Coffee and the Environment: The Hidden Cost of Your Daily Brew

Coffee and the environment are deeply intertwined, yet few consumers realize just how damaging the coffee industry can be. In this episode, Etelle Higonnet, a Yale-trained human rights lawyer and founder of Coffee Watch, joins Andrew to explore the environmental and human rights crises associated with global coffee production. From deforestation and toxic chemical use to plastic waste and ocean pollution, Etelle reveals the harsh truths behind one of the world’s most beloved beverages.

Coffee certification myths are also exposed. Etelle shares how popular labels often fail to guarantee living wages or sustainable farming practices. Together, they explore powerful, practical ways coffee drinkers can become changemakers—from choosing better beans to advocating for stronger policies. This is a must-listen for anyone who wants their habits to align with ocean conservation and climate justice.

Website: https://coffeewatch.org/

Take Action: https://coffeewatch.org/stories-of-hope/

Join the Undertow: https://www.speakupforblue.com/jointheundertow

Connect with Speak Up For Blue
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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Most people drink coffee every daywithout a second thought yet you know
that it's one of the top drivers ofglobal deforestation and ocean pollution.
Tell Hiney a human rights lawyer turnedenvironmental activists discovered
that coffee is tied not only todeforestation, but also to slavery,
toxic chemical use, and the degradationof critical marine ecosystems.

(00:23):
After years investigating abuses in cocoa,rubber, and seafood industries, tell
founded coffee, watch to expose how thecoffee supply chain harms both people.
And the planet.
Her research revealed that manycertified ethical coffee brands
still fall short, failing toensure living wages, environmental
protection, or even traceabilitywith some link to modern slavery.

(00:47):
In today's episode of the How to Protectthe Ocean Podcast, it tell shares.
How you can make simple, powerfulchanges in your daily coffee habits
to protect rainforest, defend humanrights, and safeguard our oceans.
Let's start the show.
Hey everybody.
Welcome back to another exciting episodeof the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and thisis the podcast where you find out what's

(01:10):
happening in the ocean, how you can speakup for the ocean, and what you can do to
live for a better ocean by taking action.
And today we're talking about coffeeand you're probably wondering, Andrew,
why are we talking about coffee?
You don't even drinkcoffee, and that is true.
I do not drink coffee.
Not that I don't like coffee.
I don't think I've ever actuallytried coffee to the point where I'm
like giving it a really good shake.

(01:31):
I am actually just not a coffee drinker.
There's no worries ofme ever drinking coffee.
I have no urge to drink coffee.
And that's fine.
There's nothing wrong with that.
And I have nothing againstpeople who drink coffee.
I actually enjoy the smell of coffee.
My wife has coffee and it smells greatin the house when she does have that, but
it's really difficult to know if you aredrinking coffee that's actually good for
the planet, for people who are growingit and so forth, just like seafood.

(01:54):
So I wanted to have someone on the podcastto talk about how to choose the proper
coffee and how to go forward and make surethat you can drink conscious free coffee
to make sure you can get through your day.
So I had to tell Higonnet on the podcasttoday, she is the founder and executive
director of Coffee Watch, where they lookat all things coffee related and looking

(02:16):
at the entire supply chain and findingout what is good and what is bad, and
oftentimes terrible within this industry.
And how we can make it better.
So she's gonna talk about her journey fromhuman rights lawyer in conflict areas like
war zones that have to deal with tortureand so forth, all the way to the coffee
industry and how that's kind of relatedand from a human rights perspective.

(02:38):
We're gonna talk a lot about that.
We're gonna talk aboutthe coffee industry.
We're gonna talk about how some ofthe major corporations can have a
huge difference just like they did inthe seafood industry, and how we can
find more ways to live sustainablyjust by drinking a cup of coffee.
It's gonna be a great show.
Before we get into the interview though,I would like to say if you want to find

(02:59):
out more ways that you can be guidedtowards living for a better planet
and a better ocean, you can do so byjoining the undertow that's go to Speak
up for blue.com/join the undertow.
That's speak up forblue.com/join the undertow.
All one word.
You can join our community of actionwhere we guide you to make better choices,
not only from a knowledge standpointand learn about the ocean, but say,

(03:20):
Hey, how do we buy the right coffee?
How do we buy the right seafood?
How do we make sure that we're drinkingoutta the right containers and so
forth, and making sure we're makinghealthy choices not only for us, but
for our planet and for our ocean?
Go to speak up forblue.com/join the undertow.
Here's the interview with ItelHiney from Coffee Watch Learning
all about coffee and how to makebetter choices for better planet.

