Can you have an ethical Easter? Chocolate is rife with stuff like child labour and environmental destruction. Here's how to avoid it.

It’s Easter time and we are all rushing to the stores to buy pointless, over-packaged Easter eggs.

While we love the taste of chocolate it’s a sad fact that ever sale further supports forced labour and environmental destruction.

I have spoken about this before and received a cease and desist letter from a chocolate company, even though everything I said was all factually correct.

This podcast focuses on sustainability and for this episode we are looking at an aspect of sustainability we don’t always discuss. People.

We’ll be discussing why a lot of chocolate companies suck and who you should buy from instead.

Find us online:
‍‍www.briannewest.com
‍‍https://www.instagram.com/briannemwest/
‍‍https://www.tiktok.com/@briannemwest
‍‍https://www.youtube.com/@briannemwest‍

‍Wanna know more about Incrediballs?
‍‍www.incrediballs.com‍
‍https://www.instagram.com/incrediballsdrinks/
‍‍https://www.tiktok.com/@incrediballsdrinks
‍
‍‍Business, but Better (the FREE education hub for founders & entrepreneurs):‍
‍www.businessbutbetter.com‍
‍https://www.tiktok.com/@businessbutbetter‍
https://www.facebook.com/groups/businessbutbetter
‍https://www.instagram.com/businessbutbetter

Transcript:

Kia ora kaitiaki and welcome to Now That's What I Call Green, the podcast that uses a science-based approach to expose the bullshit green scans and help you understand the sustainability world that little bit better. So if you are looking to navigate through everything green or not so green, you have come to the most delicious episode ever because today we are talking about chocolate because of course Easter is coming up and you're all rushing to the stores to buy pointless over-packaged Easter eggs. Chocolate. It's creamy, it's sweet, it melts in your mouth, but for every delicious bite you take, chocolate drives a bitter, twisted tale of forced labour and environmental destruction.

I wrote that four years ago, if you'll excuse the poetic-ness, but it still stands today because nothing has really changed. I actually wrote it for a stuff column and I actually got a cease and desist from it and an anchor phone call from another chocolate company, despite all the information being factually correct because it flies in the face of what they're trying to tell you. I really wish they would put half the effort that they put into those legal challenges into actually fixing the problem. But here we are.

So kia ora, I'm Brianne West, and I like to take the BS out of sustainability, because there's a lot of it. And of course, sustainability means people too, which is more of a focus for today. Because I'm going to tell you why a lot of chocolate companies suck, and who you should buy from instead. Including some wonderful companies based right here in Aotearoa. So first a little bit about chocolate at large.

You probably think you know everything about chocolate. You probably don't. Chocolate kind of sucks for people. I'm not talking about the healthier speaks. I'm talking about the people who grow it because of course chocolate comes from a bean, the cocoa bean. But the people who grow the cocoa bean see very little of the vast rewards. Most companies do not make their own chocolate.

They import it from the likes of Barry Callebaut, I hope I'm saying that right, which is a Belgian Swiss chocolate company. They manufacture chocolate and then on sale it to brands who then add their own flavours and fillings and so on. About 70% of the world's cocoa beans come from Western Africa. Close to 3 million tons of cocoa beans are produced every single year. Less so this year, but we'll get to that. Just 12 companies buy 85% of those beans and you've probably never even heard of most of them. The industry is expected to be worth more than $100 billion by 2030 and more than70% of that goes to enormous European manufacturers. Now, let's have a guess how much the farmers and growers take home, between 2% to 6% of that. And without their products, we don't have a chocolate industry.

There are more than 40 million smallholder cocoa farmers across Africa. They usually have less than an acre on which to eke out an income and typically they have little to no education and no way out. They earn as little as $5 a day because they are paid $2 a kg on average and I, as someone who used to buy a lot of cocoa butter, I can tell you now it cost me a lot more than that. Three years later, massive increases in goods across the board, yet that price per kg has not moved. But do you know what has? The world's four largest chocolate companies' profit margin. They have jumped by an average of 16% since the pandemic began, because obviously we all started relying on chocolate while we were shopping in our apartments. The bulk of the value chain is held in the big processing houses, not at the farm, and the profits are not shared back to the producers, which is standard trade.

