Fairtrade Shows Below Average Scores for Australian Shoppers

With the Fairtrade Fortnight awareness campaign approaching this coming May, research has found that only a minority of Australians are routinely buying Fairtrade products, falling behind the global average.

The Fairtrade movement has grown a huge amount in Australia over the last few years, research released by Fairtrade Labelling Australia and New Zealand recently found that sales of certified Fairtrade products has risen by 50% between 2008 and 2009, but Datamonitor research have indicated that only 14% of Australian people are buying such products regularly; which is much lower than the global average of 23%.

The Fairtrade Fortnight "Big Swap" campaign will take place in Australia and New Zealand from the 1st of May to the 16th of May, 2010 and challenges shoppers to swap as many of their everyday products like coffee, tea, bananas, chocolate, even t-shirts, with Fairtrade alternatives.

However, when it comes to shopping online, the larger grocery stores like Coles and Woolworths don't appear to take Fairtrade very seriously, which is a real shame -- a search for 'fairtrade' turned zero results in the Coles online store, and Woolworths didn't fair much better, with just 2 Fairtrade products in their search results.

I'm sure Coles and Woolworths do have more Fairtrade products in store, so it would be nice to see them make more of an effort to boost the Fairtrade movement in Australia, by making it easy for customers to find Fairtrade products in their online stores.

There are, however, plenty of online shops listed at the Australian Fairtrade web site. A quick search for online stores returns 10 pages of Fairtrade online stores that sell Fairtrade clothing, groceries, coffee and much more.

As awareness of Fairtrade products grows, Australians will begin to ask for more Fairtrade products in the larger supermarkets. Campaigns like the Fairtrade Foundation's "Big Swap" are important as they can overcome any doubts when it comes to buying Fairtrade products, for both shoppers and the stores.