Green Options

Terri Bly, president of The Nature of Beauty, reviews Sweet Riot, a mission-focused, women-owned company dedicated to providing the most delicious chocolate in the world through environmentally-responsible and ethical business practices.

Sweet! Anyone receive any Climate Change Chocolate this past Valentine’s Day weekend? Well, chocolate bunny season is coming up so you might wanna bookmark this one…

I wrote about the TerraPass carbon offset chocolate offerings on Shaping Youth with a jaundiced eye toward greenwashing, since the main Bloomsberry factory is located in New Zealand, but good news! Bloomsberry chocolate manufacturer CEO Paul Pruett confirmed the TerraPass chocolate that’s sold in the U.S. is produced in the U.S.!

It’s evidently part of their business model to stay local with manufacturing, in addition to the chocolate’s recyclable wrapper and 15 tips for reducing your carbon footprint. Even better? Bloomsberry reports so far they’ve sold enough chocolate bars to offset the equivalent of:

814 passenger vehicles for 1 year
10,333 barrels oil
588 homes for 1 year
31 acres of forest preserved from deforestation
23.2 railcars worth of coal

Valentine’s Day and chocolate, it’s an ethical eater’s dilemma for certain. All that worry about carbon footprint, fair trade, ogranic. “But, Honey, it wasn’t eco-friendly!” may not help your cause on Feb. 14th with a real chocolate-loving sweetheart. Here’s a relationship that won’t require any compromises: Askinosie. Ask what?

Rare, Single Bean Origins, Even Rarer Ethics

Askinosie is a small chocolate company out of Springfield, Missouri. It’s not exactly tip of the tongue for foodie locations, but to Midwesterners, it’s as local as chocolate can get. The Askinosie bars are all single bean origin, and unique origins at that. Their Soconuso bar is the first chocolate bar consumed outside Mexico in over 100 years that contains beans from this region. Other origins include San Jose Del Tambo, Ecuador and Davao, Phillipines.

Perhaps best of all is that owner Shawn Askinosie not only pays the farmers better than fair trade prices, he shares directly with them 10 percent of the net profits from chocolate made from their farms. Askinosie also works directly with the farmers, no middlemen, to make sure the beans are produced to exacting standards.

With Valentine’s Day rapidly approaching, chocolate sales will be going through the roof. Unfortunately, many people do not understand the cost others pay so that we may have the chocolate we know and love.  It is important that each of us takes responsibility in teaching our children about social responsibility.

Did you know: 284,000 children toil in abusive labor conditions in West Africa’s cocoa fields?

Global Exchange is on a mission to change that! Educators of all kinds (parents, teachers, youth leaders, after school providers, daycares, etc…) are invited to take part in the Fair Trade Curriculum provided by Global Exchange, visit the curriculum page for more details!

Teach Global Exchange’s curriculum in your classroom anytime between now and Valentine’s Day and you will be entered into a prize drawing to win over $75 worth of Fair Trade chocolate and educational materials!

(Photo on Flickr by EmilyWJones under Creative Commons License)

Around the Polka Dot Household we don’t buy into the whole Valentine’s Day thing… I just can’t get beyond the consumerism. Besides my husband gives me flowers every couple of months for no reason at all… why wait for V-Day?

That said, the kiddos do have Valentine’s celebrations at school and enjoy giving (and receiving) notes and sweet treats.

Here’s a better way to do it! The Fair Trade Valentine’s Day Action Kit. This kit includes: A box of individually wrapped fair trade chocolates (your choice of dark or milk), a bundle of 12 Valentine Greetings which feature a train and the saying, “On Valentines Day there’s nothing so sweet…as giving loved Ones Fair Trade chocolate to eat ” and facts about cocoa. Also included in the kit is An Amore/Love Papel Picado banner (perfect for the classroom party!), and An I Love Fair Trade Iron On, compliments of Transfair USA. The kit comes packaged in a recycled (red) Kraft handled bag and runs $17.00. (Read more about Global Exchange’s Fair Trade Chocolate Campaign.)

If you are looking for recycled cards, check out Stubby Pencil Studios DIY color cards. Here are some homecrafted ideas we’ve enjoyed in the past:

Even if you have not really thought about it yet, going green this Halloween is an easy and sustainable exercise. To make it even easier for you, I have put together this cheat sheet of Top 10 Green Halloween posts that were created in the last month.

Back to school fundraising hawking giftwrap, magazines and chocolate rubs against the grain of my eco, nutritional, and anti-consumption lifestyle…so what’s a financially strapped school to do?

Enter GreenRaising.com, an all-green gift hub of gorgeous recycled wrap, cool reusable bottles and bags, fair trade chocolate, green school supplies, soaps and lotions, even cleaning supplies!

This fabulous one stop portal imparts an earth-friendly message, while helping financially strapped schools and youth organizations with socially responsible spending. (um, could our government sign up?)

With childhood obesity rates and even scarier, type II diabetes rates in children under 10 years old sky rocketing, it’s time to take up the mantra of Green Halloween and start to “think outside the candy box.”

I learned about this program in the spring and am so impressed by what the founder, Corey Colwell-Lipson has accomplished after taking her idea to Whole Foods a year ago.