Morning coffee

It it appropriate for me to point out the obvious eco-friendly and fair trade solutions to coffee as it is the second most traded commodity in the world (second only to oil)! Yes I know your one or two (ok fine two or three) cups of coffee a day don't seem like much and how are you, one sole person, going to change the world by changing your coffee routine? I think the magnitude of coffee being the second most traded commodity in the world might make you feel less helpless :)

By now I know you fellow green-ers and fairtrade enthusiasts take care to buy fair trade coffee and bring your own mug around with your instead of paper cups :) but another way to help out (and save money!!) is to brew your own coffee at home. You can then make sure that the coffee you are making is 100% fairtrade (I'm convinced that coffee shops sometimes forget to mark fair trade or not and signs are easily interchanged). It can save on paper waste, gas waste, plastic waste the list goes on! Another eco-friendly and healthier option for making coffee at home is to buy unbleached coffee filters. Trust humans to bleach something white just for aesthetic purposes eh? The coffee filters we all know are chemically treated to be white and therefore you are accumulating chemicals in your body and the earth. Another option is re-usable coffee filters which are now able to be purchased or made (score diy!).

On the fair trade coffee front I IMPLORE you to buy fair trade coffee as it makes SUCH a big difference in these people's lives. I am in the middle of reading Javatrekker thanks to a friend and I have to say, so far, I am converted. The author travels around everywhere interacting and helping people to start their own sustainable fair trade coffee co-op and his company roasts them! This is big because the roasters are the ones who make the big bucks in the middle and nothing goes to the people who actually harvested them (see Black Gold) You can buy this man's coffee on Dean's Beans. Another great resource is a documentary called Black Gold which I found at my local movie store.

So now that I have shared my coffee stories with you, I must finish my own cup. Salud!

lovelove