companies, they aim to make sure suppliers are paid fairly, but the fact they are affordable is the key to their success.
Unicorn Grocery, for example, regularly publishes its organic fruit and vegetable prices, which are consistently cheaper than supermarkets' non-organic produce. Currently, Unicorn says its organic cherry vine tomatoes cost £4.82 a kg, while at the nearby Tesco it claims comparable, non-organic tomatoes cost £6.25 a kg.
At the Real Food Store the organic free range eggs "are cheaper than anywhere outside of Poundland", according to one of the directors, David Mezzetti. "And they're local – the eggs come from less than seven miles away."
The problem is, of course, that we don't all live near a co-operative grocery (as it happens, I don't live near any of them). So what would be handy is an affordable, ethical chain of supermarkets.
Perhaps it's not as unlikely a concept as it seems: Brighton-based Ruth and Amy Anslow are in the process of setting up a chain they claim will be "fit for the 21st century" – hisBe Food CIC. "The existing supermarkets are unethical, boring and old-fashioned," Ruth says. "We think it's time for a change."
HisBe Food CIC, which stands for How it should be Food community interest company, focuses on sustainability and affordability. "We're not into fava beans and organic walnut oil," Ruth says. "We'll sell basics like fruit, vegetables, bread, dairy and meat, and dried goods. The difference from the major supermarkets is that we won't be profit-driven, so we'll pass savings on to consumers."
The company is run for profit, but its structure means those profits are invested back into the business rather than taken out for shareholders and directors. The company is launching a crowd-funding scheme looking for investments from £25-£5,000 to raise the rest of the cash to set up a branch.
The first shop should open in early summer 2013 and will be at the London Road end of Brighton. While the new supermarket won't deal in rock bottom £2-a-chicken prices, Ruth says people will be able to buy quality food without overspending. "We'll sell high-welfare meat, but we will talk to customers about what they are cooking so they can buy the right portion sizes," she says.
Most ethical grocery shops are standalone ventures. The People's Supermarket London model was used to establish a store in Oxford, but the shops are run completely independently. The True Food Co-op runs multiple mobile markets as well as a large shop, but says it doesn't plan to establish a chain, and neither does Unicorn Grocery.
"We're not looking to set up another shop anywhere else, let alone a chain," says Unicorn's Kelly Bubble. "We've discussed the issue, but expanding means having many more members and this can prove difficult.
"We keep our ethics strong by being a workers' co-operative with equal pay and say in the way things are done. Having other shops, whether they are franchises or part of a chain, means we could end up moving too far away from our buying ethics."
Instead, Unicorn offers advice and support to others setting up similar ventures in their own communities. "People come and see us and work out how they can meet the specific needs of their own local community. Every local area is different – we want to grow the idea of co-operative groceries, but for local people to set them up in their own communities," Bubble says.
The Anslows do hope to establish a chain of supermarkets. What they are driven by is the desire for everyone to be able to access affordable, quality food, and they think a chain will more effectively do this.
While chains are criticised for taking money out of areas, hiSbe Food, being a community interest company, plans to invest money back into the stores and their neighbourhood, holding community events and supporting local producers.
"We want to make a big impact on the UK grocery sector," Ruth says. "For this we need more than one store. Once we're established in Brighton we will look at expansion, for example through franchises, and aim to set up wherever communities tell us they want the supermarkets."
What do you think of this approach? Do you think an ethical retailer can have scale and remain true to its ideals?
Growing taste for Fairtrade shows it's Britain's cup of tea
Sales of certified Fairtrade products – from food to flowers - are soaring despite the recession, as the price gap with other goods shrinks
Have you eaten a banana today? Last year Britain imported an extraordinary 4bn bananas from some of the poorest parts of the world. But in a triumph for campaigners, one in three bananas consumed in this country is now certified as Fairtrade, guaranteeing fair prices for farmers.
While sales of organic food are sagging, Fairtrade is booming. Sales in 2012 were £1.57bn, up 19% on the year before.
In what has mushroomed into a mainstream sector, more than 4,500 items registered with the distinctive Fairtrade mark are on sale in UK supermarkets and independent shops to help ethically minded consumers do their bit to ensure fair and transparent pricing through the supply chain.
Few people realise that Britain leads the world on Fairtrade. The label now accounts for 10% of all tea sold in the UK, just over 8% of all roast and ground retail coffee and 12% of chocolate. Last year Britons drank 2bn cups of Fairtrade coffee, 3.2bn cups of tea and chomped their way through 1.3bn Fairtrade bananas.
