A Nice Cuppa

A few days ago, Nicole posted a great snippet on Fair Trade coffee and why it’s important to put our dollars towards those companies and products that support ethical treatment of workers as well as a greater emphasis on sustainability and better environmental practices. I try to buy organic, Fair Trade and bird friendly beans whenever I can, but I know that I really should know more about exactly what these terms mean. If you’ve read the Omnivore’s Dilemma, you’ll know that some of these terms-??? like natural, bird friendly and sustainable?????? aren’t always clearly defined and take some real investigating to ensure that there is substance behind the claims and that it’s not just marketing speak. Of course, once you start exploring eco-friendly sites, be prepared to spend a long time clicking and reading. There’s more information out there than most people can make it through in a day, and to top it off, some of it contradicts itself. It’s both the beauty and the bane of the internet.

All of that is the long way of introducing a new site that I found to help make sense of all this: Coffee & Conservation. The site is packed with great articles on the how-tos of coffee and more importantly, the environmental issues surrounding it. In particular, I love this article about shade grown coffee, which logically breaks down the different types of growing methodologies that can be considered shade grown, and explains which are and which aren’t actually beneficial. There’s also a great list of sites to order ecologically friendly green beans for home roasters, which includes some of my personal favorites like Intelligentsia, Merchants of Green Coffee (the beans pictured!), and Burman Coffee Traders. Keep in mind that not all the beans that these sites offer are sustainably grown?????? you’ll have to read the fine print to figure out which are which. A new one to me, Seven Bridges Cooperative, looks like it offers only organic and Fair Trade beans. Looks like I’ll be ordering more beans soon!