By Samantha Hayes
You can already buy fair trade coffee, fair trade chocolate and now bananas are the newest ethical product on the supermarket shelf.
But where do they come from, what do they taste like and how much will they sting you at the check out?
Chris Morrison was giving away bananas today, but he's also selling them at a premium to ensure growers in Ecuador receive a fair wage.
“We're dealing with 400 small grower families and the great thing about this is you can be guaranteed that they're getting a fair price for their bananas, that they're getting access to education, they're getting medical services and that's all good news,” says Mr Morrison.
Oxfam says large multi-national companies like Dole, Chiquita and Delmonte are known to pay workers as little as $2 to $3 a day on their plantations.
“Constantly there are new cases coming up of workers rights abuses coming up in the banana industry,” says Linda Broom of Oxfam.
“This isn't a historic fact, this is something that is still happening.”
Mr Morrison needs to sell 100,000 bunches by May to make his business viable.
Auckland super city mayoral candidate Len Brown is behind him.
“It's pretty clear that the local farmers there are trying to access the global markets and are struggling, and an organisation like this gives them a chance to get into it,” he says.
The bananas passed the taste-test at the Auckland Eco Day event.
But it's the price of fair trade bananas that may ultimately slip people up.
One retailer is selling an 850g bunch for $3.49, but they can go for up to $4.
The supplier says that any bananas selling for less than $1.99 per kg means the grower is getting nothing.
Countdown, Foodtown and Woolworths do sell bananas for that little, but told 3 News they believe their bananas are already fairly traded, as measured by their own ethical standards.
3 News