The Fairtrade Foundation's new chief executive officer, Michael Gidney, says: "Fairtrade sales continue to confound expectation in the midst of the current tough economic climate. The UK public has developed a lasting appetite for food and goods traded on fairer terms with producers, and forward-thinking businesses are responding energetically to this by providing a wider range of products."
Despite this progress, Fairtrade still has a long way to go, accounting for as little as 1.5% of the overall UK food and drink market.
The foundation is on a mission to dispel the idea that Fairtrade-stamped goods are automatically more expensive than their counterparts. Gidney says economies of scale resulting from the arrival of major corporate players and brands such as Cadbury, Nestlé and Starbucks mean that price premiums once passed on to the consumer can now be absorbed within the business.
A Guardian Money survey using mysupermarket.com found that in many product categories – for example, coffee and chocolate – both cheaper and more expensive comparable conventional products flank Fairtrade products on supermarket shelves.
The Co-operative supermarket chain has been at the forefront of developing mainstream Fairtrade products for its shelves. Since first backing Fairtrade in 1998, and introducing the UK's first Fairtrade bananas in 2000, the Co-op has grown into the UK's largest Fairtrade retailer, notching up a 20% sales increase last year.
Brad Hill, Fairtrade manager at the Co-op, says: "There is a perception that people still pay a premium for Fairtrade but that is no longer the case. This month we became the first retailer in the UK to switch all own-brand bunches of standard roses and single-stem roses to Fairtrade, sourced from Fairtrade-certified growers in Kenya. We kept the price the same – £5."
But bananas tend to remain an exception, because small-scale growers cannot hope to compete with non-Fairtrade products sourced from low-wage, high-chemical-use plantations. For example, in Asda, Fairtrade bananas work out at 20p each, compared with 15p for regular bananas.
Sales of cocoa, sugar and bananas have all enjoyed significant growth – with increases of 21%, 35% and 15% respectively over 2011 figures – although coffee, tea and cotton have seen flatter sales. That may have something to do with the remaining price differentials: Waitrose Fairtrade coffee is nearly double the price of its Essential non-Fairtrade coffee. But Tesco's Clipper Fairtrade tea bags are now just a few pence dearer than an equivalent box of PG Tips.
How are farmers benefiting? Fairtrade says it is helping 1.24 million people – farmers and workers – across more than 66 developing countries. It says it guarantees a fair price and a brighter future for growers. As well as getting a fair price for their crops, they receive a Fairtrade premium that is put back into their farms and communities for the benefit of themselves and their families.
But the movement is not without its critics. Some on the left argue that Fairtrade has sold out to the major brands, while those on the right, such as the Institute of Economic Affairs, say Fairtrade is just another brand with an exaggerated sense of self-importance, and is not in a position to help all farmers.
Fairtrade is confident that this year will see another strong rise in sales, especially in the chocolate category. Mars's Maltesers brand is now Fairtrade, as is Cadbury's Bubbly and the full range of Green & Black's chocolate. Growth in sugar sales has been boosted by Morrisons switching its own-label range to Tate & Lyle Fairtrade sugar and Ben & Jerry's completing the conversion of its full range to Fairtrade. At the same time, enterprising Fairtrade companies such as Divine chocolate, Cafédirect, Traidcraft and Equal Exchange have brought out attractive new products.
The Fairtrade Foundation says 2013 is already off to a good start, with businesses such as Divine launching its Bee Happy range and Nestlé extending Fairtrade to two-finger Kit Kats, nearly trebling the company's purchases of cocoa and sugar on Fairtrade terms.
Asda turns to Canary Islands bananas to cut carbon footprint
Best-selling fruit will take four days to reach supermarket against 24 days from central America – but won't be Fairtrade
Supermarket chain Asda is to be the first to sell bananas from the Canary Islands, in an attempt to reduce the fruit's considerable carbon footprint.
Transportation time will be more than 80% shorter than for bananas sourced from central America. The fruit will be shipped from the Canaries to mainland Spain and then by road to the UK ripening centre – a total journey of four days as opposed to 24 days for bananas from the Caribbean and Americas.
The bananas, already familiar to the millions of Britons who travel on holiday to the Canary Islands each year, are sweeter and firmer than those grown in central America.