(03:43):
Enjoy the interview andI will talk to you after.
Hey Itel, welcome to the Howto Protect the Ocean Podcast.
Are you ready to talk about allthings coffee and the environ?
I am so excited to be here.
Nice.
I'm very excited too.
This is something that's very new to me.
I'm not a coffee drinker, full disclosure.
Uh, but I know so many people whodrink coffee, including everybody else

(04:05):
in my household except for my dogs.
And even I feel like my dogs woulddrink it if it was on the ground.
So, you know, let's, let'sjust put that out there.
Um, but I know like coffee is sucha huge part of everybody's life.
You know, you hear people say, Ican't function without my coffee.
There's t-shirts, like, but coffee,you know, they all have these types of
signs and everybody loves their coffee.

(04:25):
But when you think about where coffeecomes from, how it's made, how it's
farmed, who farms it, you know whatthe process is, how it affects the
environment, there are a lot of thingsthat go into it that we are not really.
Uh, uh, told about, or, or aware of interms of what happens within the coffee
industry and are we drinking coffee?

(04:46):
That is one sustainable,actually free trade.
You hear people talkabout free trade coffee.
So we're gonna get into all thesedifferent questions and really dispel
some of the myths and really understandhow the coffee industry works in 2025 and
what we can do as people who drink coffeecan do to make it better and, and, and
just have a better conscious when they'reactually buying coffee and, and making

(05:09):
sure they're making the right decision.
So, uh, without hopefully interferingwith their lives too much or paying,
uh, the wazoo for, for coffee, right?
So we're gonna get into all that, butbefore we do, Al, why don't you let
us know who you are and what you do.
Sure.
Well, it's such a pleasureto be here on your show.
I am a human rights andenvironmental activist and lawyer.

(05:31):
You can probably tell frommy name I'm French American.
Uh, but I, yeah, I, I went to the UnitedStates for university and from law school
at Yale and worked, um, a little bitinto war crimes, tribunals, and that
sort of set me on this trajectory of.
Trying to combat crimes against humanity.

(05:51):
Mm-hmm.
So after the war crimes courts inSierra Leone and in Cambodia, I
worked with Human Rights Watch andAmnesty International, mostly in
war zones and post-conflict areas.
Wow.
And the InternationalHuman Rights Law Institute.
So the first like 12 years of mylife were dominated by a somewhat
grim reality of documenting Yeah.

(06:12):
Really awful things that peopledo to one another like rape
and torture and killings.
But I'm, I'm actually a very positiveglass possible kind of person.
I know that sounds crazy.
And I, I do believe in fundamentallyin, in the goodness of humanity.
And I had this moment where Irealized that one reason there's so

(06:34):
many wars and conflicts is because.
You know, we're entering anera of climate chaos, and it's
already turbocharging, huh.
And deepening conflicts andmaking conflicts appear where
none were before and making themworse when they interesting.
And so I decided to gowork at, at Greenpeace.

(06:55):
Um, okay.
Combat climate change as best I could.
And I ended up as research directorfor Greenpeace in Southeast Asia,
working a lot on oceans and actuallytrying to, um, combat seafood
slavery as well as overfishing, butalso just a lot on deforestation
and other environmental issues.
And that sort of, I don't know, itjust ignited this passion in me to both

(07:16):
defend the environment and human rights.
And when I was at Greenpeace and thenalso this other organization I worked
in, it's called Mighty Earth, I guess.
Maybe describe it as aspinoff of Green Peas.
Yeah.
Um, yeah.
One thing that I had wanted to dowas to work on all the top seven
drivers of global deforestation.
Okay.
And at green we did an amazing job onthe big four palm oil pulp and paper

(07:39):
cattle, soy, but we never really wereable to tackle cocoa, coffee and rubber.
So at Night Earth, I started these cocoaand rubber campaigns that were awesome
and we love so many of our campaignreally helped to transform a lot of
things in those industries, which arenot great by any means, but Right.
There's, um, this really amazing journeytowards rapid change in, in rubber and

