Gotta love how the mainstream media doesn’t do links, even for its online versions. Not that I’m complaining — I’m psyched that The Times UK mentioned the Starbucks Challenge in its latest report on fair trade:

“But when the coffee chain [Starbucks] made a similar pledge [to offer fair trade coffee upon demand] in the United States last year, it provoked bloggers to launch the “Starbucks challenge”, encouraging customers to ask for Fairtrade coffee in their local branches. Judging by the blank stares that some bloggers say they received, not all stores were on-message.”

An interesting article for anyone interested in the fair trade movement. The gist: Would-be ethical consumers are concerned about multinationals giving only a token noed to the fair trade movement.

“Starbucks … could certainly do better, as could many of the other biggies. In the last financial year, only 3.7 per cent of the coffee it sold globally was Fairtrade, though this is up from the 1.6 per cent of the previous year. Nescafé’s Partners Blend, the Fairtrade option launched by Nestlé, accounts for only 0.02 per cent of its total coffee sales.”

Thanks to bread chocolate coffee yoga for pointing me to the article :)

4 Comments