Starbucks is the largest purchaser of Fair Trade Coffee

Full of rich bodied flavor and great respect for the farmers who grew it.

Café Estima is 100% Fair Trade Certified coffee. Its name means "respect", and its goal is to do good things for the farmers growing it. This is a full-bodied, well-balanced coffee with great versatility. From Latin America and East Africa, this coffee shows just how delicious it can be to turn beliefs into action.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Starbucks
• 'fair trade'
• 'cafe estima'
• 'starbucks coffee'

[proletarian48]

Fuck Starbucks, Fuck World Trade, Fuck Capitalism! Happy World, Happy Planet!

[fayer10]

starbucks is also the largest buyer of non fair trade coffee...

[1newgroove]

@Cienstin Yep. People can definitely agree with the ideals of Fairtrade, but it seems to fail in practice. After looking at the aggregate results of Fairtrade, it appears to me that it has done more harm than good. I would encourage everyone to look at the widespread results of Fairtrade and to look at the arguments against it (the article Unfair Trade by Marc Sidwell is a good place to start).

[Cienstin]

@1newgroove

Are you say then that fair trade is merely a marketing strategy.

Have you looked into the effects of fair trade on local markets in these countries?

[1newgroove]

@Cienstin Yes. I just wrote an ethics paper on Fairtrade coffee and was a bit surprised to discover how lousy Fairtrade has been in distributing aid to farmers. Most of the cases that I ran into demonstrated that "fair trade" farmers were no better if not worse off than regular coffee producers. At this point, the costs of meeting the Fairtrade standards appear to be too high for fair trade to actually be beneficial.

[Cienstin]

Does anyone else see the problem with the economics of fair trade as well as the economics of the environmentalist movement for everything 'green' ?

[billgatenbrad]

I don't believe it until I see it on the package and so far I haven't seen it on the package. I'm sure some of it is but not all of it.

[CariadSian]

That's wonderful - thanks for telling me - I have never once seen them advertise this fact.

[jieeeee]

@CariadSian Starbucks does give consumers who bring in their reusable cups a 10 cent discount.

[CariadSian]

During the video, did anyone else just see thousands of cups stacking up...the same way they do in garbage cans/ landfills around the world?

Right, they are recyclable...after about 80 years they begin to break down....

Hey Starbucks, why not encourage your consumers to bring their own reusable cups by giving them a 5 cent discount, a special recyclable punch card for a free drink after 20 or 50 punches if you wish, or how about a high five, or God knows what.