Why buy ethical
chocolate
Read about why buying ethical
chocolate
is important.
And choose the good story!
- PRODUCTS
- THE STORY
- COMPANIES
Did you know?
- Up to 12,000 of the 200,000 children working in Ivory Coast, the world's biggest producer of cocoa, may be victims of trafficking or slavery (1).
- There are reports of farmers enslaving thousands of child workers (2)
- One of the most common pesticides used on cocoa in West Africa is lindane, a toxic cousin of DDT (3).
- It takes 24,000 liters of water to produce 1 kilo of chocolate (4).
- Only about 6-8% of the revenue in the chocolate business makes it’s way back to the cocoa farmers (5).
Green issues related to chocolate
Child workers in the cocoa industry labor for long, punishing hours, using dangerous tools and facing frequent exposure to dangerous pesticides as they travel great distances in the grueling heat. Those who labor as slaves must also suffer frequent beatings and other cruel treatment (6).
The documentary “The Dark Side of Chocolate” documents how major chocolate brands such as Nestlé, Mars and Kraft buy their cocoa from suppliers using child labor (7). After watching this documentary you really want to go for chocolate produced by ethical companies with high social and environmental standards! Watch it here!
Benefits of "good" chocolate
Cocoa can be cultivated under the shade of native trees and maintain a landscape similar to natural forest. This helps conserve the habitat of threatened plant and animal species, protect natural pollinators and predators of cocoa pests and create biological corridors that maintain large-scale ecological and evolutionary processes (8).
Organic fairtrade chocolate have been grown without the use of pesticides and under fair working conditions.
Sources
(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_in_cocoa_production
(2) http://exhibits.mannlib.cornell.edu/chocolate/fairtrade.php and http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/events/department-news/743/the-dark-side-of-chocolate/
(3) World Watch Institute: "State of the World 2004"
(4) http://www.worldwatercouncil.org/fileadmin/wwc/Programs/Virtual_Water/virtual_water_final_synthesis.pdf
(5) World Watch Institute: "State of the World 2004".
(6) http://www.laborrights.org/stop-child-labor/cocoa-campaign
(7) http://laborrightsblog.typepad.com/international_labor_right/2010/06/the-dark-side-of-chocolate-child-labor-and-trafficking-in-the-international-chocolate-industry.html
(8) http://www.rainforest-alliance.org/agriculture/crops/cocoa
FILTER PRODUCTS
ABOUT
THE STORY
Green products are all about the story behind them.
CONTRIBUTE
Help everyone make the right chocolate choice.
Write about all the ethical issues that people should know about - wiki-style.
Contribute here
ABOUT THE STORY
Behind every product
there is a story
When you buy stuff you don't just choose the product. You also choose the story behind it.
Improve the story
All product stories are wiki-based.
Help others by sharing what YOU know.
Add an ethical company
Do you know a great chocolate company with a good story?
FILTER COMPANIES
ABOUT
THE STORY
Green products are all about the story behind them.
CONTRIBUTE
Help everyone make the right chocolate choice.
Write about all the ethical issues that people should know about - wiki-style.
Contribute here
