Wallet Mouth

Valentine’s Day preparedness, Part 2: chocolate without a dark backstory

I was going to try to include in this post a summary of the recent history of efforts to clean up the cocoa industry, but that will have to wait till later—it’s too complex.

Also, I just had a baby! Which means my pace of posts is going to slow down for a while.

But in the meantime, get your ethically made chocolate at Divine Chocolate and Sweet Earth Chocolates.

Addendum: Following are more sources of ethical chocolate (thanks, Co-op America!).

Fair Trade Certified chocolate can be found  at health food stores and specialty markets across the country. To find a fair trade retailer near you, visit the TransfairUSA website. If you can't find the brand you want locally, an excellent one-stop online source is the Global Exchange Store.                   

The following companies all sell fair trade chocolate products.  Most (though not all) are also organic:

Dagoba Organic Chocolate - Chocolate bars, baking chips, chocolate syrup, hot chocolate, and baking cocoa (non-alkali).

Dean's Beans - Organic hot cocoa and baking cocoa, also kosher.

Equal Exchange - Organic hot cocoa, baking cocoa (with alkali) and fair trade, gourmet chocolate bars.

Ithaca Fine Chocolates - Organic chocolate "Art Bars."

La Siembra Co-Operative - A Canadian worker-owned co-op. Dark chocolate bars are available in the USA.

Sjaak's Organic Chocolates - All organic and fair trade chocolate bars, gift boxes, holiday items, vegan selections

Theo Chocolate - Organic, fair trade premium chocolate.

Yachana Gourmet - Chocolate, tropical fruit spreads and other food products made from organically grown raw materials from the Amazon rainforest region in Ecuador.

Valentine’s Day preparedness, Part 1: flowers whose ethics don’t stink

What could be more romantic than a dozen roses on February 14th?

Unfortunately, that bouquet starts to smell less sweet when you consider that it was most likely grown using toxic pesticides and handled by workers who probably weren’t given adequate protection against those chemicals. Oh, and those employees could easily have been children, or women illegally required to take a pregnancy test every month (and fired if they get a positive result).

The vast majority of flowers we Americans send our sweeties on Valentine’s Day are imported from Colombia and Ecuador, where it’s common for farms engage in the less-than-fragrant practices mentioned above, plus others. (For more info, check out the International Labor Rights Forum’s Fairness in Flowers campaign. While you’re there, sign the petition telling Dole to stop union-busting at flower farm Fragrancia—the link is in the third sidebar on the right.)

Only within the past couple of years have I been made aware of these ethical considerations. Many people, I think, have no idea. And the biggest U.S. company in the cut-flower industry, FTD, isn’t helping.

If you visit FTD.com, you’ll see that it does have an  “Eco-Friendly” product category. But it looks like nothing more than greenwashing to me. Emblazoned across the webpage is a logo that features a recycling logo and the words “Go Green Living,” along with this meaningless copy:

In an effort to embrace the ever-changing needs of our consumer and our society, FTD proudly presents “Go Green Living.” A movement that is making us aware of the way we have and continue to effect our planet, we recognize the need for natural, fresh, sustainable or organic products to be made available to our customers. Send these stunning bouquets, gourmet treats and gorgeous gifts to not only delight your recipient, but make a statement about the importance of protecting the beautiful earth we inhabit.

I called FTD to ask what, if anything, the Go Green Living designation means. Under what conditions are Go Green flowers grown? Are there publicly available standards I can read? Is this a certification program?

“They are certified sustainable,” the customer-service rep I spoke with said.

“By whom?” I asked.

“Um... [keyboard sounds] It doesn’t say by who,” she replied. “I believe Go Green is a service provided by FTD.”

“But you guys are the ones selling the flowers,” I pointed out. “Of course you’re going to say they’re sustainable.” For a certification system to have any teeth, I added, it has to be operated by an independent party.

