Teachers Citizenship - Citizens of the World Money Matters Interactive Activity
Every day, consumers make choices that impact on the lives of people around the world.
When a purchase is made at the supermarket, the customer's choice influences which suppliers the supermarket chain chooses to use. By increasing or decreasing demand customers determine, for instance, whether the bananas available are organic or covered in pesticides.
There are 8 locations to explore including the corner shop, coffee shop and farm. Topics include consumer rights and responsibilities, globalisation, fair trade and organic foods.
Aims: During this activity students will find out what it means to be a consumer. After completing the activity and accompanying worksheet students will be able to:
Identify that spending money has a global impact
Identify what product information is needed to allow people to make an informed decision about the products they buy
Understand that as consumers people have important responsibilities
Citizenship, KS4 Knowledge and understanding about becoming informed citizens
1.f) the opportunities for individuals and voluntary groups to bring about social change locally, nationally, in Europe and internationally
1.g) the importance of a free press, and the media's role in society, including the internet, in providing information and affecting opinion
1.h) the rights and responsibilities of consumers, employers and employees
1.j) the wider issues and challenges of global interdependence and responsibility, including sustainable development and Local Agenda 21
Developing skills of enquiry and communication
2.a) research a topical political, spiritual, moral, social or cultural issue, problem or event by analysing information from different sources, including ICTbased sources, showing an awareness of the use and abuse of statistics
Worksheet
Answer the following questions:
Do you think consumers want to buy ethically? Find evidence, facts and statistics to support your opinion.
There are a variety of labelling schemes in operation that give you information about the food you eat. What is the difference between fair trade, organic and free range?
Consumers make quick decisions. What kind of scheme would you develop to give consumers enough information so that when they purchase a product they can make an informed choice quickly?
Should a ban be put on imported goods which were produced by workers who laboured in dangerous, unsafe or unfair conditions? If yes, outline what impact this might have on the UK economy.
Make a list of all the goods you used yesterday, from toothpaste to trainers. Now, identify where those goods came from. Why might you have difficulty completing this task?
How can you prevent underage children from working in sweatshops?
Corner Shop Local shops offer convenience on your doorstep. Pros: Convenience, community focus, long opening hours. Cons: Lack of choice, small shop, pricey, rarely carry organic or fair trade products.
Health Food Shop Good place to buy healthy stuff. Pros: Wide range of health products & natural remedies, often organic, fair trade or recycled products. Cons: Expensive, not a one-stop shop, need to remember to read the precautions.
Travel Agent Want a holiday without feeling like you're trampling on the world? Ethical tourism minimises the negative impact of travel. Pros: Small specialist trips, meaningful community participation, visit new places without causing harm, protect natural areas, generate income. Cons: Expensive, limits to where you can travel, no industry standards/ regulation.
Clothes Shop Every brand name under the sun, without stretching your wallet to its outer limits. Pros: Convenient, easy shopping, latest trends, often good bargains, lots of choice, clear consumer policies. Cons: Can be expensive, inconsistent sizing, cost doesn't equal quality, associated with sweatshops, not eco-friendly, not very individual.
Coffee Shop The coffee shop is a perfect place to put your feet up and enjoy a hot cup of coffee. Pros: Easy, quick, cheap, good for meeting up with mates, caffeine fix. Cons: Fair trade and organic coffee not usually available, expensive if becomes a habit.
Charity Shop One person's rubbish is another's treasure. Go green and raise money for charities. Pros: Inexpensive, supports a good cause, eco-friendly, original one-off items. Cons: Limited choice, can be hidden damage, might not last long.
Supermarket Supermarkets offer the quintessential shopping experience - massive rows of anything you might ever want to buy, from baklava to shoe laces. Pros: Wide selection, easy shopping, ready-meal heaven, occasional bargain. Cons: Can be expensive, hard to get to, food travels long distances, limited fair trade and organic items, pesticides.
Farm Life on the farm: Chickens live life to the fullest and you get farm fresh produce without any nasty surprises. Pros: Know where eggs come from, no pesticides or antibiotics, animal welfare comes first. Cons: Inconvenient location, expensive, high demand means eggs aren't always available.
The Ivory Coast, Ghana and Indonesia produce most of the world's cocoa
A few large corporations control the world cocoa industry
These corporations don't pay a fair price for cocoa
Plantations aren't environmentally friendly
Cocoa industry has been linked to child slavery
We consume over 500,000 tonnes of chocolate every year, a habit which costs us, as a nation, about £3.6 billion.
Cocoa farmers see only a tiny amount of the fortune we're gobbling up.
The worldwide confectionery industry is controlled by a few corporations. Fair trade campaigners say these corporations don't pay a fair price for cocoa beans and keep too much money from the chocolate they sell.
Small-scale cocoa producers have no power Small-scale cocoa producers don't have the power to influence prices. Corporations have the resources to search around for the cheapest price. When they do find it, farmers are often forced to sell their cocoa for less than its worth.
The largest cocoa-producing countries are the Ivory Coast, Ghana and Indonesia. About 500,000 tonnes of cocoa powder is traded internationally each year. Cocoa is grown on plantations where workers toil in backbreaking conditions.
