Did you know?? We have Consumer Power!
I’ve found facebook and registered…in my surfing through it, I also found neat groups like the big green purse and the green parent. One of the articles on the green parent:
(http://thegreenparent.blogspot.com/2008/03/grab-cup-of-eco-savvy-java.html)
Coffee is the second largest agricultural crop in the world, after cotton. It is also the third most heavily sprayed crop in the world; cotton and tobacco are first and second. If you drink conventional, non-organic coffee, you are likely consuming a slew of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. And these chemicals are not only terrible for your health, but they are also harmful to the fields, streams, animals, birds and people who live where the coffee is grown. Coffee can be even more destructive than other crops because it is often grown at high elevations where chemical affects are amplified.
Did you know that?? another one that got me => made me think “power to the women”! Big Green Purse
…women spend $.85 of every dollar in the marketplace.
Can you imagine the impact if we band together and say “no” to environmental tragedies? Chemicals in our cosmetics that don’t belong…no to markets that aren’t helpful to our country? Perhaps we have a wee bit more power than we think! Happy Washing! 😀 ~Regina
One Comment
Andrea
Consumer Power when it comes to coffee: 2 additional, very important factors to consider when buying: Shade grown (so under the roof of the rain forest) and Fair Trade. Coffee is the second-most traded commodity in the world (oil is the most-traded), and, as with anything with such a prominent place in the global marketplace, there are myriad green issues from growth and harvest to roasting and distribution.
“Shade-grown,” as the name implies, is reserved for those coffee bushes that grow under a canopy of taller trees and other foliage. So what? Well, coffee grows in three main locales-Central and South America, Indonesia, and Africa-around the globe; all are near the equator, between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. As it happens, many of the world’s rich, dense rainforests also reside there, making them ideal places to grow the bean.
Coffee, like most plants, grows most quickly in the sun, and therein lies the predicament: To grow coffee on an industrial scale, rainforests-and the rich biodiversity and enormous range of habitat they provide-most often get the short end of the stick. But it doesn’t have to be that way.Shade-grown coffee, then, not only promotes ecosystem health-and, according to some connoisseurs, produces a fuller, richer, more mature flavor-but it also helps keep rainforests and their astonishing biodiversity intact. (Big coffee producers don’t like this so much, since their crop grows more slowly and it’s more difficult to manage and harvest.) When you buy shade-grown, you’re helping maintain this system, and end the cycle of clear-cutting and monoculture that can accompany large-scale coffee agriculture
Fair trade is a model of international trade that promotes giving farmers and producers equitable compensation for their labors-or what counts as a living wage in the country of their origin-so that the lion’s share of the producers’ hard-earned profits aren’t whisked away by predatory (and unnecessary) middlemen. By demanding fair-trade products, you’re leveraging your power as a consumer to push for better trading conditions and fair returns for marginalized producers and workers.