Which Brew Is Best for Tea & Coffee Workers?
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www.ethicalconsumer.org EC176 Jan/Feb 2019 £4.25 Which brew is best for tea & coffee workers? Product guides to: Coffee, Coffee shops, Tea & Herbal tea Plus: Counting the cost of disposable cups & plastic in teabags CAPITAL AT RISK. INVESTMENTS ARE LONG TERM AND MAY NOT abundanceinvestment.com BE READILY REALISABLE. ABUNDANCE IS AUTHORISED AND REGULATED BY THE FINANCIAL CONDUCT AUTHORITY (525432). YOU LOVE: YOU HATE: The idea of building Companies a long term income with short term thinking ISAs for people exactly like you (although some have more freckles) From Don’t just change just £30 per your phone. month Change the world. Next time you change your phone – make it a change for good. Fair materials and supply Choose Fairphone 2 the world’s most chain ethical smartphone from the UK’s only telecoms co-operative and we’ll donate a share of every bill to Ethical Consumer. Committed to improving worker conditions www.thephone.coop/ethicalconsumer 01608 434 040 Dual SIM - ideal for international travel Prices are correct at time of issue Editorial ethicalconsumer.org JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019 Josie Wexler Editor This issue of the magazine is all about hot drinks: It is just that incorruptibility which is currently tea, coffee and herbal tea, and the places that they are causing such a problem in our oceans and soils. consumed. Humans are making a huge amount of plastic, and it isn’t going anywhere. Or rather, it is going Tea and coffee have a lot in common. They are both everywhere. God, it seems, may have had a point. grown by millions of poor farmers who labour at the end of long supply chains. These supply chains To help you to avoid spreading more of it about, we at their most narrow point consist of just a handful report on how companies are doing on getting rid of of companies that are responsible for international plastic cups on page 19, on plastic tea bags on page commodity trading. 32, and pass on tips on how to have a plastic-free Christmas on page 7. In both cases we argue that what is needed is to shorten the chain, or at least to shine a light onto it, so those at both ends of the chain can see what is going Other news on at the other end. We have just released our annual report on the state Both the tea and coffee markets carry some pretty of ethical markets, detailed on page 46. The overall murky colonial history. Europeans took coffee with figures this year were rather lack lustre, being less them as they colonised various parts of the world, and than inflation, but this was caused by the loss of frequently enslaved people in order to grow it. The government support in two key markets: solar panels British established a system of giant tea plantations in and energy efficient cars. If you discount these two India, shifting populations about in order to work on markets, the overall growth in ethical spending was a them, establishing a brutal culture around them, and pretty reasonable 5.45%. that past has never really gone away. We discuss this We also report in this issue on the Lush Prize: the on page 28. annual prize that we run in collaboration with the At the same time, tea and coffee have also been the cosmetics shop Lush, to acknowledge those who source of liberation, and continue to be: providing are helping to bring forward the date when no more an income for many poor farmers around the safety testing on animals is necessary. The winner of world. And coffee shops are a traditional location of this year’s £50,000 Science Prize was a team from the community and solidarity. University of Pennsylvania, for their blinking “eye on a chip”, which is made out of human cells and blinks Plastic in the same way as a human or animal eye would. It may sound a bit like something out of a horror film, This issue is also about plastic, since plastic and hot but don’t worry – it isn’t realistic enough to give you drinks go hand in hand: plastic is found in takeaway nightmares. See more detail on page 40. cups from coffee shops, as well as in tea bags. The Italian chemist and holocaust survivor Primo Happy New Year Levi once remarked that God had refrained from In other news, thanks for your support and interest patenting plastic, because, as he put it: “it is a little too in ethical consumption over the last year. See you in incorruptible...He doesn’t like incorruptible things.” 2019, when we’ll be talking first off (amongst other things) about furniture shops and paint. Go Pineapple... NEW Chevron NEW Cheatah Pineapple Pineapple NEW Snug Boot Pineapple Go Hemp... 