Ivory Coast associated with child slave labour The Ivory Coast, the world's leading producer and exporter of cocoa (nearly 40 percent), has been associated with child slave labour.
According to Save the Children, a children's rights organisation, thousands of children are working on coca farms in dangerous and exploitative conditions.
Children are enticed to plantations by promises of wages of $150 USD a year. Instead they work 12-hour days in appalling conditions, get little food, no medical care and no money, either.
Children are routinely beaten.
Playing fair Fair trade initiatives provide alternatives to consumers who may wish to purchase chocolate that is made from cocoa beans not harvested by exploited labour, children or otherwise.
Fair trade organisations try to reduce those risks by ensuring that producers are rewarded fairly for their product.
Fair trade farms are also healthier. Unlike plantation-grown cacao trees, which are grown in the sun, trees on organic farms are grown in the shade alongside indigenous crops such as avocado, pineapple, bananas and coffee. As a result, they don't need pesticides.
Kenya, Malawi and Zimbabwe produce 25 per cent of the world's tea
70 per cent of Britons drink tea
Price of tea on the world market has dropped by half since the 1970s
Low prices mean plantation workers get paid next to nothing
We've been drinking tea for more than 350 years. Black tea, green tea, English Breakfast, Earl Grey, Chai, Iced Tea. Seventy percent of us noisily slurp back the stuff, at the average rate of three cups per day.
Approximately 90 per cent of the tea drunk in Britain is known as blend tea the type of tea that you can buy in most supermarkets and shops.
Tea doesn't just come from just one type of tea leaf, but is an intricate blend that contains up to 35 different teas. Each popular blend has its own recipe and that recipe is the company's trade secret.
Tea trade controlled by tea giants The tea trade is dominated by a few giants who buy up bulk tea from around the world. Tea is commonly sold at large auctions in the country of origin.
Kenya, Malawi and Zimbabwe produce 25 percent of the world's tea; China 18 percent; India 14 percent.
Plantation workers paid next to nothing The global price of tea has dropped by nearly a half since the 1970s.
'Low prices may seem great for shoppers, but all too often someone is paying the price usually the farmers at the end of the supply chain', said Fairtrade Foundation Director Harriet Lamb. 'Producers are frequently faced with the stark choice between facing ruin or selling their product at any price'.
Businesses shutting down Low prices translates into abysmal wages for workers. Many small businesses are going belly up.
In India, for example, up to 65,000 plantation workers have seen their livelihoods destroyed as their estates have been abandoned because low prices have made them unprofitable. A further 20,000 workers have not been paid for up to 20 months.
Dangerous pesticides Plantation growers compensate for price losses by reducing costs and expanding production. World tea output tripled over the past forty years. But this has created a vicious cycle of overproduction, causing tea prices to plummet.
Moreover, increasing output comes at a cost, such as the intensive use of fertilisers or pesticides.
Playing fair In contrast, fair trade tea guarantees tea pickers fair wages and safe working and living conditions.
A part of the earnings from every purchase of fair trade tea goes into a plantation community development fund, which translates into better housing, healthcare and education for tea-growing communities.
There are over 120,000 fair trade tea farmers in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, China, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Uganda.
Cotton is grown in 90 countries, 70 of which are developing nations
High street shops sell cotton t-shirts that are cheap and trendy. But there's a price to pay for being hip.
The only thing is, we're not the ones who are paying the price.
Human rights organisations say the garment industry is dominated by brand-name bullies. These bullies rely on sweatshop labour and cotton laden with pesticides to produce their goods.
Human costs need to be factored into the bottom line Corporations don't operate their own factories. Instead, they've found it's more cost-effective to exploit workers in other countries to meet consumer demand.
Subcontractors set up sweatshops with hazardous working conditions, where workers aren't paid enough to exist and physical and sexual intimidation are common.
Cotton most toxic crop on earth Cotton is grown in over 90 countries, 75 of which are developing nations. The big cotton producing nations are China, USA, India, Uzbekistan and Pakistan. They account for nearly 80 per cent of world production.
Cotton accounts for 25 per cent of worldwide insecticide use, making it the most toxic crop on earth.
Organic cotton farming offers a healthy and safe alternative to pesticides and genetically engineered cotton. Organic farmers use biologically based, rather than chemically dependent, growing systems to raise crops.
Hemp is a healthy alternative Another alternative is hemp cotton. (While industrial hemp looks a lot like its leafy cousin, Cannabis sativa, or marijuana, it lacks the same hallucinatory properties.) Hemp requires no pesticides and needs little water, yet it renews the soil with each growth cycle.
It's considered by many to be a natural, miracle fibre. Hemp has three times the strength of cotton. It's less expensive to farm because it doesn't need much attention while growing.
However, neither organic cotton nor hemp guarantees that worker's rights have been protected. Large clothing manufacturers have cottoned on to the idea of going green and use organic cotton and hemp in their clothing lines.
Fair trade clothing, in contrast, is produced on a small scale with suppliers offering up, among other benefits, fair wages. The downside is that the clothing produced tends to have a very 'eco-friendly' look, definitely not high fashion.
