Comments on: Starbucks: Fairly deceptive claims

By: ruthy

ruthy — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 19:07:05 +0000

Super informative…keep the info coming!

By: Lusidvicel

Lusidvicel — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 15:37:23 +0000

Hello, i love greenlagirl.com! Let me in, please :)

By: Stephanie

Stephanie — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

damn siel, i’m glad you blogged this. very timely considering i just got a brief lecture from a starbucks supervisor about how all their coffee is “in a sense, fair trade” because they pay above the average market price. I wasn’t anticipating a claim like that so unfortunately, I didn’t do much to refute her other than point out we don’t know whether that money goes to the farmers or not. Anyway, good post.

By: kieran moore

kieran moore — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

great post –

“in a sense free trade” is that like “technically our t-shirts are not made by ‘slaves’ “?

starbucks story:http://fromthecabin.blogspot.com/2005/11/holiday-suits.html

By: beev

beev — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

I’m also glad you blogged this. These kinds of claims are always made to sound good, but we really could use more transparency in such things.

By: jeni

jeni — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Siel – just dropping another “hi” from the east side. glad to see you’re still keep on top of the challenge. i now make it a regular habit to ask starbucks for fair trade coffee. and by this i mean 1-2 times, daily. i work as a business consultant, and am always doing most of my work out of the office; i consider myself to be a pretty loyal starbucks customer, mainly because 1. i have the t-mobile hotspot, 2. they are completely dependable in an omnipresent way, 3. most of their locations are work-condusive, 4. their coffee drinks are just pretty damn good.

since i’ve started to ask for Fair Trade coffee, i was actually surprised at the number of times employees would quietly point me to a nearby cafe that offers FT coffee, and encourage me to check it out. this shows a lot, don’t you think?

I feel like we should create a map of all starbucks locations to plot them with scores on our success in getting fair trade coffee drinks.

By: justin

justin — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

more plugs for portland (you may know of these guys already): although much smaller than starbucks, portland roasting and sustainable harvest buy direct from farmers or producer-owned cooperatives. that way, you know how much is going to the farmers. and portland roasting is doing some innovative in-house development work in their supplier countries, while sustainable harvest is innovating with helping farms move toward sustainability.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

I think that original quote was taken slightly out of context. In 2004 Starbucks did pay on average $1.20 per pound for coffee. That average price point is for all coffees Starbucks purchased that year not just Certified Fair Trade coffee.

I think it would be a better representation to quote the average price per pound spent specifically for Certified Fair Trade Coffee.

If you read further into Starbucks website you'll see that they have recently partnered with TransFair USA, one of nineteen members of Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO), and the only third-party certifier of Fair Trade products in the United States, to further Starbucks committment of having transparency in prices paid to the farmer.

By: Siel

Siel — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Anon — I think you may’ve misread my post. What I’m saying IS that Starbucks says it paid $1.20 on average per pound of coffee, fair trade or not. My question is who that $1.20 went to. I’m aware that Starbucks is working with TransFair USA to work on the mermaid’s transparancy issues, which, as of now, are still serious issues.

Steph and beev — Thanks for the props :)

Kieran — I LOVE Gorey! You know, there was a play made based on his stories performed in LA — Wonder if it’s still running! Ok — I know that’s not the point of your post, but I’m psyched that someone’s blogging about Gorey –

Justin — These companies/initiative sound really interesting! I’ll need a lil time to read and digest — kinda makes me wanna visit Portland –

jeni — Cool about the Starbucks’ employees! Now if only the headquarters would wake up and smell the fair trade coffee — I hear ya with being stuck with Starbucks if you’re a nomadic gal with a laptop — One must have a reliable wireless network ;) Which is one of the major reasons the Starbucks Challenge is important. We’re working on a map with the results of the Starbucks Challenge that’ll pull the info from the del.icio.us links, but it’s taking us a lil while — Hopefully we’ll have it up and running soon :) In the meantime, let me know which Starbucks you visited and what the results were when you get the chance! Feel free to put the info in a comment or email if you’d rather not put it on your blog :)

By: trill42

trill42 — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Partial economic transparency is “in a sense” worse than no economic transparency because it lets a company become complacent and act smug about how open and ethical they’re being when, in fact, they’re really not doing that great a job at either. They believe in transparency as a policy or they don’t. They believe in fair trade or they don’t. Pick some policies and go with them. “In a sense fair trade” is meaningless doublespeak. In a sense white is black. Once a whole lot of black has been added to it.