Traidcraft is tackling the shopping frenzy of Black Friday by joining the ongoing climate change event instead of the shopping craze. The Gateshead-based company will be spreading the call for shoppers to become more carbon conscious instead of discount detecting, with a series of events on Friday 29th November. The fair trade, organic and vegan food and drinks retailer will be running a refreshment station at Newcastle Cathedral, as well as handing out jute bags of toiletries to the local homeless. Traidcraft will also be addressing its own environment maintenance strategy and planting trees in the garden at its head office. Instead of pruning prices, these motions are a step towards helping shoppers ‘buy right’.
Many of the habits in our daily lifestyles are contributing factors, and shopping is a great example of this. Sarah Main from Traidcraft said: “As a brand, we are accountable when it comes to promoting consumer behaviours and we’d like to focus on lowering our own carbon emissions, encouraging our customers to follow suit”.
She added “Traidcraft customers won’t see any flash sales or discounts across our website, and we’re openly choosing not to participate in the Black Friday tradition of encouraging people to buy more ‘stuff’ than necessary”.
Brands can certainly help to change wider attitudes to consumption. As it stands, every person currently living in the UK would need to plant 1,000 trees each to curb their average carbon output of 6.5 tonnes. Traidcraft is focusing on the idea of ‘buying right’ this Black Friday. It advocates buying less in quantity and instead, investing in better, more ethical products — especially in the run up to Christmas.
Climate change has become a huge talking point in recent years, informed by a string of global social media campaigns. Traidcraft is proud to support this movement by holding a greener alternative to Black Friday and helping people to ‘buy right’ in doing so.
Tune into the live cam online to watch the teams progress throughout the day, and shop right in the lead up to the festive season with organic gift hampers.