But there is a far worse part to this, because hideously, many children are trafficked from countries such as Mali across the border and sold to farmers as slave labour. They're not paid for this and their families often have no choice. But it doesn't stop there. One of the areas where the beans are sourced, the Ivory Coast, has lost more than 80% of its forest cover in just 50 years, pretty much due to cocoa. This represents one of the fastest forest losses on earth. And before you say that it is those farmers and growers fault, it is absolutely not. It is driven by us and by those 12 companies. Around 25% of all cocoa produced on the Ivory Coast is actually from illegal plantations that are slap bang in the middle of protected areas of forest.

And surveys have shown that 13 of the 23 protected forests no longer have much wildlife left and they are completely devoid of primates, except humans, obviously. And those are animals that those forests are famous for. Reports criticise the smallholders for this. And sure, there's no denying that they are the ones with the literal axes chopping down those trees, but if it was a choice between a tree and the ability to feed your family, how long would it take you to pick up the axe? The worst part is that the major international chocolate companies know all this.

They are well aware of the disgraceful mistreatment of farmers and producers of cocoa beans, and they have made numerous pledges to do things about it and failed at every turn. Very little has been done to alleviate people's suffering. Sound familiar? Governments, they're keen to fix this, but they are being left to solve a problem.

They don't have the resources to fix that they didn't cause. And while the industry has the proper resources, a lot of the time they just offer empty platitudes. Look, there's no doubt this is a complicated subject and a boycott is not necessarily in the best interest of farmers and the forced and indentured workers. This is where things like fair trade come in. This is the international certification that assures buyers that the product they are buying has been bought for a fair, above market price and that the producers have good working conditions.

There is what you call a fair trade minimum price, which of course beans have to be bought for. And if they're not, there has to be a shortfall paid. This is designed as a safety net, which covers the cost of sustainable production, determined through consultations with producers and traders and sometimes experts. There are some critiques on this process and whether it's set high enough, whether it's adequate for a decent decent living because it isn't quite a living wage on its own. So that remains a discussion point because it's also only about 10% above market rates. So it's not enormous. And I have to be honest, that does beg the question, why on earth isn't it the bare minimum now anyway?

Putting that aside. But Fairtrade does offer an additional premium of $240 per tonne. Again, not a lot, but that goes directly to the community to be spent on what they need, such as education and community infrastructure. It's paid to the cooperative and whilst that is beneficial, of course, its influence can vary. It's influenced by factors like the cooperative size, the management, and the community in general. So Fairtrade's role in significantly improving these living standards is complex. It has definitely helped adjust and improve prices and policies, but it's not achievable for some farmers due to the costs and the legal hoops they've got to jump through.

So it's not a perfect system, but there are signs that it's doing some good and it is well worth going over to the website to read some of the reports that they produce. But just briefly, the average yearly income of fair trade farmers has gone from $2,670, that's US dollars, to $5,000 per year. So it's not far off double and that is something to celebrate at least. Another option you may have heard me talk about in my previous career was direct trade. It's where companies directly buy from producers hence the name.

And honestly, I'm probably more of a fan because I trust myself to do it ethically, but it isn't vested or structured. So you can't necessarily trust other brands if you don't trust their values. Something to bear in mind. But direct trade involves a bit more effort from the brand. But if they genuinely care, they can really support and work with their producers. They buy with a price that is genuinely living wage, which is probably higher than the fair trade minimum, certainly higher than the market price. They can also work with the community to determine what is necessary for them. It's very much not a relationship where someone goes in and dictates, it's a working closely cooperative relationship. This is how I source ingredients like our coconut oil from Samoa and our moringa oil from Rwanda for example. And it's actually just a really lovely thing to be a part of and one of the backbones of fatigue, back when I founded it.

Again, not as structured as Fairtrade, but it does have pros and cons. So if you're buying chocolate, keep an eye out for those, but we'll get to that. Now another chocolate ingredient that you may have heard me talk about is palm oil. It has massive social and environmental implications and it is the most widely consumed vegetable oil on the planet. It is found in everything from food to cosmetics and about 50% of everything in your supermarket and about 95% of your cosmetic products. Just like cocoa, unfortunately the vast majority of oil production is concentrated in the tropics which of course is where most ancient rainforests seem to be. And this is particularly in Indonesia and Malaysia with some of the most incredibly biodiverse areas on earth are.