(08:03):
cocoa that I sort of figured out allthe best things that we had done at
Greenpeace for palm oil and brought itinto cocoa and rubber, um, along with
the best things that I remembered fromamnesty and human Rights Watch days.
And it just taught methat you can transform.
Mm-hmm.
Really destructive industries.
So after taking two years offwith, um, my beautiful baby boy,

(08:24):
I thought, ah, I got knighted.
What should I do with this knighthood?
I'm gonna try to now turn to thelast of the big seven drivers of
deforestation that gets almost noattention, which is coffee, right?
Nobody works on it.
Not Greenpeace, not mighty Earth,not amnesty, not human rights Watch.
Just decided this orphan subject,and yet it's the number six driver.
Of global deforestation andit's powering ocean destruction,

(08:49):
slavery, and child labor.
And I thought, okay, that's whatI'm gonna use my neighborhood for.
I'm gonna try right.
Change the coffee industry if I can.
So that's where we are now.
I guess you could bestdescribe Coffee Watch.
It's like if Amnesty and Green Peasgot together and had a baby and that
baby just wanted to work on coffee.

(09:09):
Well, I, you know, I think it'sreally important too, and, and
we'll, we'll get into this moreas, as the interview progresses.
'cause I wanna really start to get yourmindset of when you started off and your
first, even before you started your careerand, and get your schooling, your thought
process of what you want to do when, like,growing up and how it related to coffee
or even just human rights and everything.

(09:30):
But it's, it's interesting how,you know, we look at the top 10 of
what the, the top 10 drivers of, ofdeforestation coffee is one of them,
but there isn't much information.
On how it's destructiveor even movement on that.
And you know, even like, you know, youknow, organizations like Green Pieces
and, and a C International and all theWWF, all these other organizations that

(09:51):
are so massive, they focus on specificaspects of, you know, deforestation.
Uh, but it's funny how coffee is kind ofslipped aside and, and you know, not many
people are working on if it's more thanone, uh, as, as opposed to a coffee shop.
A coffee watch.
It'd be interesting to, tohear that, but let's go.
But I, I, I kind of wanna go backa little bit in time and you've,

(10:14):
you've mentioned that you've coveredsome pretty emotionally and mentally
draining and I'm sure physicallyas well, but, uh, uh, and intense
cases and, and exper work experiencewhen you were studying even before
when you were, you know, a teenager.
Did you always havethat drive to like that?

(10:38):
I guess it's, it's a bit of a political,but also human rights drive to stick
up for the person who, or the peoplewho couldn't defend themselves or
who went through a hardship Always.
Yeah.
And if anything is, you know,Andrew, I think most of us start out
that way, but somehow life crushesa lot of people along the path.

(11:01):
But yeah, ever since I was young, I,I knew the world was not quite right.
You know, all this injustice andpoverty and human rights abuses.
I think many people know thatthe world is not quite right.
Yeah, for sure.
But, um, somehow my family andfriends gave me this weird,

(11:22):
wild, crazy idea that I could.
Change that to make theworld a better place.
So I think I'm very luckythat I, um, got that memo,
especially one of my professors.
Mm-hmm.
I was an undergrad named Greg Grandin.
Greg Grandin, he just changed my world.
And another Professor Ben Kernan.
They're both just the most amazing mentorsand yeah, I, I will be internally grateful

(11:48):
to them for teaching me that, you know,every time you see something wrong mm-hmm.
You can always, alwaysdo something about it.
And that's a very difficult thing to, Imean, it's easy to tell a child or to tell
a, a student, an undergraduate student,to say, Hey, look, you know, we need to
stand up for what's wrong in this world.
There, there are a lot ofthings wrong with this world,

(12:10):
uh, and we need to stand up.
But a lot of people, uh, don't wantto, it, it takes a lot of bravery.
It takes a lot of courage to stand up forsomething and speak out against something.
You can speak out about anythingthese days and get criticism.
And a lot of people are worriedabout the criticism that they get.
They don't wanna, uh, you know, take toomuch of a, a controversial stance or they
don't want to go opposite of what the mainpurpose of, you know, or, or the main sort

(12:33):
of thought process of a specific issue.
Uh, you know.
Even as an example, obviously we'renot gonna discuss it, but like the,
you know, the what's happening in Gaza,in, in Israel, it's a very difficult
issue even just to have a conversationwith, you know, within your household
or, uh, within a, within a context of apublic setting because everybody's so,

