Items on a Shopping List

When I offered a guest a cup of coffee last week, I offered as an accompaniment a high quality chocolate biscuit. There is, of course, nothing unusual about that. I mention it only because the biscuit was marketed by Traidcraft, an organisation which distributes goods which are "fairly traded", so that a proper financial return goes to the producers, who are workers in the Third World countries. The biscuits carry, on the package, an assurance that the cocoa and the organic sugar used in them are "fairly traded to ensure the farmers (in this case in the Dominican Republic) benefit directly from your purchase."

During the week also, the local district council, left at the gates of all the houses in the village a large plastic box and a leaflet urging residents to use it as a container for newspapers, magazines, cans and "clean, dry, usable clothes" which will be collected by the council two or three times a month, as a part of a major recycling drive. The leaflet tells recipients that, if they support the scheme, they will be "supporting the environment and your community". It explains that, as part of the scheme, a sum will be paid to a local community group, or the parish council, for every ton of material collected.

The fact that the district council has felt it worth-while to introduce the scheme is a reflection of the growing interest in, and concern for, the environment in the United Kingdom (and, of course, many other countries too). A similar reflection of this interest came in a second leaflet that reached me during the week, this time from the water company listing "ten tips" for saving water which, the leaflet reminds me, is a limited resource.

Although interest in environmental issues - and a concern for the poor and often exploited in developing countries - can sometimes reflect a naïve and ill-informed idealism, it is surely, in essence, a good thing. It is certainly better that more of us should be conscious of our international responsibilities for the planet and for its inhabitants than that we should simply focus our interest on our own selfish needs and wishes.

I was strengthened in this belief by the arrival of yet another leaflet this week. This was a sales catalogue, which arrived with a news digest to which I subscribe.

I read it with mounting irritation. It is produced by a firm called "Gifts for the Girls", and it consists of exhortations to buy a selection of goods whose usefulness bears little retaliation to their inflated prices. A pair of padded coat hangers at nearly 17 pounds, are by no stretch of the imagination a sensible purchase, and the description of them as "a luxury all women enjoy - you can never have enough of them" could certainly not be applied to any women of my acquaintance. And a shopping list selling at just under 8 pounds would surely appeal only to the wasteful or to the stupid (even when headed with an atrocious musical pun: Chopin Liszt).

One surely does not have to be a killjoy or a puritan to find this kind of invitation to engage in conspicuous consumption distasteful, if not down right obscene.

The late Julius Nyerere, in his early days as President of Tanzania - which was, and is, a poor country - dealt with this kind of thing well in a series of speeches on "Freedom and Socialism" delivered during the decade after his country became independent in 1961. He referred to the creation of markets for goods which people "have never thought of wanting and really have no need for." And he gave one example with the ironic humour for which he was noted: "In some societies it is a matter of pride, I am told, to buy an electric tooth-brush - presumably the energy required to clean one's mouth properly is beyond the strength of well-fed men and women."

Nyerere did not then argue against the production of any luxury goods, but declared that they should not be produced until more essential needs had been met.

Writing from a country with far more wealth than Tanzania, I think I can justify the purchase of some of my luxuries, but my frugal instincts make me draw a distinction between the luxury chocolate biscuits, the purchase of which will do some good for the struggling Third World farmer, and a shopping list whose function could be quite well performed on the back of an envelope.

Bill Kirkman
The writer is an Emeritus Fellow Of Wolfson College, Cambridge.
Email him at Wpk1000@cam.ac.uk
Taken from THE HINDU, dated 22nd October 2000. Column : Cambridge Letter .