Andy SingerA friend of mine was working in the Peace Corps in East Timor a few years ago. The coffee farmers there make somewhere around ~$0.001 US for each lb of coffee theyre able to produce. The people are starving, poor, and have no education. Part of his job was simply informing sick people that eggs and tomatoes would help them heal faster than ramen noodles. As he has foreign citizenship, he was forced to flee East Timor during the most recent tribulations between Catholics and Indonesian Muslims.
Starbucks corporation makes several dollars off of a single cup of coffee produced from beans from East Timor. Every cup of Starbucks coffee purchased supports the oppression and subjucation of SE Asian and Pacific Island peoples. Fair Trade Certified!
VOTE WITH YOUR DOLLARS - Support products, businesses, and people who provide a service or item that has a positive back story, from the raw materials put into it to the people who put it together and bring it to market. Just because Natural Resources, Pollution, Human Labor, Opportunity Cost(lost), and other major factors are not figured into the accounting balance sheet doesn’t mean we as consumers can go on ignoring them. You might have noticed that our planet, the only Home we know, is falling apart at the seams and until every last person realizes what truly is at stake, history will continue to repeat itself until there isn’t anybody or anything left to sustain it. Ignorance might be bliss but it doesn’t guarantee a better tomorrow for us and our children. /blahg http://www.storyofstuff.com
