'Cheapest shop in NL' popup in A'dam to draw attention to unequal profit distribution

The Cheapest Shop in the Netherlands-popup store is open in Amsterdam on Friday. There you can buy chocolate, bananas and coffee at extremely low prices. With this initiative Solidaridad, an NGO committed to sustainability, wants to draw attention to how little money farmers receive for their products, and what that means for society and the planet. Het Parool reports.

In the supermarket consumers pay around six euros for 500 grams of coffee from a well-known Dutch coffee company. Only 10 percent of that money goes to the country of origin. The coffee brand and supermarket earn much more. The same is true for chocolate and bananas. So for Black Friday, consumers can buy coffee, chocolate and bananas at the Cheapest Shop in the Netherlands for the same amount farmers receive for their bananas, cacao and coffee.

According to Solidaridad, it is not only farmers who suffer from the skewed profit distribution. The costs of pollution and the clearing of forests to cultivate these products are also under the so-called hidden costs. For example, consumers pay 1.35 euros for a bar of 150 grams of chocolate. The hidden costs for the planet are 34 cents and the social costs for society are 1.19 erous, according to the NGO

The Cheapest Shop in the Netherlands is open on Haarlemmerplein 2 on Friday, 29 November, from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.