(12:55):
or a lot of people who are so dividedand, but want to see a solution in
some sort of capacity as a, as a child.
It's like, I've got two teenagers athome, two teenage girls at home, and
it's like, you know, sometimes youwant them to stand up for something and
you want them to stand up for what'sright and then there are, but there are
sometimes there are consequences to that.
Was there, was there anything in your,uh, whether you were in high school or

(13:15):
undergraduate level, like a specificmoment that you kind of remember standing
up for something that you may not havehad to, but you felt it was really
important to say, Hey, you know what,like this is wrong and we really need
to be able to tackle this or be ableto discuss this, this particular issue.
You know, something that really, um,motivated me when I was younger, when

(13:37):
I was a teenager, I found out thatmy grandfather Kapa had done small
things with the franchise sauce.
Okay.
And he was not a big hero.
Yeah, right.
He just, uh, he was an engineer andhe apparently, according to one of
my uncles, um, who's also a very,very talented math, science brain,

(13:58):
um, he kapa made microfiche mm-hmm.
Papers for the ALS and the microfiche.
You can roll them up very small Yeah.
Persons and put them in likea cigarette case or a matchbox
or a cylinder of a bicycle.
And, um, you know, the fact thatmy grandfather did something
that was so small and niche.

(14:21):
But so important and so courageousand just that he was like
this tiny little cog mm-hmm.
In a big machine.
I mean, not that the French resistance wasbig enough, it should have been bigger.
His, well, it, during WorldWar ii, they're under attack.
It's, it's, yeah.
It, it was not easy to be in thehis, and yet we wished that the,
his results had been bigger.
But, you know, just knowing that youdon't have to be a super mega hero.

(14:44):
Right.
You know, K Peppa was not like Right.
Right.
He was always just a father of threekids who was an engineer and made
his little microfiche what he couldfor these, his, his cells guys, and,
you know, it was an act of courage.
Mm-hmm.
It was probably really hard for him.
Mm-hmm.
And I'm not sure, it'll be scary for mygrandmother if she found that For sure.

(15:05):
But it, you know, everylittle thing matters.
And I think knowing thatyou don't have to be a hero.
You don't have to mm-hmm.
You know, save the world.
All you have to do is just dothe best you can in the moment.
Yeah.
With the time that you have andthe abilities that you have.
Just this moment, just do the best.
But I think that's kind of whatset me on my path in a way.

(15:27):
I, I love that story because, Imean, if you think about that age
of Sistance and, and World War ii,he could have been killed for that.
For, you know, creating those microfichefor all we know, you know, you never know.
He may have helped even one or twopeople to get to safety or, you
know, get further ahead in, in,in what they were trying to do.
I think that's a, that's avery important fact to realize.

(15:49):
We don't all have to have ournames in the history books.
To have, uh, to make a difference.
And, and sometimes small changes or makingthose little voices, you know, matter
can matter to a couple people that couldchange something else, that could change
the world, that can change anything.
You never know what's what's gonna happen.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
You, you, you just never know.
Now, you know, with that type ofmindset, that having that history

(16:12):
and knowing of that history goinginto law, a lot of people will go
into, I, I don't think I've ever had,uh, a friend of mine go into law.
Friends of mine go into law.
That wasn't like corporate law.
It was all business.
It's usually business focused.
That's, I feel like that's a,a popular thing to go into.
'cause it's, it's stable.
It's, you know, you can makepretty good money out of it.
And there are some that go intoenvironmental law and human

(16:34):
rights law, but not often.
So what was it for you whenyou were choosing that?
Like, tell me the process of like choosingit and why you would choose to follow
human rights law, if that's what it was.
Or, or if it was a different type of law.
I think most people don't want to gointo human rights and environ law because
it's sort of a life of pen for sure.

(16:56):
Yeah.
You can make so much money workingfor a law firm, but um, you know,
even people who do go into law firmswill often take on pro bono cases.
Yeah.
And amazingly good thingsfor the world that way.
So I don't feel like it'san either or situation.
But yeah, for me, I, I, I did once workat a corporate law firm for eight weeks.

(17:18):
Um, and then that was it.
It was just enough money sothat I could go work in the work
crimes space that I wanted to.
Almost nothing.
Yeah.
Um, yeah, I, I did thatvery, very briefly.
Um, Sullivan Cromwell.
Um, yeah, it was a weird, weirdside moment in my life, but I just
always knew that I wanted to dohuman rights and environmental work.