Bananas are the best-selling fruit at Asda, with shoppers buying more than 100m bunches a year. Bananas have been grown in the Canary Islands since the 1880s, thanks to the hot and dry climate, but this is the first time they will have been exported other than to mainland Spain and Portugal. Asda has been working with produce importer IPL and Fyffes, a leading importer and distributor of bananas.
While many supermarkets have switched to 100% Fairtrade bananas as standard, however, the new Canary bananas in Asda will not be Fairtrade.
Jock Higgins, banana technical manager at IPL, said: "This is a really exciting project which we've been working on for over a year. Not only do we see the environmental benefit of the reduced transport time, but these bananas are pretty tasty too. We can't wait to see what our shoppers think."
The bananas, which will be sold under the Fyffes brand, are priced at £1.50 for a bunch of six, and have gone on trial in over 230 stores, with a potential extension nationwide if they are successful.
Despite the proximity of the Canary Islands to the UK, no leading supermarkets stock bananas from the region because of issues around quality and volume. A Marks & Spencer spokeswoman said: " It's something we have looked at in the past but the quality wasn't right, but it is ongoing and we are still considering it."
Spanish sperm whale death linked to UK supermarket supplier's plastic
Sperm whale on Spanish southern coast had swallowed 17kg of plastic waste dumped by greenhouses supplying produce to UK
A dead sperm whale that washed up on Spain's south coast had swallowed 17kg of plastic waste dumped into the sea by farmers tending greenhouses that produce tomatoes and other vegetables for British supermarkets.
Scientists were amazed to find the 4.5 tonne whale had swallowed 59 different bits of plastic – most of it thick transparent sheeting used to build greenhouses in southern Almeria and Granada. A clothes hanger, an ice-cream tub and bits of mattress were also found.
The plastic had eventually blocked the animal's stomach and killed it, according to researchers from the Doñana national park research centre in Andalusia.
Researchers at first found it hard to believe that the 10-metre animal had swallowed the vast amount of plastic they found protruding through a tear in its stomach.
In all the whale's stomach contained two dozen pieces of transparent plastic, some plastic bags, ninemetres of rope, two stretches of hosepipe, two small flower pots and a plastic spray canister.
All were typical of the closely packed Almeria greenhouses that cover about 40,000 hectares – and are clearly visible in satellite photographs taken from space.
Desert-like Almeria has transformed itself into Europe's winter market garden thanks to the plastic greenhouses where plants are grown in beds of perlite stones and drip-fed chemical fertilisers. Local farmers report that Tesco, Waitrose and Sainsbury's are all valued customers.
The greenhouses produce 2.4 tonnes of plastic waste per hectare each year – or more than 45,000 tonnes altogether.
Much is treated in special waste centres, but environmentalists complain that local riverbeds are often awash with plastic detritus and, with greenhouses built right up to the high-tide line, some also ends up in the sea.
"The problem of degraded plastics that are no longer recyclable still remains," Renaud de Stephanis, lead researcher at Doñana, and his team reported in the Marine Pollution Bulletin.
Only about 1,000 sperm whales – the world's biggest toothed whales – are thought to live in the Mediterranean. They live for up to 60 years and are often killed after getting caught in nets or being hit by ships.
Now another man-made danger has been detected. "These animals feed in waters near an area completely flooded by the greenhouse industry, making them vulnerable to its waste products if adequate treatment of this industry's debris is not in place," warned de Stephanis.
Frozen beefburger sales down 43% since start of horsemeat scandal
Data also shows decline in frozen ready meals as Whitbread calls for overhaul of how processed meat industry is regulated
Sales of frozen beefburgers have decreased by 43% since the start of the horsemeat scandal as shoppers steer clear of products they fear might not be quite what they claim on the label.
Data from market research firm Kantar Worldpanel shows sales of frozen ready meals have also been hit, down 13% since the Food Safety Authority of Ireland said in mid-January that it had found horsemeat in beefburgers destined for sale in retailers including Tesco, Lidl and Aldi.
The figure also shows Tesco, which was one of the most affected after 100% horsemeat was found in its own-brand lasagnes, suffered its worst monthly fall in market share for at least 20 years in the four weeks to 17 February. Kantar said this was more likely because of a reduction in big promotions compared with a year ago, rather than shoppers staying away in protest against the scandal. However, retail analysts at Barclays said Tesco "may indeed be suffereing a degree of consumer backlash".