I don’t often talk about donating to organizations (maybe I do in your opinion), and I’m not suggesting that here. We currently live in a world that creates problems, and then creates organizations and campaigns to fix those problems. It seems a bit backwards to me.
About one year ago I decided to stop eating chocolate, at least chocolate I wasn’t sure was ‘fair trade’ (or if I found it in a dumpster). I went the majority of the year without eating chocolate period, which wasn’t too difficult. The reason I stopped eating chocolate is because I was confronted with the reality that the majority of our chocolate was harvested by children in forced labor in West Africa.
The solution to the problem of labor slavery to harvest cocoa is to choose to avoid those products. For now that means choosing smaller, more transparent companies, particularly those companies that carry the Fair Trade label. That has been the decision I’ve come to. Unlike coffee, which I don’t like and can easily avoid, I’m really a sucker for brownies and so when I choose to purchase chocolate I’ll be sure to choose the fair trade variety.
Your probably asking now where the $30 comes in. I’m not sure how many times you purchase brownies, or other chocolate through out the year, but we’ll just take an estimate. Let’s say that because chocolate isn’t all that good for your health, and because buying fair trade is more expensive, that you choose to purchase a chocolate bar about once every two weeks (am I being modest?). Choosing to buy the fair trade bar (at your local coop) will probably cost you around a dollar more per bar. It seems steep considering it’s probably double the cost of the other bar, but when you look at it in the overall scope, every other week, in a year your looking at about $26 to go from forced labor chocolate to fair trade chocolate. Seems like a pretty nice donation to me.
In the same way, you could eliminate a source of major unpredictable chemicals in your food buy choosing organic milk. Yes, each gallon is considerably more expensive then the store brand, but depending on how much milk you drink (maybe a gallon a week?), your looking at around $100 a year. Seems like a decent donation to chemical free bodies.
I think it’s important to be thinking about our consumer choices in this way, because they have a much bigger impact then we think. We tend to separate our purchasing from our giving, but I think we should start thinking about them together. Consider buying fair trade chocolate and coffee this year. Keep track of the cost difference and consider it as part of your annual giving (don’t know if you can count it on your taxes though). The world will be a better place for it.
I recommend reading Joel Saltin’s book “Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal”. He is the owner of Polyface Farms and was featured in the recent book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” by Michael Pollan. A combination of reading both books, but especially the first opened my eyes to the importance of small, local farms not simple relying on the label of organic. Often, local farms are more responsible and healthier because they are more connected to what they are doing. Sometimes organic farms are just too big.
this was a very interesting post! i like the thought of $30 per year going to help the problem. that makes it much more easy to purchase the more expensive option when you think of it in that way. thanks! oh, and your lack of chocolate eating has caused me to decrease the amount i eat and purchase. i’m not yet ready to eat none, but i have made a decrease. thanks for the influence!
Woah, that’s an awesome way to look at it. I’ll have to give that some more thought.