I found this story via The Church of Stop Shopping website (see the sidebar surfing links). This coincides with my recent viewing of Black Gold: Wake up and Smell the Coffee, a documentary about Ethiopian coffee growers. The film is fabulous and the impression I got from the film was that there is a significant impact directly on the farmer due to my own personal purchasing coffee choice. Starbucks is so completely huge and powerful it's frightening. The Ethiopian coffee growers are so poor it seems absurd that something in such high demand and coveted by people globally does not benefit those who grow it.
2 comments:
The link to the story didn't work for me, but that's never stopped me from expressing an opinion!
I loathe Starbucks. How it's been allowed to dominate the coffee market on such a vast scale is a mystery to me.
I was reading the other day about a band (Aiden) and how the lead singer loves Starbucks so much he would like the logo tattooed on his body. There and then, irrespective of their music (which ain't all that), I decided that Aiden were shit.
You would think young people who are a bit on the rockin' side of things, who hang out with cool bands like Rise Against (if you don't know them, you should check them out. You might not like the music, but I'm sure you agree with their philosophy) and even uncool bands like Coldplay (who I think are the spawn of Satan, but at least they are helping bring FairTrade ethics into the main arena) would have a better idea of just what it is they are glowing about so shamelessly.
I fixed the link. Sorry about that.
Agree with you on Starbucks, or as I call it Fivebucks. There's a Simpson reference where Bart goes to get his ear pierced and the owner of the store tells him to hurry up and decide because the store is turning into a Starbucks.
cut to:
Bart walks out of the store with his ear sparkling and a Starbucks cup in his hand.
Behind him all the stores now read "Starbucks"
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