(17:41):
Um, especially human rightswork when I was younger.
That was just, um.
Like, not even a, a doubtin my mind because Right.
I just thought to myself, you know,Andrew, why is it that there are
these people who are just like me?
Literally, there's like no difference.
Mm-hmm.
They have been born in my shoes.

(18:03):
They would be the onesgoing to Yale Law School.
Why is it that these peopleare earning under $2 a day?
Mm-hmm.
Are being, are being tortured.
You know, this, it's so unfair.
I just don't want to live in a world withthat level of unfairness without for sure.
Something about it.

(18:24):
Yeah.
And, but it's a heavy toll totake, to take on those cases.
To work on those cases toDefinitely, definitely.
Yeah.
It's, I remember when I worked inIraq, I kind of stopped sleeping.
Yeah.
And also when I worked in this,uh, civil war in, in West Africa,
I, um, my hair started fallingout and I lost like five kilos.
It was not a, I bet healthy time.

(18:45):
Definitely.
It's hard sometimes todo this kind of work.
It's true.
What allows you to survive thosetimes, like mentally and emotionally?
That's very easy.
Love.
Love to Right.
I have such wonderful friends and family.
My husband is the besthusband in the whole world.

(19:06):
He's like, my whole supportteam rolled into one person.
If you could have like queereye for the straight guy, he
is like Brazilian eye for it.
And you said he works for theUnited Nations as well, right?
He does.
He does?
Yeah.
Okay.
So he works for the United Nations.
So he's, you know, obviously into,is it the same line of work, like
human rights or, you know, justhelping out different countries.

(19:29):
Like I know I have a friend whoworks in this, in this type of work
and he's been in, uh, in Syria andin like some pretty heavy places,
you know, like civil war places.
That could be pretty, pretty dangerous.
So it's connected, but myhusband works in public health.
He's a public health hero.
Okay.
Okay.
Yeah.
And so, um, you know, if you thinkabout how this is all interconnected,

(19:50):
Andrew, you know, we're deforestingthe world at a rapid clip.
Mm-hmm.
That's something that I've workedon at Greenpeace and Mighty
Earth and now coffee watch.
But when we deforest, not only doesit knock all our rainfall off kilter,
turbocharges, climate change, mostpeople don't know this, but a third
of climate change is from agriculture.

(20:12):
Right.
Um, it does crazy stuff to our oceans.
Um, it just crazy stuffto our whole planet.
But it also means that we're goingfurther and further into the heart
of where wildlife used to have safehabitats without contact with humans.
And so the closer we go intothese wild areas, the more we get

(20:33):
exposed to new novel pathogens.
Mm-hmm.
And the more we have factory farms,which is the other thing that I worked
on a lot at Greenpeace and Mighty Earth,you know, these terrible factory farms.
You squeeze lots of animalstogether and mm-hmm.
Dirty, filthy, unhygienic,horrible conditions.
It's basically torture.
Yeah.
Before we kill them.
And which also by the way,is terrible for oceans.

(20:55):
'cause all their poop goes straightinto the ocean and creates these
enormous dead zones that same.
Um, Catho system.
These, these, these concentrated farmingoperations also is like a Petri dish for
bird flu and swine flu and crazy diseases.
And so in a way, the environmental stuffthat I work on is also rolling the dice.

(21:18):
These, these horrible crimes ofdeforestation, factory farming.
The way we do it now, it rolls the dicefor these spectacular diseases like COVID.
Like HIV.
Mm-hmm.
Like bird flu, like swine flu.
And then you have these heroes, like myhusband, who are trying to pick up the
pieces and save everyone and vaccinatepeople and get the medicine and the

(21:39):
tests out all over to stop us from alldying in large numbers essentially.
They're doing the mop-up operationsto compensate for corporations totally
irresponsible behavior that activists likemyself have not been able to curb or stop.
So in a way I or hold himaccountable for, right?
Like that's a hold him accountable.

(22:00):
So I think that is connected to my work.
He's like the emergency mop up guys thatcome and try to save humanity when we've
made ourselves sick by killing our planet.
Yeah.
That, uh, I mean it's, it is greatto be able to, to work with somebody
like that or to live with somebodywho works in such a, a, an interesting
field like that as you do as well.

