Fairtrade Label South Africa (FLSA) is glad to announce that Fairtrade is growing from strength to strength with sales in 2010 reaching ZAR 18,4 million, a steep increase from the ZAR 5,7 million estimated in 2009. This shows that awareness and demand for Fairtrade products in South Africa are on the rise. The bulk of the sales are mainly accounted for by local Fairtrade wine and African Fairtrade coffee, which are currently the key Fairtrade products available on the local market.

"This is a great achievement for Fairtrade in South Africa," says Mr Boudewijn Goossens, executive director of FLSA. "Soon local consumers will

Campaign walkers to Waddle for a Week to raise awareness about endangered birds

The African penguin, this continent’s only indigenous penguin species, is in danger of becoming extinct - and it needs YOUR help and support. Now.

Numbers of the African penguin, which is endemic to South Africa and Namibia, are rapidly declining, and this decline is accelerating exponentially. Causes include climate change, overfishing, oil pollution and, historically, penguin egg and guano collection.

There is now less than 5% of the original population remaining; numbers have declined by 80% in the past half-century, and by 60% in the past decade alone. Less than half of the minimum viable global population estimate of 50 000 breeding pairs is left.

Platbos is here... whoop! We'll be camping out, planting 1000 trees, enjoying the magical Platbos forest, eating good food, listening to talks in the evenings and celebrating with some seriously great music.
If you're planning to join us for this adventure on the weekend of 10th ,11th and 12th June, book your place now as we only have 50 spots.

Price: R270

1. Your full name and email address
2. The names of anyone else you want to book for and their email addresses
3. Would you be interested in taking The Green Bus (http://thegreencab.co.za/) there and back? (Write: Transport needed OR Don't need transport). The price for this will be sent out shortly.

Via email from the African Centre for Biosafety and SAFEAGE

On the 1st April 2011, final regulations were published in terms of the Consumer Protection Act, on the labeling of GM foods. These regulations will come into effect on the 1 October 2011.

Its been a long and anxious wait to see what the final regulations governing the labelling of Genetically Modified GM Foods would entail. We are not ecstatic about the regulations, its more of a cautious welcome, please see our press release at www.biosafetyafrica.org.za

We originally asked for the regulations to:

1. Extend to all approved GMOs and food derived from such GMOs;
2. Set the threshold at 1% for technically unavoidable presence and thus GM content above 1% and not 5% should be labeled;
3. Exclude loopholes for companies to avoid testing and correct labeling.

What we ended up with, is the possibility of up to 5 different labels on GM foods:

1. Where the GM content is at least 5%, the food will be labeled as 'containing GMOs'. Cereals containing maize and soy could fall into this category as well as many supermarket breads that usually contain some soy.

Greenpop welcomes Earth Day with a party celebrating the earth and her beautiful trees - Cool as Folk, 21 April 2011, The Assembly, 8pm

Tree planting initiative, Greenpop, started planting indigenous and fruit trees on the Cape Flats in September last year. At Greenpop, the past 7 months have seen just over 3000 trees going into the ground, environmental education spreading, more than 500 volunteers signing up to come and plant and wonderful school children getting their hands dirty and learning to plant and care for trees.

Through the hot summer, the schools excitedly implemented Greenpop's grey water idea, where each child brings in a 2-litre bottle of their bath water to school 3 times a week and each class has designated days to water their trees. With more than 1000 learners at some schools, that's a lot of recycled water!

But now it's time for the rains to come, and some rain dancing is in order.

Greenpop's second 'Cool as Folk' party is Thursday 21 April - the day before

Consumers can now help fund Wessa's grassroots environmental education initiativesWhat happens to fish if you throw empty plastic bags in a river? Why is it wrong to litter? How many different types of plants exist in my community, and which ones can I plant to provide me with food?

These are some of the questions WESSA (the Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa), a nationwide NGO that pro-actively engages with the challenges and opportunities presented by South Africa’s unique natural heritage, is addressing with its Environmental Education (EE) programme for primary school learners across KwaZulu-Natal(KZN).