The sad thing is that North America does have a highly regarded certification system for sustainable flowers, and I’m sure that FTD’s executives know this. It’s called VeriFlora. Its website discusses its criteria (which span environmental and social responsibility categories), and it’s managed by Scientific Certification Systems, a certification company that specializes in audits across a number of industries.

According to an interesting article on ethical flowers in the new issue of Plenty magazine, about 30 percent of the stems sold by Canada’s largest floral distributor, Sierra Flower Trading, are VeriFlora-certified. Why is FTD lagging?

I told the customer-service rep that I and countless other consumers would love to see FTD offer VeriFlora bouquets. She promised she’d put a recommendation into the company’s system. While you’re at it, tell them to get rid of that Go Green Living nonsense, I added.

So where is a conscious consumer to go for flowers? Here are some options:

Organic Bouquet (the flower arm of eco-boutique Organic Style) has some VeriFlora offerings; a search on the term yielded 43 results.

Even more selection might be found at California Organic Flowers, which sells stems grown in the Golden State that are certified as organic by both the USDA and the more stringent California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF).

Diamond Organics’ floral offerings are also mostly from California, and a company rep told me the flowers are definitely USDA-certified and probably also CCOF-certified organic.

Meanwhile, Flowerbud.com has 22 VeriFlora bouquets, though strangely it doesn’t trumpet that fact very loudly.

Lastly, mainstream 1800flowers.com sells one lonely fair-trade rose bouquet, certified by TransFair USA.

“Mass Nausea” chocolate photos featured in art exhibition

In November I encouraged readers to take part in a photo project highlighting the ills of unethically sourced cocoa. Mr. Wallet Mouth and I did, and we had a great (and messy) time spitting up M&Ms.

Now the artist behind the portraits, April Banks, is showing the first installment of the ongoing project as part of a group exhibition at the Headlands Center for the Arts in the San Francisco Bay Area. The opening reception takes place this Sunday from 2 to 5 p.m. (plenty of time to make it to your Superbowl Sunday party before the game).

The Headlands Center for the Arts is located at 944 Fort Barry, Sausalito, CA 94965.

Amuse-bouche: consumers getting hip to sustainability

As if in response to my New Year’s rumination about a tipping point in consumer attitudes on values and spending, SustainableBusiness.com just published a piece about a recent study indicating that conscious consumerism is catching on.

Absence makes the Mouth grow louder

Miss me? I haven’t been neglecting you, I’ve just been away. It’s always refreshing to leave the States for a little while and rinse off all that America über Alles. This time it was Venice, where Mr. Wallet Mouth and I just had a romantic getaway to celebrate our last days as a twosome. (In less than three months, we will have another Mouth to feed.)

The city of canals has always been a tourists’ mecca, so I didn’t really expect any mind-altering shifts in perspective. Nonetheless, between our many helpings of gelato (baby needs calcium!) and during our meanders through countless piazzas and ever-narrower streets, a few blog-worthy moments surfaced.

One was encountering this graffito. (OK, I feel slightly self-conscious whipping out the rarely used singular form of “graffiti,” but hey, that’s what it was.) Anyway, it warmed my heart to see that some kindred spirit out there shares my obsession and outrage over the opaqueness of corporate parentage. It almost made me want to add a footnote (pun intended) suggesting No Sweat sneakers as an alternative.

Later, we happened upon this store—sadly, after it had closed for the day. Apparently everything it sells is fair trade, made by artisans all over the world (and there were some neat things inside; my eye was caught by a pair of Mongolian-made slippers with elvish upward-curving pointy tips). The fact that all the wares are fair trade is remarkable by itself, but what really struck me were shop’s appearance—nice, spacious, and emanating a Real Store vibe—and its location: right by the Rialto Bridge, one of the more touristy parts of Venice. It would be the equivalent of having a fair-trade shop in Fishermans Wharf, which I find hard to imagine.

