Archive for June, 2009

Fairtracing inspires design project

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

Guiseppe Constanza is completing his MA Communication Design degree at University of the Arts London Central Saint Martins with a project called foodtracer.

Food tracer uses d-touch visual markers which can be read at point of sale with a mobile phone. It is designed to address several “ethical issues” such as carbon cost,  packaging, local food, Fair Trade and organic. Many of Guiseppe’s ideas take the thinking behind the Fair Tracing project into exciting new directions. He says: “Fair Tracing has been an importnat source of inspiration for me”.

Have a look at Guiseppe’s project website: http://www.giuseppecostanza.it/foodtracer/index.htm    

Foodtracer is also on display at the Central Saint Martin’s 2009 Finalist Exhibition, June 22-25 between 10am -8pm at Candid Arts, 3 Torrens Street, London, EC1V 1NQ

Posted in Data Visualisation, Design, General, Tracing & Tracking, UI | No Comments »

Fair Tracing presentations and publications now up-to-date

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

With the Fair Tracing Project entering its final “dissemination” phase, we have double-checked that our presentations and publications are up-to-date. In many cases, we now provide links from the items directly to the full presentation or publication.

Yet more presentations and publications are planned, and will be blogged as they become available.

Posted in Fair Tracing presentations, Fair Tracing publications | No Comments »

Fair Tracing in the New Scientist

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009
New ScientistJournalist Mason Inman from the New Scientist magazine interviewed Fair Tracing Project Manager Dr Dorothea Kleine for his article “Barcode’s could reveal your food’s credentials” which has just appeared in this week’s issue.  In it, Inman cites the Fair Tracing project:
“Meanwhile, an online initiative called the Fair Tracing Project aims to publicise how farmers in poor countries are treated by the multinational companies that sell their produce in the west. Farmers use mobiles to upload photos and videos “so they can tell a story about the labour conditions they’re working under”, says Fair Tracing team member Dorothea Kleine of Royal Holloway, University of London. Kleine and her colleagues add this to data on how the goods travel from farm to store, including the amount that packagers, shippers, and retailers get paid along the way.
So far they have completed case studies on Chilean wine (see diagram) and Indian coffee. Customers in stores should eventually be able to photograph a product’s bar code with their phone, and be directed to the relevant charts and videos.”
 
See the diagram: http://tinyurl.com/lxup24 
This is the second time Fair Tracing appeared in the New Scientist, and this time we were also able to point to the other projects we collaborate with in the newly formed Ethical Consumer Information System (ECIS) network. Of these, the GoodGuide Project (www.goodguide.com) was also mentioned in the article.  

Posted in Chile, Coffee, Coffee Traceability, Fair Tracing publications, General, India, Tracing & Tracking, Wine | 3 Comments »

Civil society and fair trade

Monday, June 1st, 2009

This is a useful survey of Fair Trade (thanks, Marcelo!):

This publication offers a guide to Fair Trade through the exploration of 49 sites which include the official organizations of the movement, alternative traders, labeling organizations, government and multilateral bodies, NGOs and academic research across North America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America. The Guide makes no claim to be representative, many sites being chosen for their intrinsic interest (availability of information, documents), but it does we feel capture the breadth and diversity of the movement and makes accessible a wealth of documentation on the key aspects of the movement, from facts and figures to analysis and debates. 

Posted in General | No Comments »