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Ethical Consumer ad 1118.indd 1 30/11/2018 12:14 Contents ethicalconsumer.org JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019 who’s who p6 Tea & Coffee guides this Issue’s editor Josie Wexler coffee Ciara Maginness (littlebluepencil.co.uk) proofing 10 introduction writers/researchers Jane Turner, Tim Hunt, Leonie Nimmo, Rob Harrison, Anna Clayton, Joanna Long, 11 the certifications used Josie Wexler, Ruth Strange, Mackenzie Denyer, Clare Carlile, Francesca de la Torre, Alex Crumbie, Madeleine 12 score table & Best Buys Jones 14 pods and coffee waste regular contributors Simon Birch, Shaun Fensom, Colin Birch 16 sustainable coffee models design and layout Adele Armistead (Moonloft), Jane Turner coffee shops cover image © Denys Kovtun | Dreamstime.com cartoons Marc Roberts, Andy Vine 17 introduction ad sales Simon Birch 18 score table & Best Buys subscriptions Elizabeth Chater, Francesca Thomas news press enquiries Simon Birch, Tim Hunt 18 tax avoidance enquiries Francesca Thomas web editor Georgina Rawes 06 food & home 19 disposable coffee cups thanks also to Eleanor Boyce, Merle Büter supermarkets rated on plastics, plastic-free Christmas, vegan certification schemes All material correct one month before cover date and © Ethical Consumer Research Association Ltd. ISSN cheese recipe, palm oil news 24 Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance & UTZ 09 8608. 08 journal of consumer ethics 25 Fair for Life, organic, direct trade what’s in the latest issue? Printed with vegetable ink by RAP Spiderweb Ltd, c/o the Commercial Centre, Clowes Centre, Hollinwood, 09 clothes tea Oldham OL9 7LY. 0161 947 3700. Bangladesh Accord, fur, 26 introduction Paper: 100% post-consumer waste, chlorine-free and sustainable fashion museum sourced from the only UK paper merchant supplying 27 Kenyan tea producers only recycled papers – Paperback 23 ethical novice 28 Indian tea estates (www.paperbackpaper.co.uk). the trials and tribulations of coffee shops 30 score table & Best Buys Retail distribution is handled by Central Books on 0845 458 9911. Ethical Consumer is a member of INK 38 beyond consumerism 32 plastic in teabags (independent news collective), an association of radical make your own herbal teas and alternative publishers - www.ink.uk.com. herbal tea 39 climate We are a Living Wage employer, a multi-stakeholder extinction rebellion, Cuadrilla 34 introduction co-op, and Fair Tax Mark accredited. 40 Lush Prize 2018 36 score table & Best Buys who won this year’s awards? p10 41 boycotts Amazon, Airbnb, Nestlé film 42 tax justice about the advertisers digital services tax, EU tax havens ECRA checks out advertisers before accepting their ads blacklist ineffective and reserves the right to refuse any advert. Covered in previous Product Guides: Co-operative 43 money phone & broadband (145), Kingfisher Toothpaste (165), carbon divested funds, wind farm Vegetarian Shoes (162). investment Other advertisers: Abundance, Green Building Store, Infinity Wholefoods, Investing Ethically, Juno, Royal 43 save our bank Society for Blind Children, Shared Interest, Tree Aid, latest news about the Co-op Bank Womankind. 46 Ethical Consumer Markets Report Ethical Consumer Research the state of the ethical market regulars Association Ltd 47 thinker 48 Christmas gift subscriptions Unit 21, 41 Old Birley Street, Manchester, M1 RF new ethical advertising network t: 0161 226 2929 (12 noon-6pm) give a gift that lasts a year e: [email protected] for general enquiries 49 letters [email protected] for subscriptions. feature a regular forum for readers’ views Follow us: @EC_magazine 40 Baladi 50 inside view agro-resistance and positive food news on the Stop Funding Hate Ethical Consumer Magazine initiatives in Palestine campaign Food and home JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019 ethicalconsumer.org Plastic News A regular update on what companies are doing to get rid of single use and non-recyclable plastic, and tips for how to avoid plastic in your life. Checking out on plastics Greenpeace and the Environmental Investigation Agency have just released a major new league table ranking of how supermarkets are addressing plastic pollution. They surveyed the top UK supermarkets and grocery convenience store chains and found that just 10 supermarkets collectively put more than 810,000 tonnes of plastic on the market each year. This is in addition to more than 1.1 billion single-use plastic bags, 958 million bags for life and 1.2 billion plastic produce bags for fruit and veg. There is also a shortage of plans in place to stem the flood. Most commitments made by supermarkets are weak, with room for improvement even among survey leaders – Iceland and Morrisons. The league table found that: • Five supermarkets have no specific targets to reduce plastic packaging – Aldi, Co-op, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose.