Yes, ALDI is heavily involved with Fairtrade, offering a wide range of certified products—including coffee, cocoa, and flowers—as part of their commitment to sustainable sourcing and fair wages. They work with organizations to ensure ethical standards for workers and, by 2025, aim for over 90% of their private-label cocoa products to be certified by organizations like Fairtrade.
For years we have been working with our suppliers to increase the number of independently certified products we sell, such as bananas, cocoa, coffee and tea. To do this, we use schemes such as Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance.
Look for products at ALDI with the Fair Trade Certified logo to support quality products that improve lives and protect the environment. ALDI products with the Rainforest Alliance logo are helping to provide better opportunities for farmers, their families and our planet.
Asda 40% – While it scored surprisingly well in our agriculture rating, Asda's ethical policies in general are very poor. Aldi 16% – Aldi's ethical ratings are even lower than its budget prices, with 0 marks for approaches to climate, animal rights, tax conduct and company ethos. Lidl 14%
One way to ensure social and environmental standards is through the use of independent certification schemes. All bananas offered in our European and US ALDI stores are certified. We either use the Rainforest Alliance standard or buy organic bananas with Fairtrade certification or GLOBALG.
The Aldi 2p rule is a policy at the supermarket, which is designed to keep it ahead of the retail pay curve. This was seen at the beginning of September 2025, when the pay for UK store assistants went up to £13.02 an hour, when it was originally expected to be £13.
Lidl GB sells over 100 different Fairtrade certified products throughout the year, from bananas originating from Colombia, to cocoa for our chocolate grown in Cote d'Ivoire.
Under the new initiative, all fresh produce suppliers who have a turnover of under £5 million will be offered new, quicker payment terms for the remainder of 2025. The changes take effect immediately and form part of Aldi's broader commitment to long-term, fair relationships with British growers.
M&S are one of the UK's leading Fairtrade retail supporters, having worked in partnership for almost two decades. Fairtrade producers in M&S's supply chains receive a fairer price for their crop and an additional Fairtrade Premium to spend on projects of their choice.
Lidl was founded by Josef Schwarz, a German businessman who focused on opening grocery stores in his home country, and the chain didn't expand into more of Europe until 1977. Aldi, on the other hand, was founded by German brothers Theo and Karl Albrecht, who quickly expanded their grocery chain across the globe.
Some say it's how "old crows" who have long shopped at the store find each other. Others believe it refers to the sound a crow makes when it spies something shiny and interesting. Either way, the caw caw call is a method AOS shoppers -- kindred spirits, if you will -- use to find one another in the store.
Aldi unveils its top selling products of the year, with more ready salted crisps purchased than any other flavour and bananas named the top selling item of 2025.
M&S launched proceedings in December 2021 alleging that Aldi had infringed M&S' registered design rights in the bottles of its 'Snow Globe' range of gin through the distribution of Aldi's 'Infusionist' gin range (Marks and Spencer PLC v Aldi Stores Limited [2023] EWHC 178).
They said, for them to ripen, bananas are typically sent to a “Banana room.” Inside this room, they said, the baby banana is blasted with ethylene gas, which initiates the process of ripening. “If this process gets skipped or they don't hit them with enough or for too short a period, they will never ripen.
If you buy a banana with a four-digit code (4011 is the code for bananas) on the sticker, that banana was conventionally grown with the use of pesticides. All conventionally grown produce will have stickers with four digits.
