Back in September of last year, I met Philipp Abel, who is the head of sustainability at Fürth City Council in Germany. He revealed to me that Fürth was twinned with our town Paisley in Scotland and wanted to establish fair trade links between our two towns. Embarrassingly, I didn't know that we were twinned with Fürth but I was delighted that he wanted to create links with us.

The town twinning movement has been going on for at least 50 years. It is such a good idea to create connections between different towns in different countries rather than building walls. It struck me that adding the layer of fair trade to that relationship enhanced it because it meant we were looking outwards to different parts of the world and creating more links.

Since then Philipp and I have met a few times on line and talked about how we can work together through education exchanges and sharing ideas between our fair trade businesses. He also invited me to join in with their 10th anniversary celebrations of Fürth becoming a fair trade city in February 2026.

Philipp talks about his own family story of creating connections between different countries and the work that Fürth have done to promote fair trade in their city.

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This is a heads up of a special podcast episode that we'll be putting out on the 9th February.

I've been recently talking to Philipp Abel, the head of sustainability at Fürth City Council in northern Bavaria, in Germany, about their commitment to fair trade. I met Philipp back in September 2025 at a fair trade towns conference in Edinburgh and discovered that Fürth was twinned with our town Paisley, in Scotland.

We quickly realised that we had a lot in common, particularly with fair trade, and decided to use our twinning links to support each other in the work that we do. One thing that interested me was to hear more about Fürth's and Philipp's stories and to put them out on our podcast in time for Fürth's 10th anniversary as a fair trade city at the beginning of February.

So look out for our next episode of Rainbow Turtle Rebooted, coming out on Monday the 9th of February, about the work that is going on in Fürth, in particular their commitment to purchasing fair trade products as part of their public procurement policy.

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Welcome to episode 4 of our series and this time we're with Emma Hillcoat of Greencity Wholefoods in Glasgow. Emma has got to be the most positive person I've met and when you combine that with a job that matches her personality and ethics, you have the perfect combination. Emma is also a relatively new recruit to Green City and views the workers' cooperative from a fresh perspective. What's also heartening is that Green City is the kind of organisation that attracts young people who are passionate about the environment and trading fairly with producers and farmers in the global south.

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