There are 31 billion cups of coffee drunk in the UK each year
Coffee is the second most valuable world commodity after crude oil
Up to 100 million people worldwide are involved in the growing, processing, trading and retailing of coffee
In 2001 coffee accounted for 42 per cent of the UK's fair trade product sales
For us, a cup of coffee represents little more than a quick caffeine fix. For impoverished coffee farmers, however, coffee is a matter of life and death.
Coffee is the second most valuable world commodity after crude oil. Because of this, it has become central to the economies of many of the world's poorest countries.
There are 31 billion cups of coffee drunk in the UK each year. In 2000, we officially started preferring coffee to tea.
Coffee is grown in more than 50 equatorial countries and provides a living for more than 20 million farmers. Altogether, up to 100 million people worldwide are involved in the growing, processing, trading and retailing of the product.
However, in 2001, prices of coffee on the international market collapsed to record-breaking lows, slashing farmers' and national incomes alike.
Price drops have meant that farmers who produce our coffee can barely make ends meet, while big corporations, who sell more and more coffee off the backs of the farmers, were £60 million better off in 2001 than the previous year.
Fair trade coffee As coffee drinkers we don't really know who produces the coffee we drink. However, buying fair trade coffee gives us a chance to contribute to the economic sustainability of at least some of the world's small coffee farmers.
In 2001, UK sales of fair trade products topped pound;44m. Coffee sales accounting for pound;18.5m, or 42 per cent of the total sales. But the Fairtrade organisation points out that this number needs to increase dramatically to change the lives of the majority of the world's coffee farmers.
Workers badly paid and exposed to deadly pesticides
Multinationals control two-thirds of the world banana market
Bananas are the UK's most popular fruit. (They overtook apples as Britain's favourite in 1998).
About 95 per cent of all British households buy bananas, making bananas the most valuable food product in supermarkets (only petrol and lottery tickets outsell them!).
Annual British banana sales top £750 million.
A deadly fruit The world banana trade is worth £5 billion. Yet, banana workers are badly paid, forced to work in appalling conditions and exposed to deadly pesticides.
Latin American bananas, called dollar bananas because the plantations they're grown on are controlled by large American multinational corporations, supply two-thirds of the world's market.
Consumers want perfection Multinational corporations are better equipped to give consumers what they want on a large scale (uniform, unblemished, cheap bananas).
They help control their costs by paying workers low wages. On an Ecuador plantation workers are paid just $1 USD per day. In Guatemala workers make marginally more: 40p per hour, about £17 per week.
To keep their crops disease free multinational corporations use large amounts of poisonous agrochemicals, as much as 30kg of pesticide per hectare per year.
Deadly pesticides Pesticides present serious health risks to workers and have catastrophic effects on the environment.
In 1987, 8,000 banana plantation workers got compensation from one company after becoming sterile from the use of the pesticide DCBP. Vast tracks of rain forest have been destroyed. Pesticide run off into streams has caused massive loss of aquatic species.
Six out of ten consumers want fair trade bananas More and more British consumers are shirking dollar bananas in favour of fair trade bananas.
In January 2000, British supermarkets began to sell bananas labelled with the fair trade mark. And even though these bananas cost more, six out of ten UK consumers say they would buy them because they care about the conditions endured by the people who produce goods for their consumption.
Fair trade protects the rights of small producers and helps them export their own bananas.
Hens don't see the light of day and are fed antibiotics in their water
Free range egg farms are only marginally better than battery farms
Organic farms let chickens roam freely in humane conditions
Eggs offer up a fast and easy meal. They're cheap and widely consumed. But UK egg producers deal with the enormous consumer demand by running inhumane battery egg farms.
On a typical battery egg farm, hens live in warehouses that fit 80,000 birds. Beaks are clipped to prevent birds harming each other by pecking (hens peck because there are too many bored hens in a small place).
Upwards of 20 birds die a day Machines regulate feeding, lighting and temperature. Conveyer belts deliver food and water. Birds never see the light of day. Nor do they get to leave their compounds – until they die.
Serious health risks A range of drugs mainly antibiotics and anti-parasitic treatments are used routinely in intensive battery conditions because birds are kept inside in overcrowded conditions where disease flourishes and are delivered to the birds in their feed or water.
Some of these drugs are highly toxic and poses a serious food safety risk to consumers.
Free-range Free-range eggs are marginally better. Most consumers believe that the hens that produce 'free-range' eggs spend much of their lives outdoors, but in most cases 'free range' only means that hens can roam freely indoors in crowded sheds.
Organic eggs There's hope though for ethical consumers though - organic eggs.
Organic eggs are more expensive than their mass-produced supermarket counterparts because high standards have to be met to ensure animal welfare.
Organic feed is more expensive and must be from certified organic sources that have not used herbicides, fungicides, insecticides or chemical fertilizers.
Organic chickens are given more space. Birds must have maximum fresh air, access to large open-air runs, have contact with the ground and shelter from bad weather.
No antibiotics or prohibited parasiticides are allowed in the egg-producing flock.
There is a downside to organic eggs: right now there aren't enough organic eggs to supply the UK market: supply cannot meet the huge demand.
Teachers
Corner Shop