Saturday Shopping. Would much rather be in Selfridges, buying Paul & Joe or examining Marc Jacobs handbags, but needs must. First, contact Abel & Cole (020 7737 3648), suppliers of organic produce 'straight from the grower to your table'. Order a mixed box of fruit and veg, to be delivered Monday. Cost: £12.80. Apparently, will be full of seasonal surprises. Hope these 'surprises' won't be too knobbly. Next, head for Fresh & Wild (www.freshandwild.com), the very cool and right-on chain where earnest celebs can be seen carrying their babies in Bill Amberg papooses. Alas, no celebs today. Only smiley beardy-weirdies in search of soy. Purchases include: organic Cornish pesto; sustainably fished tuna in organic sunflower oil; Gorilla Munch, an organic breakfast cereal, profits from which help save the wildlife of Rwanda; and a bag of organic cola bottles (and they're caffeine free). With milk, cheese etc, my bill is £32.21. Finally, to Waitrose for eggs and meat. Spend £17.86. Attempt to go the Co-op for Fairtrade wine, but can't find anywhere to park. All this takes most of the afternoon. Try not to think how much pollution I've caused. Concentrate on feeling virtuous.
Sunday Breakfast. Gorilla Munch. Looks like frogspawn, tastes of sugar. Lunch. Organic cheddar on Dr Karg's organic pumpkin seed and Emmental crispbreads (in spite of medicinal Germanic name, they're great, and no laxative effect). Supper. Organic pasta with Cornish pesto (hooray for the small supplier, even if he does live in Liskeard, not Liguria). Pesto like grass cuttings. To cheer myself up, open a cola bottle. Ugh! Wash down with Fairtrade tea. Not half as nice as Red Label.
Monday My organic box arrives. There are potatoes (satisfyingly dirty), onions, broccoli, tomatoes, a lettuce, parsnips, bananas (very small), apples and clementines. Also, Jerusalem artichokes. What on earth should I do with these? Eat more Gorilla Munch for breakfast, trying to imagine the smile on the faces of Kureba and his mother as I do so. Lunch is crispbread, then some Montezuma's organic chocolate. Lovely. Supper. Getting bored now. Shall I open a tin of organic baked beans? Or shall I go out? The beans (sweetened with fruit juice) bring to mind those heady student days when I drank only Nicaraguan coffee and frowned disapprovingly at those who ate Jaffa oranges. They go straight to the back of the cupboard.
Tuesday Pour milk on my Gorilla Munch only to find it has turned into cheese. Am sure this does not happen so quickly with ordinary milk. Try to convince myself that this just confirms what awful things happen to my usual daily pint, but to no avail. I am in a right old strop. Pull coat on over pyjamas and go to corner shop where I buy most zapped-looking pint it is possible to find. Me and Dr Karg still getting on famously, so lunch as usual. For supper, organic salmon with potatoes and broccoli from my box. Yum.
Wednesday A strange smell emanates from my organic box. I look inside. The Jerusalem artichokes are covered with a white fuzz. Throw them in the bin. Parsnips also look a bit green about the gills. Shove them in the fridge and hope for the best. For supper, I make a shepherd's pie with organic beef and potatoes from my box. Serve with organic frozen peas. Delicious, but feel guilty that neither my Worcestershire sauce nor my ketchup are organic. Being good is exhausting.
Thursday Open fridge. Parsnips practically jump into my arms to greet me. Also, something horrible has happened to my lettuce. Like a scene from Alien. It sits in a pool of water, and smells of duckweed. For breakfast, Whole Earth Cocoa Crunch. Get jaw-ache, but at least there are interesting facts on the box. Apparently, 1.6 times as many insects can be found on organic farms as on normal farms. No lunch. Supper: organic eggs and bacon. Love it that something so decadent counts as do-gooding. Drink glass of bubbly, in manner of Thirties socialite. Not organic. Not Fairtrade. But comes from France, a country whose people are much persecuted just now.