And together they produce about 85% of global production. The industry has brought economic benefits to these regions, for sure, to some people, but it has caused a lot of serious environmental and social issues. The expansion of palm oil plantations has been a major driver of deforestation in these countries, leading to a huge loss of biodiversity. You've probably seen the orangutan as the one that is the most disrupted by the palm oil industry, but it affects millions of species including also Sumatran tigers, rhinos and so on. It also massively contributes to climate change as it releases massive amounts of stored carbon dioxide locked into these forests because these forests are often burned to clear them.

The industry is also rife with social issues. This land disputes, poor working conditions, exploitation of workers. The smallholder farmers who play a massive role in this palm oil production are again facing very similar challenges to the cocoa farmers. Again, indentured labour, child labour, little to no bargaining power and again, no way out. Palm oil is in some chocolate. It is particularly sweet, creamy, thick, delicious centres, but it also sometimes makes up the chocolate itself because it's a cheap replacement for cocoa butter. It has that nice mouthfeel, creamy effect. Do you remember when Cadbury put palm into their chocolate not so long ago and man was the power of the consumer ever shown so well as it was then because they faced a mass customer exodus. It was amazing and they have not really recovered. But because of that, Cadbury reverted back to its original recipe and it just goes to show you how much people care and how important your vote with your dollar is.

It's a nice reminder that the world isn't a total dumpster fire. But again, a boycott of palm oil is not the answer because palm oil is the most efficient oil we have. So we get the most amount of oil from the least amount of land. If we switch to the next most efficient oil, that would be coconut, we would need four times the land for the same amount of oil. Obviously that's not sustainable because it's not just land, it's also everything that goes with it. So this is where certifications like the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil come in or the RSPO. You may have seen these stickers on some products. It is not perfect and it wasn't something I was comfortable relying on back then. I preferred that a teak was palm oil free, but it is better than nothing and it is trying to regulate and change the industry.

But back to Easter. Easter is days away. Maybe you've already bought your Easter eggs, in which case this is too late because I didn't plan ahead as usual. Or maybe you haven't and you're just waiting for the last minute like so many people at Christmas. So what do you do as a consumer? You need to start looking at the chocolate you're buying.

Look for brands that have a third party certification like Rainforest Alliance or Fairtrade. And of course, remember that some certifications are a lot better than others or they might have different focuses. So if you look at the Rainforest Alliance, for example, they focus very much on environmental sustainability, whereas Fairtrade focuses more on people. They both have an element of each, but one is stronger than the other. So if in doubt, get one that has both. If the certification is in-house, so the company itself owns it, I'm not going to name names, but it has a catchy little name, Treat It With Skepticism.

Because if the brand doesn't have independent verified external certification, is it really reliable? And maybe ask them why they chose to do that. There'll be a cute little PR reason as to why they chose it, but treat it with skepticism. They might have a good reason, right? They might have chosen to work directly with producers and they can prove that, but you know, bucket of salt and all that. The more we ask, the more brands will realise we actually care and the more likely they are to put money into these sorts of things and start changing things because that's what we need because again, your vote is very, very powerful. Your vote is your dollar.

It's impossible to buy and do the right things all of the time because you have to spend your entire life doing research and digging into all of these issues. So that's why these certifications are so important. And even if they're not perfect, they do help make consumer decisions a little bit easier. I personally find it absolutely horrifying to think that the decisions I make in stores and supermarkets have such a drastic impact on people across the world and the survival of our environment. And that's true of everything we buy.

We can all make better choices. But I can hear what you are saying, sustainable brands are more expensive. Yes, they most likely are because they pay their producers a living wage and they probably don't use cheap ingredients like palm oil. I hear you. And if you can't afford to pay this, but you still want to gift Easter eggs, that's okay. You cannot be perfect. Sustainability is about progress, not perfection.