Finally, look at the vegetarian and vegan check boxes on this canister of Pringles. Why don’t we have those on American Pringles? (At least I think we don’t; it’s been a long time since I’ve bought them.)

No doubt because Europe is kilometers ahead of us on the food-labeling front...

(And yes, sigh, I know Pringles are not good for baby. But Mr. Wallet Mouth claims he simply could not resist their Pringley goodness while on vacation!)

Fair-labor assurances boost sales in retail experiment

A recent article in Slate discusses an intriguing experiment that suggests businesses can increase profits by offering products labeled as having been produced in a socially conscious manner.

More testing is needed, since the trial took place in a New York City store with a progressive reputation and customers who tend to be wealthier than average. But the proposition that there is a quantifiable unmet consumer demand for fairly made products is exciting.

My minor but nagging question—were the items the researchers labeled as fair-labor in the experiment actually produced under fair and safe conditions?—gets an affirmative answer in the research paper itself (pdf). Also notable there is the list of retailers that declined to participate in the experiment for fear of drawing attention to the issue of labor standards: Abercrombie and Fitch, Adidas, American Eagle, Eastern Mountain Sports, Free People, Gap, the Harvard / MIT Coop, J. Crew, Marshall’s, Nike, Patagonia, Target, Timberland, Urban Outfitters, and Wal-Mart.

Vomit for fair trade: models needed for photo project

San Francisco Bay Area readers: Want to make a statement against Mars Corporation’s unethically sourced cocoa and have fun at the same time? Conceptual artist April Banks is seeking models of varying ages, races, and physical characteristics so she can shoot portraits of them spitting up M&Ms. (Actual vomiting not necessary.)

If you’re interested and free on Nov. 10 or 11, email her at aprilinafrica@yahoo.com. Choose a two-hour time slot between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., and indicate your race, gender, and approximate age. Saturday’s shoot takes place in Oakland; Sunday’s is in San Francisco. Wear a white T-shirt.

What’s really scary about Halloween

Pumpkins are sprouting up on front steps, and synthetic spiderwebs are spreading throughout windows and doorways in my neighborhood. In a week, trick-or-treaters will blanket the area to collect all manner of sugary confections. But just as Halloween has a dark side (from its origins in warding off evil spirits to such present-day irritants as oversexualized kids’ costumes), so do all those sweets.

Top candy manufacturers such as Hershey’s, Mars, and Nestlé—the makers of most of the treats that will fill those bags on All Hallow’s Eve—have long been criticized for sourcing their cocoa from West African producers with unsavory labor practices. Chocolate isn’t the only culprit, of course; social and environmental injustices can lurk behind other ingredients and in other parts of the supply chain as well.

There are some signs of progress: Hershey’s and Nestlé, for example, have signed on to the International Cocoa Initiative, and Hershey’s this year worked with Verité and Business for Social Responsibility to create a code of conduct that addresses fair-labor practices as well as the environment and food safety in all its suppliers. But many conscious consumers are still understandably wary of Big Candy.

Then there’s the health aspect of the annual feeding frenzy; the statistics on childhood obesity today are nothing if not worrying.

In response, some forward-thinking people and organizations have come up with a couple of interesting twists on Halloween. Corey Colwell-Lipson, a mother who was inspired by the households in her Seattle-area neighborhood that gave out non-candy items last year, founded Green Halloween, an initiative that encourages parents hand out healthier edibles (like organic juice boxes) and keepsakes instead of confections. It also advocates for focusing more on costumes and the social aspects of the holiday than the caloric ones. (Thanks to Lonnie for turning me on to this one.)

Meanwhile, Global Exchange is publicizing reverse trick-or-treating, in which costumed kids give fair-trade sweets and informational postcards to the households they’re supposedly hitting up. I tend to share World Changing’s skepticism of just how fun this would actually be for the little tykes, but hey, it’s worth a try.