(22:21):
Um, now, you know, you work in this,you, you mentioned you work in this,
this, this heavy, heavy, uh, intensesort of field of, of human rights,
looking at war crimes and peoplebeing tortured and, and so forth.
And then you start moving alittle bit more environmental, um.
You know, it's a, this, it's a switch.
I can see the switch because a lot ofthe en environmental and conservation

(22:42):
needs and issues that we're facing,a lot of them are human rights.
Uh, they're human rightsviolations, fishery slaves.
As you mentioned, when you worked,uh, in Asia, there was, um, there was,
there's, you know, fishery slaves aswe talked about on this podcast before.
Um, and, and so that's, was that the,sort of the general move as you started
to look at human rights, these fileswould start to come up where you work

(23:05):
at Greenpeace and you're like, okay,let's start looking at these different
aspects of conservation issues andhow they, they relate to human rights.
Yeah.
Andrews, this is such adeep and good question.
I think that human rights andenvironmental problems often tend to be
the two sides of the exact same coin.

(23:26):
Mm. One of the most fascinating thingsthat we found out when I was at Greenpeace
when I was um, our Southeast Asia researchdirector, was that all these vessels.
That were the mostimplicated in IUU fishing.
Yep.
In pirate fishing and overfishing andfishing juveniles and fishing out of
season fishing in marine protected areas.

(23:48):
Basically the vessels thatare trashing the ocean
disproportionately, they also had someof the worst human rights violations.
Mm-hmm.
They were just floating prisons.
Hmm.
And not just with seafood slaves, butin order to keep people in that level

(24:10):
of servitude, they would deploy immenseamounts of violence, torture, killings,
threats, confiscating people's papers.
Right.
And beating them.
You know, this is.
But I remember I was working in Bangkokwith the Oceans team there, and my
flatmate was this fantastic reporter forthe Guardian who broke open this landmark

(24:34):
first ever, um, expose of seafood slavery.
The Guardian is like at the heart of that.
And then after Guardian Ian Orbinat the New York Times did some work
and AP did some fantastic work.
Um, and then it sort of spread.
But I remember what I would, I wouldcome back to work from home from
talking with my flat name Kate,this wonderful journalist, Kate.
I wish she could have gotten like everymedal for best journalism in the world.

(24:57):
Um, I would, I would go to theoffice after talking to Kate.
I'd be like, guys.
We have got to do more about humanrights abuses at, in the high seas
and, and in all these ports becausethe penalties for the environmental
stuff are so low, but the penaltiesfor the human rights abuses are higher.
And these, mm-hmm.
Let's start working onthis in a holistic way.

(25:19):
And I remember it was very similar,the deforestation problems for palm
oil and pulp and paper, they oftenwent, I mean, of course they're
terrible for the environment.
It's it.
Carbon catastrophe.
It's a biodiversity catastrophe.
I have a beautiful picture of an orangutanmother and baby up on the wall behind me.
You know, it's like the number one killerof orangutans is palm oil republic.

(25:42):
Yep.
It's, you know, they set thesehuge raging forest fires that
you can see from outer space.
The smoke like travels to China to thepoint where the Chinese complain to
the Indonesian authorities about air.
If China's calling you to complainabout air, yeah, about air quality,
you're doing something very wrong.
Seriously.
But it's not just a carbon bomband an air pollution problem

(26:02):
of like airpocalypse now.
It's not just killing orangutans anddriving immense biodiversity loss.
Also these fires and this deforestationand pea training, it harmed so
many indigenous communities andforest dependent communities.
And then, you know, as they would resist,people would be violently mistreated.

(26:22):
Threatened.
You know, we could see that thehuman rights problems that go hand
in hand with the deforestationon, on land as they do at sea.
So I believe that, you know, it'sthe two sides of the same coin.
And I see it again now in coffeewhere you've got kids and slaves
and forced labor and extremepoverty on the social side.
And then on the environmentalside, deforestation, horrible

(26:45):
overuse of chemicals.
Often hhp is highly hazardous chemicals.
And where do you think they go?
The ocean.
And our bodies.
And our rivers.
Yeah.
And not just that, but plastics fromcups and pods, and not just deforestation
and plastics and misuse of waterand chemicals, but also we're doing
things in monocultures that should bebeautiful Regenerative agroforestry.