Friday Breakfast. Eat organic yoghurt bought solely because it is made by a woman called Rachel. Lunch: Dr Karg's and fruit from the box. Supper. My sister and I visit the chip shop. We have battered cod. We are a disgrace to the cause of sustainable fishing.
Saturday To celebrate my first week as an ethical shopper, I cook for my sister and my true love. We have organic beef with almost-organic Yorkshire puddings (I'm unable to find organic lard - presumably it is just too unfashionable in green circles). Also, cabbage, roast potatoes and green beans, but not from the box, which is now empty and waiting to be recycled. The meat is wonderful, though it ought to be as it cost nearly 20 quid. But am I a convert to this squeaky-clean way of life? While the idea of it appeals to the dirndl-wearing hippy in me (think Ali McGraw in Love Story), there are simply not enough hours in the week for all the shopping, peeling and chopping required. Besides, as every girl knows, sometimes there is nothing for it than to go right ahead and be very, very naughty. Right. Fancy a Findus Crispy Pancake, anyone?
Dubble chocolate bar, 39p, Divine chocolate bar, £1.09 and Co-op Fairtrade Chocolate Cake, 450g, £1.89
The cocoa beans used for all three products come from Kuapa Kokoo in Ghana, which represents thousands of cocoa farmers, and is the only farmer-owned company in Ghana. The co-operative has used the Fairtrade premium for 46 projects including schools.
Fruit Passion Pure Tropical Juice, 1 litre, £1.19
The orange juice in this drink comes from Cuba where the farmers have used the Fairtrade premium to build a community centre and replace old orange trees.
Green & Black's Maya Gold chocolate squares, 120g, £3.49
Ten years ago, this was the only Fairtrade product in Britain. The Mayan Indians, from the Belize rainforests, were left in economic ruin after world cocoa prices plummeted. Their farms are deep in the jungle and some can only be reached by dugout canoe. The community relies totally on British shoppers buying Maya Gold.
Bananas, £1.25 per bunch approx
Prices are at rock bottom and supermarkets are undercutting each other in price wars. A year ago there were 16 banana plantations on the Costa Rica/Panama border; now there is only one. This means hundreds of banana workers are forced to return in poverty to their villages. Many are only able to survive because of Fairtrade.
South African Oranges, £1.99 per kilo approx
Sourced from Thandi Initiative farms in South Africa.
Clipper Fairtrade Tea, 125g, £1.39
Before Fairtrade, many Sri Lankan tea pluckers didn't have access to electricity. Now they send their children to school and meet with management to decide how to spend the Fairtrade premium.
Percol roast and ground coffee, 227g, £1.99
The world price for Arabica coffee has fallen to $0.65 cents per pound, while the Fairtrade price is $1.26. Former coffee workers in Nicaragua now beg by the roadside. Thousands took to the road in July in a March of the Hungry (14 people died). The Fairtrade premium from top-quality coffee helps co-operatives in the crisis.
Cocodirect drinking chocolate, 250g, £2.29
The drinking chocolate contains Fairtrade cocoa beans and cane sugar from the Caribbean and Africa. Massive fluctuation in prices means instability for the farmers; they don't know if they'll be able to pay for food, medicine and schools. With Fairtrade, the stable price means they can plan for the future.
Traidcraft Seville Orange Marmalade, 6 x 340g, £9
Most sugar from developing countries isn't sold in the UK as the growers can't compete with high subsidies and tariffs protecting sugar beet. The premium from the sugar (from Paraguay) in this organic marmalade is shared by 80 farmers, who use it to bring running water and electricity to the area. It will also pay for an organic fertiliser plant to increase production.
Fairtrade pineapples, £1.09 approx
A co-operative in Costa Rica produced the world's first Fairtrade pineapples. Most of the farming families live on a very small income. Selling the fruit for Fairtrade prices means better living standards for families.