In any case, I like the fact that so many people are “thinking outside of the candy box” (to quote Green Halloween) this year. Hmm, Mr. Wallet Mouth and I have a bunch of leftover blinky dice we had made as gifts to hand out at Burning Man; perhaps those would make good treats (not for compulsive swallowers, though). At the very least, we’ll have to scare up some fair-trade chocolate.
Mmmm!

Ethical threads turning heads

To Mr. Wallet Mouth’s general relief (if occasional chagrin), I’ve never much gone in for haute couture. That said, I do wish I could teleport to Paris for the Ethical Fashion Show, which starts today. Now in its fourth year, the conference touts itself as a “unifying event” that fosters dialogue between industry players and promotes responsible designers.

And of course, it promises to be quite a spectacle, with exhibitors bringing the latest in catwalk fare from such far-flung locales as Chile, Indonesia, and Azerbaijan.

The 100-odd participating designers were invited only after meeting demanding criteria. They must comply with International Labour Organization rules concerning wages, health care, and the right to unionize. Dyes or other fabric treatments used must not be harmful to the environment. A portion of profits must be reinvested into local communities. Working with local craftspeople and making frequent use recycled materials is encouraged. And so on.

The show also features lectures examining ethical fashion entrepreneurship, responsible fashion in education, and the market for ethical fashion.

The latter topic is the one I find most interesting. As is the case with so many “sustainable” products, ethical clothes often come with a high price tag that puts them out of reach for many consumers. Apparel that doesn’t harm people or the environment shouldn’t be a luxury, but all too often it is.

The flip side is that events like this expose more companies to the idea of ethical threads and generate ever more demand for them. This should lead to economies of scale and to wider availability of nonexploitative fashion.

But in the meantime, many of us slumming at the bottom end of the market can rest easy shopping in an already-ubiquitous low-impact way—at the local secondhand shop.

Fair play

Last month I blogged about Project Good, an upcoming collaboration between World of Good and eBay to create a large online marketplace for ethically made products. The unnamed marketplace is still in the works (it should launch before the holidays), but you can get the latest scoop on it—and do some good at the same time—by signing up for the Project Good email list. For every 20 people who sign up, Project Good will donate a fair-trade soccer ball to Better World Cup in Africa.

In other news, October is Fair Trade Month. The fourth-annual one, even! To celebrate, Trans Fair USA, the organization that certifies fair-trade products in the States, is holding a video contest. Submit five minutes or less of footage demonstrating what fair trade means to you, and you could get flown to Peru  to visit a farmers co-op (hmm, I hope they’re going to offset all those carbon emissions).

Also in conjunction with Fair Trade Month, the Fair Trade Federation is launching the Fair Trade Towns initiative, modeled after the first such movement, in the U.K. This is not a certification program: unlike a package of fair-trade coffee, a fair-trade town does not get independently audited to ensure that it follows certain standards. The Fair Trade Federation doesn’t own the term fair-trade town.

Rather, the initiative is an invitation for municipalities to declare themselves as fair-trade towns, based on guidelines laid out by the Fair Trade Federation (that don’t necessarily have to be followed). A fair-trade town should have a steering committee, for example. It should pass a resolution in support of fair-trade principles. It should also have a certain number of fair-trade products widely available, and one or more of its larger institutions (such as a hospital or house of worship) should use mainly fair-trade products.

Frankly, I’m not sure how I feel about the Fair Trade Towns program. Does it really mean that much for a city to declare itself a fair-trade town? Fair-trade products have to undergo rigorous certification programs; I fear that using the same name for a municipality—which facilitates and encompasses so many different kinds of economic forces and transactions—waters down that rigor and could potentially cause confusion. (When I first heard the term, I imagined a city where everything—all products, contracts, etc.—were fair trade.)

I suppose it raises awareness of fair-trade principles, and that’s good, but I worry that the designation implies something more concrete than it really is, a vague statement of support with little to back it up.