And it's not about feeling guilty, because you can't be perfect. We are in a cost of living crisis. I get it. This is simply providing information and not judging you. And if you can't afford to, that's okay. Maybe you could buy fewer. I know a large amount of people buy lots of Easter eggs and hide them around the house for an Easter egg hunt.

My mom does an Easter egg hunt for me, and I am a 36-year-old woman. I love that. I'm not knocking it, so I totally get the desire to do it, but maybe, instead of hiding lots of mini eggs, you could get one and create a little treasure hunt with a bunch of clues leading to that treasure, and that'd be just as much fun. Better yet, though, skip bloody Easter eggs entirely because they're over-packaged nonsense. I actually saw an article today just before I filmed this talking about how much chocolate has gone up in price due to massively decreased yields, which is of course due to weather events, which is of course due to climate change, which isn't going anywhere. So that's a fun insight into the future. But I do wonder how much of that 150% has gone to growers.

I can't find any stats to back this up, but I am prepared to bet it's little to none, because again, they don't have the bargaining power. The companies that buy from them do, and they are the ones who can heighten the price up to the buyers from them. But e-streets have gone up 278%, which is a bit different to 150.

So where has this extra gone? Well, apparently Easter eggs are a pain to package because they're delicate and also they're seasonal, so they don't sell as many, so they're smaller runs. And that's absolutely true, but it was also true last year, and the year before, and the year before. So why the jump this year?

I suspect it's got a little bit to do with that 16% profit increase. There's nothing wrong with being profitable, but at least be honest. Anyway, skip Easter eggs. They're not the best chocolate and they're usually wrapped in plastic. Go for a brownie from the sugar trader. You should go and look at her on TikTok, she's awesome.

Or cookies from the Stash or, I don't know, a delish nut butter from the likes of Butterlucks. But okay, okay, you want chocolate, I hear you. I have some recommendations for you. Trade Aid. This one is obvious, right? It's written on the label. They do a really good job of communicating what it is they do and of sourcing genuinely fair trade chocolate. And their chocolate is delicious. They also work with them to work towards environmental sustainability.

You've got the Wellington Chocolate Factory, you've got the wonderful Benito, Tony's Chocolonely, Honest Chocolat, some incredible ones made in Ōutautahi Christchurch, the likes of Mind Your Temper, and they're also dairy-free for those of you who are looking for that. But they are delicious, you wouldn't know it. And then of course you've got she. But this is not an exhaustive list because we actually have a lot of chocolate producers in Aotearoa. But please let me know of your other faves because you can never have too many ethical chocolate choices. If we want to get to who I don't recommend, it's probably the ones you're thinking of. Now this is where I entered the cease and desist territory. I personally do not recommend, but if you want to buy them, you do you. No no judgment, Lint, Cadbury, Forever Rochere, Kinder, Green and Blacks, and that one might surprise you because they are Fairtrade certified. And since they were acquired in 2005 by Cadbury, they have also released non-Fairtrade certified chocolate. Then we get to the big three.

These have all signed pledges to remove child labour from their supply chain. And all three have missed the last three deadlines, 2005, 2008, and 2010. And all three of them are currently facing a child slavery lawsuit in the USA. Yes, again, I am aware that child slavery is incredibly complicated, but I do not accept that for us to enjoy chocolate, children have to work for effectively nothing. And I will not support that.

That would be Hershey's, Mars and Nestle. So there you have it. There are heaps of ways to have a more ethical Easter. Which is of course what we should all aim to do, as much as possible. Progress, not perfection. And hopefully I have suggested a couple of options for every budget. Happy Easter. Next time we're going to talk about the top 10 sustainability myths, which some of you have added to on my Instagram. What do you believe that is in fact actually not true? That electric cars are actually terrible for the environment? Or that technology is coming to save us? Or aliens are coming to save us?

I'm not going to cover that one guys. Or that natural means sustainable. Well, tune in next time to see what's real and what's not.

And there you go. I hope you learned something and realised that being green isn't about everything in your pantry matching with those silly glass jars or living in a commune. If that's your jam, fabulous. But sustainability at its part is just using what you need. If you enjoyed this episode, please don't keep it to yourself and feel free to drop me a rating and hit the subscribe button. Kia ora and I'll see you next week.

‍