Unlike certain ‘Green’ publications, New Consumer strikes a nice balance between consumerism and hair-shirt utopianism. It’s printed on a matt-finish recycled paper, which sounds a bit dour, but the content is lively and the cover stories eye-catching and (dare we say it?) sexy. In March, for example, the magazine features fair trade clothing – once the preserve of scratchy-looking T- shirts, but now firmly entrenched at the fashion end of the market.

This all sounds suspiciously New Age and touchy-feely, but New Consumer is a practical and informative guide to ‘fair trade’ products. With global trade increasingly dominated by greedy mega-corporations and unscrupulous trading cartels, it’s all too easy for the little folk to get squeezed out, leaving millions reliant on hand-outs, when all they really want to do is sell their bananas, tea or cocoa at a fair price.

Fair trade – spear-headed in the UK by the excellent Co-operative movement (the Co-op sponsors New Consumer) – is a neat way of circumventing the inequities of the global trading system, by working closely with producers and guaranteeing to pay them a fair price for their labour.You might think that this would make the products expensive, but because there are no middle men and corrupt officials taking a cut, that’s not necessarily so. A quick search around our local Co-op reveals that fair trade products are broadly mid-range (and we can vouch that the chocs and Clipper tea are jolly good). Until recently, fair trade meant coffee, chocolate and little else, but the list is expanding rapidly, and – watch out – supermarket giant Tesco is beginning to take an interest, which gives you some idea of the way the wind is blowing.

New Consumer has been around for nearly three years, but we think the concept is about to take off.To get you all enthusiastic, we’ve negotiated a reduced introductory subscription of £12. Just quote ‘A to B’ when subscribing.

New Consumer annual subscription (6 copies) £15 . ISSN 1478-8527. tel 0141 335 9050 mail newconsumer@axismediaservices.co.uk