After years of begging, pleading, and boycotting from activists, Starbucks finally made a more serious commitment to fair trade coffee by promising to double its fair trade certified coffee purchases. This makes Starbucks the world’s largest buyer of fair trade coffee.

I find it interesting that this sudden change of heart from Starbucks comes now that the company’s not doing as well financially. Perhaps Starbucks discovered that greenwashing wasn’t quite as profitable as actually going green. Here’s a little history of Starbucks’ clashes with fair trade activism:

>> Activists have been trying to push Starbucks since at least 1997. Bruce Herbert, Director of the Northwest Coalition for Responsible Investment and prez of Thomson Herbert Company, said that in 1995, Starbucks “adopted a Code of Conduct in a move to hold coffee growers accountable for acceptable working conditions, wages and basic rights forworkers” — but then stayed mum on the results of this code.

>> In Oct. 2005, City Hippy and I launched the first Starbucks Challenge, taking Starbucks up on its offer to make a cup of fair trade coffee for any customer who asks for one. Soon Starbucks said it was experiencing “a breakdown in customer service.”

>> In Feb. 2007, Starbucks announced at a fair trade convergence it won’t commit even 5% to fair trade. The company continued, however, to green up its image by talking about its own CAFE practices — a confusing self-created “certification program” touted as being (but actually wasn’t) even greener and more fair than fair trade.

>> In Sept. 2007, the SacBee wrote a damning expose on Starbucks. SacBee’s Tom Knudson spent 3 weeks in Ethiopia and found that the very Ethiopian farmers Starbucks purports to benefit are in fact living in poverty, forced to settle for a little charity here and there instead of receiving a fair price for their coffee.

>> Starbucks’ purchase of fair trace certified coffee stayed at a stagnant 6% in 2007, though according to its self-defined criteria, Starbucks’ coffee purchases from “sustainable suppliers went up from 53% to 65%.

Starbucks’ sudden support of fair trade certification now reminds me of Whole Foods’ similar fair trade conversion back in 2007. The grocery chain had formerly rejected fair trade certification for its Allegro coffee line, but after a lot of consumer pressure coming from all sides, decided to reverse course, launching a new initiative called Whole Trade and enlisting the help of TransFair USA, the nonprofit that certifies fair trade products in the US.

Similarly, Starbucks’ about face comes with the launch of a new initiative dubbed Starbucks Shared Planet and a joint press release with TransFair USA. TFUSA’s so psyched it wrote an exuberant letter to Zarah, fair trade blogger at Change.com, further hyping the deal.

Who’s next?

Illustration by Jasmin Chua, Worsted Witch

Update, 12/6/08: Starbucks UK goes 100% fair trade for its espresso drinks.

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