Treat someone to Plush guilt-free gourmet chocolate
(16/02/2010)

With a new range of affordable chocolate gifts from £4.99 treat someone to Plush guilt-free chocolate for Mother's Day and Easter. Gourmet chocolate company Plush with indulgent flavours like Champagne and Caramel gives you that feel-good feeling.

The company founders, Sarah Hobbs and Jenny Silverthorne-Wright, are passionate about creating chocolates that not only look and taste great, but that also use natural ingredients, are eco-friendly and most important of all every product is made with Fairtrade Ingredients. Ok, so they haven't figured out how to make them totally fat and sugar free, so you could feel guilty about that. But you can feel better about the fact that the ingredients used in Plush chocolates, like the premium cocoa beans from the Ivory Coast, are sourced in a way that helps small-scale farmers secure their future.

Take the Manduriva Fairtrade Co-operative from Paraguay for example, whose members grow and harvest cane sugar for Plush's Classic Belgian Collection. Before Fairtrade, their region only had one doctor. Now they have one doctor, two dentists, two medics and enough resource to fund improved access to running water and the replacement of latrines with new bathrooms and toilets.

Before founding Plush, Sarah and Jenny's passion for fighting poverty was channeled into their work for Oxfam, where they spent a combined 14 years. Their love of affordable high quality food, combined with their wish to prevent the exploitation of people and the planet then led them to launch Plush. Jenny Silverthorne-Wright said 'We knew we were asking a lot - we wanted to create chocolates that used Fairtrade ingredients, met our ethical expectations, and that tasted fabulous and didn't cost the earth. The results have exceeded our expectations'. In addition to paying a fair price to producers, the two entrepreneurs have taken their ethical principles further by using re-usable, recyclable or biodegradable packaging.

In addition Plush offers a range of English handmade truffles, hand finished Belgian chocolates and Organic Fairtrade caramels and buttons, packaged in luxury gift boxes, keepsake boxes and hand crafted Christmas baubles and Easter novelties.

They are available online and from Oxfam, Ethical Superstore, John Lewis, Harvey Nichols, Save the Children and EH Booths.