(27:08):
So with coffee, as with what Isaw when I was at Cream piece and
Mighty Earth, environmental andhuman right stuff go hand in hand.
Yeah.
If you wanna fix the planet.
You gotta do it in this holistic way.
Yeah.
Now you're, you know, you're tryingto help out a, an entire industry.
Not just the farmers, not just thepeople who are affected by this.

(27:31):
Not just the environment, eventhe industry, the people who
are making profits off of this.
Like, let's make profit,but let's do it properly.
You, you identify this happening,you know, looking at deforestation
through your work and you see coffee.
Okay.
The coffee industry, whois doing what about it?
You're probably looking around andbeing like, what is being done?

(27:51):
You find one paper, and that was writtenin 2007 by WWF, as you mentioned before.
We, we recorded, uh.
You know, talking about howdeforestation in the, in the coffee
industry is, is a huge problem.
Not many people are covering this.
When did, when did you startto discover this problem?
And then when did that turninto the idea and, and sort of

(28:14):
brainchild of, of coffee watch?
So, this is a great question.
When I was working at Greenpeace,I already knew that coffee was the
number six driver of deforestation.
Okay.
And a lot of NGOs, Greenpeace, WWFAmnesty, so many NGOs got together and
pushed with a lot of parliamentarians topass this law in the European Union called

(28:37):
the EU Deforestation Regulation to bar allof the top seven drivers of deforestation.
Gotcha.
Makes sense.
You could think of it as like theseven deadly sins for forests.
Right.
Um, and Greenpeace worksa lot on the big four.
Mm-hmm.
But the numbers five, six, andseven got really short rif.
So when I went to Mighty Earth afterGreenpeace, I worked a lot on cocoa

(29:01):
and rubber, which are numbers fiveand seven of coco deforestation.
But it was just niggling me andniggling me and niggling me.
I wanted to work on coffee.
All these scientists kept sayingis the number six driver, but then
there's no NGOs working on it really.
And then I came across one paper.
Yeah, which blew my mind.

(29:21):
The WWF had investigated how coffee wasthreatening tiger habitat in Indonesian
park, elephant, tiger, and rhino habitat.
It's one of the worst.
Wouldn't think about that important.
National parks and coffee wastrying deforestation there.
I was like, what is going on?

(29:44):
And then I started digging deeper and.
I realized, oh my God, thisis a problem of your portions.
I mean, it's not one of the bigfour, but it's one of the seven
deadly worst commodities for horse.
Nobody is working on it.
Really?
WWF did that one beautiful thingand then they never did anything

(30:04):
again on coffee and forest.
So I decided to startCoffee watch at that time.
And then I realized, wow, it'sdriving deforestation in all the
forest frontiers in Cameroon andthe whole Great Lakes region.
Mm-hmm.
And Chicken Z Habitat, bonobo,gorilla Habitat, Andro, these

(30:24):
are our closest cousins.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then one day I was at the beach,uh, with my wonderful husband,
um, and I just looked at allthese stupid effing coffee cups.
Mm-hmm.
And it was a beautifulbeach and I just thought.
I hate my life.
I started picking up all the coffee cups.

(30:45):
I, and it felt like suchan act of futility, right?
'cause there's so many of them.
As I was going through this garbagepicking up episode in Thailand, just
sort of like rage cleaning the beach.
I thought, wow, it's not justdeforestation, it's plastics.
Mm. And it wasn't until much later,Andrew, that I processed how many

(31:07):
chemicals the coffee industry is usingand how much it relies on monoculture.
Mm-hmm.
So I think my resolve just kept deepeningand deepening with every discovery.
Yeah.
Well, and it seems like it's,it was hitting all the bad parts
of affecting the environment atevery point in the supply chain.
So you, you, from the production,like growing to the production

(31:30):
aspect, uh, to the retail aspect.
And then to the consumer aspect,it was hitting everything, not only
from deforestation, but lookingat lack of biodiversity with the
monocultures, the use of pesticidesand, and chemicals to grow the coffee,
the packaging to sell the coffee.
Then you got, you know, the packagingto sell and consume the coffee, and then

(31:52):
it goes into the, to the environment,whether it be on land or at sea or in a
river, or all of the, all of the above.
Yes.
It's, it's, it must've been devastatingfor you to, as you start to realize
where this is at and, and you know,you're, you're one person or a few people
who are, who are starting to recognizethis and, and, and be aware of this.
Even though this has been happeningfor a while, not many people are, were

