starbucks challenge

It's Monday morning, back to the work week grind.  Speaking of grinds, did you stop for your morning jolt of java today?  Regular readers will know that I harp on drinking shade grown, preferably organic, fair trade coffee.  Coffee is the second largest U.S. import after oil. Coffee drinkers have the potential to make a huge impact on the environment and economies of coffee growing nations. (click on continue reading for more info)

Ergo, I won't patronize that WalMart of coffee, Starbucks.  I can often find a bag of fair trade coffee to buy, but they don't ever seem to have any brewing.  Once I asked, and was told it was not their coffee of the day, so they didn't have any to serve. 

I'm not the only person who noticed this, and it turns out Starbucks actually has a policy that says they will serve brewed Fair Trade coffee on request.  So the folks over at green LA girl and City Hippy have started the Starbucks Challenge.  Go into your local Starbucks and ask for a cup of Fair Trade coffee.  Let the folks at City Hippy know what happened.  They'll compile the results.  I'm curious what happens, too, so you can comment here as well.

Below the fold/beyond the click, some resources.

A round up of important coffee information:

Shade grown coffee is sustainably grown, while sun coffee is not -- it requires large inputs of fertilizers and pesticides and exhausts soils.  Further, shade grown coffee is critical bird habitat.  Learn more from this summary Seattle Audubon and this slide show at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center.  I've also posted on research verifying that shade grown coffee plantations benefit orchids.

How much do you pay for a cup of gourmet coffee? Fair Trade Certification guarantees a minimum price to farmers of $1.26 a pound. That means that farmers who grew your non-Fair Trade coffee likely received LESS, which is unethical to say the least.  Fair Trade certification helps to make sure that coffee growers, most who are small farmers, receive a fair price for their coffee, and helps promote health care, education, environmental stewardship, and economic independence.     More info here at Global Exchange.

Not all shade grown coffee is organic, athough most of it is. Ditto -- not all shade grown or organic coffee is Fair Trade Certified, but they often are.  I've posted coffee sources before, but here's my top three:

• Grounds for Change. My favorite. All of their coffee is Fair Trade, shade grown, and organic.  I'm currently having monthly shipments of Cafe Femenino, which supports a Peruvian coffee cooperative run entirely by women.
• Thanksgiving Coffee Company. These folks dedicate their whole company to educating the public and providing "Not just a cup, a just cup."  They have a whole line of song bird coffees.
• Heine Brothers. They sell only organic, fair trade coffee.

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Comments

[Jenn]

Roast your own!! I buy green beans for my coffee-addict hubby - he roasts them in our air popcorn popper. I typically get them from Sweet Maria's, a company that is very good about explaining the bean source (organic, fair trade, co-ops, etc.).

[MaryMactavish]

The only use I know for Starbucks is when I can't get to Peet's (where I buy their fair trade, because I just don't like the taste of their organic) and *must* have caffeine, and then I have to get a mocha because the flavors in their over-roasted coffee spoil it for me. I can't imagine their chocolate is ethically grown, but it never occurred to me to request fair trade in their *espresso*, which is easy enough to do, if they have the beans around.

As a birder (and environmentalist), shade-grown coffee is important to me.

[green LA girl]

Shade grown's totally important. I love the "triple-certified" coffees -- organic, shade-grown, and fair trade. Too bad we still have to pick between these for our brewed cups --

[Joshuel Patterson]

Thank you very much for this informative article. I am fairly new to coffee and the incredible world of fair-trade and organic/sustainable production.
And although Coffee is really only a small portion of this whole world of change I still believe very strongly in supporting businesses practicing responsible and ethical operating principles. I will be traveling to Guatemala along with over 30 other Heine Brothers' Coffee employees in February to visit a Coffee Growing Cooperative and other impoverished areas to build houses with Habitat for Humanity.

You probably already know this, but there is still much work to be done. Fair-trade and organic practices are the foundation for this change. I have seen first hand a significant rise in interest among consumers in recent years (yay!), but also in articles describing responsible choices by groups of young children in classrooms that refuse to participate in fundraisers based on selling certain unhealthy products.

As a member of Generation-X I must say that growing up knowing all of the terrible things our forebears (and us) have been doing to our world and its inhabitants (including ourselves) has a rather overwhelming ipmact on our view of the future. As a committed optimist, however, I I say with confidence it is thanks to articles like this that provide an invaluable service of educating and promoting interest that we will soon be able to look back and say, anything really is possible!

Joshuel Patterson
Barista, Computer Guy,
Heine Brothers' Coffee