Produce Challenged

“Fools”, I think when I see tourists parting with their cash to the pea-under-cup scammers working Las Ramblas. Then I'll go shopping at La Boqueria and come out with bags of perished vegetables and rotten fruit. Oh, the irony.

So while the pickpockets will leave me in peace, looking for easier targets, the vendors smile beguilingly at me, smelling an opportunity to offload their worst produce. I find it ever easier to live with the environmental guilt of buying cello-wrapped styrofoam trays of fruit, sprayed and fertilized to perfection, from El Corte Inglés.

For fresh-produce challenged folk like me, however, there's some refuge with the organic food network, Xarxa de Consum Solidari. Acting like online group purchase organisations, the co-ops source only products adhering to the prescribed environmental and social standards. In other words, quality produce and fair trade.

It's easy - sign up and order your weekly basket online, then pick it up at your local center on Thursdays. And while not cheap, it lets you do good without resorting to eco-warrior demonstrations, dreadlocks or sensible shoes. Or putting yourself at the mercy of stall holders.

Xarxa de Consum Solidari
Annual membership fee EUR 60

By AAl