Blood, Sweat and Takeaways... but seriously where do you think your cheap meat came from?

Ethical clothing. Fair trade. British meat. All words we've heard together and often put in sentences to make us feel guilty about our consumption, but shouldn't we already care? The best part of this is, that the more awareness is raised, the more people are starting to take note. All the information a consumer needs is at their fingertips, quite literally, nowadays with the internet at our dispense.

So why does it take a BBC TV series such as 'Blood, Sweat and Takeways' to raise the plight for Thai rice farmers, sex workers and factory workers? Is there really not enough being done for people to see that absolutely everything we do in the UK has a knock-on effect on someone, somewhere in a developing country?

Take our t-shirts for example. Did you know 22% of ALL pesticides are sprayed on cotton? Or that 20,000 farmers die each year in developing countries from agricultural pesticides?

Or what about your Primark jewellery made by thousands of people every day? Do you know that the person who made your bead necklace eats far less than the recommended 2,000 calories a day? Or that despite the extremely physical 14 hour work days in a sweatshop they get only 3 days off a month?


Yet Fair trade goods, ethically sourced products, and ways to help support and take people out of sweatshop labour is an easier option than it may seem.

People Tree (peopletree.co.uk) are an ethical and organic label who pay all their artisans a fair wage to support their families for making their clothing and handicrafts. They often have online sales too, and their clothing is affordable at the best of times.

Monkee Genes (monkeegenes.co.uk) are an ethical and organic jeans and cords company who produce some of their products in Britain. Their jeans come in fashionable colours and 'supa-skinny' fit. Perfect.

Kenyan handicraft group Bega kwa Bega which means 'shoulder to shoulder' take hundreds of women from the slums of Nairobi each year to teach them trades such as tie dye; scarf making; sewing; and knitting. They ship to as many businesses as possible in the UK.

I know my friends always say to me, 'When you only have a certain amount, how can you stop shopping at cheap places?' Here's how.

Once you start looking, there is a world of opportunity available to you at a fair price, and ensures the maker of your product was entitled an even fairer wage. I used to get paid £6 an hour in a part-time job. Some labourers get paid £6 a week. Really, who's the one losing out?

So here's a friendly tip, just so you know I'm not getting on your case for no reason; ASOS.com often have Fairtrade certified labels on their website, and if you Google 'Fair Trade clothing', 1,620,000 hits come up. American Apparel are ethically sourced and Fairtrade certified. Arcadia Group which includes Dorothy Perkins, Miss Selfridge and the notorious Topshop have all signed up to the Sustainable Clothing Action Plan to reduce clothing waste, pay fair wages, and stop using pesticides eventually. The Fairtrade Foundation have pledged to increase the volume of Fairtrade cotton products to at least 10 per cent of cotton clothing in the UK by 2012.

Now is the time to stop making excuses, and make a difference. Why? Because it costs you a lot less than it costs them.