2006.05.25

To celebrate the 2006 Sustainable Development Week, Aéroports de Paris will serve 3.500 fair trade meals on 29 May and 2 June 2006 in the restaurants managed by the company works council at the headquarters, Paris-Orly and Paris-Charles de Gaulle. The menu will include organic food (bread, buckwheat pancakes, carrots, cauliflower…) and fair-trade products (quinoa, a very nutritious grain from the Andes, Max Havelaar coffee).

This initiative has been acknowledged as outstanding "2005 Good Practice" by the United Nations in the frame of the World Pact.

It has already been cheered by the company's staff in 2005. An opinion poll had established that 57% were "very satisfied" by this proposal and that 46% whished this type of treat were more frequently offered.

2006 novelty

Aéroports de Paris and its works council bought from Andines, an importer, 3.500 magic dolls made by a 50-family community from the Tchitchi Castelnengo region in Guatemala. These magic "grief-eating" dolls are made according to fair trade principles and crafted after an ancestral Mayan weaving technique.

Aéroports de Paris is thus linking the promotion of fair trade small-scale craft production (magic dolls) to food products (organic meals).

In Guatemala, the story goes that when a child has a worry or a grief, he tells it to the doll before putting it under his pillow in the evening. The following morning, thanks to the magic doll, the problem will have vanished.