(32:15):
working on these types of problems.
Maybe as a, a larger aspect.
'cause we've known coffee cups.
I know here in Canada we've known coffeecups have been a problem, you know, out.
When people, you see them over,like people throw them out, but they
don't always make it to the trash.
They'll, they'll, you'll seethem on the streets sometimes.
You'll see them in the, in the lakes here.
And sometimes, and, andobviously not good, uh, in, in

(32:36):
a long, in a lot of that way.
Um, but when it's, it'skind of interesting when
you think of coffee itself.
Like I, I, I'm not a coffee drinker,but I don't know anybody who's like, oh,
it's so bad that I'm drinking coffee.
It's so bad for the environment though.
Like, you know, like, you'll seethat with like pop or soda, right?
Yeah.
And you'll see that with alcohol.

(32:57):
'cause you know, alcoholhas its known effects.
Uh, but with coffee, it's like every timesomeone's drinking, it's like a relief.
You know?
It's like you're gettingthat caffeine hit.
Uh, if you drink coffee, likethere are, there are, uh, studies
that show that it's healthy foryou if you drink it in moderation.
And when you think about the productionand the sale, I guess from, from my,

(33:19):
I'm, I'm, this is very anecdotal.
I always think of peoplebuying it fair trade.
I always think about people buyingit where, you know, the, the, the,
the agriculture aspect, the farmersbenefiting because it's part of this
fair trade, fair use type of system.
And most people want that because thattends to be the better coffee anyway.
It's, a lot of people are using theircoffee, like they drink their wine.

(33:40):
It's gotta be unique.
They want to taste everything about it,you know, all the way from grinding it
all down and, and, and then drinking it.
Why is there such this disparity ofinformation of the, what, everything
I talked about in terms of the, thecreation and the production of this
to the selling to the consumer.

(34:00):
Not really realizing the, the amountof problems that are occurring.
Not just because of one individualdoing it, but because of it.
Whole industry supplyingthese individuals with.
You know, great coffee Andrew.
I think that there has beena giant consumer fraud.
Mm. Perpetrated on coffeedrinkers, both by the industry

(34:25):
and by certification schemes.
Actually.
Interesting.
I was shocked.
Yeah.
When I started Coffee Watch and Istarted digging into the certification
schemes to discover that there isnot a single certification scheme,
not one that guarantees a livingincome price for coffee farmers or a

(34:47):
living income wage for farm workers.
There are 25 million coffeefarmers in the world and a hundred
million farm workers, give or take.
So if you add in their dependence,there's like several kids, right?
Per farmer and farm worker, we're talkingabout, well north of 200 million people.

(35:08):
Almost all of whom live in poverty,most of whom live in extreme poverty.
Right.
With coffee.
Right.
And actually the certificationschemes are not fixing it.
Most of the certificationschemes do not require that you
be chemical free, like organic.
And to my knowledge, the certificationschemes do not force the companies

(35:31):
whose coffee they certify to deal withpackaging in an appropriate fashion.
Even though we know that there are anestimated 500 billion disposable cups used
annually, many of which are for coffee.
Yeah.
That's million.
With a bee.
With a bee.

(35:52):
And even though we also know that
we think there are hundredsof millions of pods.
Yeah.
Oh yeah, none of which arecompostable and recyclable

(36:12):
being appropriately disposed of.
I mean, unless you think disposingof it in our ocean is appropriate,
and most certifications don't reallyrequire the coffee to be grown
in a serious agroforestry system.
There's a difference betweenmonoculture and agroforestry, okay.

(36:35):
Right.
And if you're gonna have a chemicalfree agroforestry system that's like
a regenerative system with lots oftrees mixed in with the coffee, you
want multiple different canopy heights.
You wanna have nativespecies and not invasives.
You want it to be bird friendly andbat friendly and butterfly friendly.
And you know, if you do agroforestrycoffee, it's got 19 times more

(36:55):
biodiversity and double the carbon.
It anchors rainfall.
It's not a poison machine.
It means you're just takingpressure off the oceans.
Why is it that the certificationschemes don't require coffee to treat?
Its effluence.
The coffee industry just dumpseffluence straight into rivers.
That's it.
There's like.

(37:16):
A handful of companies that treat theireffluence, not even a hundred percent.
The ones that do are like, