No person, enterprise or corporation operates in
a vacuum and every action can have a consequence,
positive or negative. Issues which affect people’s
lives, the environment and society should be considered
with integrity and thought.
Where previously profit ruled, the rise of Corporate
Social Responsibility highlights how increasingly
business is being asked to consider the ‘triple
bottom line’ of People, Planet, Profit. Organisations
like Fair Trade, 1% for the Planet, and Oxfam have
done a great deal to increase awareness of issues
around sustainability, the environment and the exploitation
of Third World Workers. Now, not taking responsibility
for the impact a business has in these areas can
irreparably damage a company’s reputation and
diminish a brand’s popularity.
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The project launched by looking at children’s ‘Global
Footprint’ – the impact each child’s
behaviour has on the environment. This covers issues
including how they travel, where they holiday, the
rubbish they produce, and the energy they consume
at home. Then over the course of another six sessions
they looked at food and issues around packaging,
food miles, supermarket control, environmental impact
and fair trade.
Children visited an ordinary farm and an organic
farm and heard about the differences. They looked
at produce from supermarkets, where they come from
and how heavily packaged they are. Then they compared
them with produce from the local allotments – just
over the road from the school. Children participated
in ‘blind’ taste testing, rating the
allotment vegetables ‘sweeter’ and ‘nicer’ than
the supermarket vegetables. They also looked at what
goes into food and did ‘guess the product’ games
where they were given lists of incomprehensible ingredients
(hydoxypropylmehyl cellulose, sulphur dioxide) and
asked to guess what product they made (vegetarian
sausages).
Talking to the children it was plain to see the
impact the project had made upon them. Even months
after the project had taken place they were still
buzzing with ideas about what was the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ thing
to do. Comments they made variously included: “Buy
food locally...” “Try and get parents
to buy more organic and fair trade foods…” and “Look
at what’s on food labels…”
More than anything the aim of the programme
was to make them aware that one day they would have
a choice in making decisions about these issues,
and that their decisions had a consequence. Through
the project they explored the concept that everything
they did impacted upon someone further down the line
- that there was a farmer in a far off country getting
paid a fraction of the cost of the banana they buy
at the supermarket.
Teacher Kath Thomas said: “It was a brilliant
opportunity, it really opened their eyes. It’s
so easy not to think about issues like these, but
when you do it seems to bring out children’s
innate sense of justice.”
