We are 12 students from the 5th grade classes at the Gemeinschaftsschule Quierschied and have been running the Fairtrade club (One World club) at our school for one year.
We have already done a lot in our working group and have a big topic this year:
"Fair Trade". This is English and means "fair trade" in German.
In mid-May, we took the bus to Friedrichsthal – to the unpackaged goods store "Unverpackt-Leben".
It was wonderful in the unpackaged store! We met a nice lady named Alex. She is the owner of the store and patiently answered our many questions. We were even allowed to go into the warehouse with her.
In addition to unpackaged products, the store offers many Fair Trade products, such as chocolate, coffee, nuts, and bananas. Alex believes it is important that the farmers in the countries of origin receive fair wages for their work. This also helps prevent child labor there, and the farmers' children can attend school.
The unpackaged store is very environmentally friendly – nothing is packaged there! You have to bring your own containers or bags, but they are also available at the front of the store in case you need a container spontaneously. You weigh the empty container on a large scale before shopping. That's fun!
We got to try some sweets and were amazed at how big the store is and that there are so many different things!
In addition, the container always indicates where the product comes from and you can see it. This is very convenient and looks great!
Not only pasta, cornflakes, muesli ingredients, but also body cream for self-filling or detergent are available here. There is a really large selection of unpackaged products for cleaning and washing! This can certainly save a lot of plastic waste!
Some things are homemade and Alex buys a lot from producers in the Saarland! There is also fresh fruit and vegetables from organic Saarland farmers.
Regional products are very important to Alex, because the shorter the transport route, the fewer emissions are produced.
In the end, we were still able to buy something for ourselves – and that wasn’t easy, because there were so many great sweets!
We say:
Thank you, dear Alex, for taking so much time for us, answering our questions, and showing us your beautiful products!
The students of the Fairtrade club at GemS Quierschied
