Locally-made, fair trade products in Cebu City!

Heads up, Cebuanos! Taga Cebu City ba ka? Adto na mo sa People’s Fair Trade Shop sa Osmeña Avenue!

This is a piece of good news that I found through a colleague’s Facebook—Cebu City has a store devoted to selling exclusively fair trade products.

What are fair trade products? To be honest, there is no single universally-accepted definition of fair trade but according to the Southern Partners and Fair Trade Corporation (SPFTC), which runs the store, a fair trade product is one that meets the following criteria:

• it is made by workers who receive fair wages, in safe, human working conditions
• it is made from raw materials bought at fair prices, using a process which cares for the environment,
• by a company, cooperative, or people’s organization that operates on the pricinciples transparency and accountability, capacity building, and gender equity, and the creation of opportunities for marginalized members of society.

I’m very jealous of Cebuanos now—because the principles of this fair trade store are basically the principles that drove me to start this blog in the first place.

Have you been to the store yet? What’s it like? What kind of products do they sell? I’d love to hear from Cebuanos what they think of the store.

You can read the news item here.

Why Buy Pinoy? Part 2: Buying Local, Carbon Emissions, and Climate Change

A rescue worker in Guinsaugon, Southern Leyte. Catastrophic landslides hit the barangay in 2006. Photo from www.flickr.com/photos/remzamora/418662063/. (I believe Rem Zamora is a photojournalist for a major Philippine daily.)

I was planning to put off this entry to a later date, simply because I wanted to do more research first. However, two things spurred me to writing this entry today:

1. Today is EARTH DAY! Happy Earth Day, everyone!
2. The weather. 

It’s supposed to be the middle of the summer in our part of the world, Because we’re a tropical country, Philippine summers are very warm, with very little rainfall, but high humidity.

Today, however, is the second day that it has been raining–and not just summer shower rain, but torrential rain. The quality of the rains of the past two days make me think of July, the middle of the typhoon season. The sky in Metro Manila is completely gray. As I write this, I am in the MRT and the sky’s dimness makes it seem as if it were dusk, though it is just 2pm.

According to PAGASA meteorologists,* this is a highly unusual weather pattern, even worrisome. The present rains, they say, are due to an intertropical convergence zone in the atmosphere–but intertropical convergence zones form only after the warm season.

Yes, folks, the climate has already begun to change.

What does climate change, irregular weather patterns, and the Guinsaugon landslide have to to with buying Philippine-made products, you might ask?  You might be surprised–buying locally-made products have a lot to do with it.

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Product Review: Human Nature Moisturizing Shampoo (Aloe Vera, Egg Whites, Guava)

I first heard of the Human Nature line from my friend and colleague  R., who blogs at PinoyBaby.com. As you can probably tell from the title of her blog, she’s a mother to a wonderful 5 month old baby boy, and she blogs about her experiences as a first-time mom. She had only good things to say about using Human Nature’s baby shampoo on her son, and I thought of giving it a try as well. I selected this particular variant of the many Human Nature shampoos because my hair tends to get dry easily, and because I get dandruff easily as well.

 (please excuse the crappy lighting in this photo)

 
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