Making Sense of Certification — Fair Trade, Direct Trade, Rainforest Alliance, UTZ, Whole Trade, and Organic. — Cooperative Coffees

[delicious] Making Sense of Certification — Fair Trade, Direct Trade, Rainforest Alliance, UTZ, Whole Trade, and...

Walk into your neighborhood café or pick up a pound of coffee from your local grocer and you’ll no doubt be overwhelmed by the number of different coffees available to you. You’ll need to choose your coffee from a variety of roasts, origins, and blends as well as decide which trade relations model you’d like to support. Here you are, juggling two bags of coffee; you’re committed to becoming a socially conscious coffee buyer (to respect human rights, to participate in an alternative economy, to protect the environment); still, you only have 30 minutes to do your grocery shopping. One bag, from Ethiopia, displays various certification labels. The other, from Brazil, states that the grower uses sustainable environmental practices and protects the rainforests. Coffee bags in hand, you realize that coffee buying is going to be more complicated than you had anticipated. Both bag...

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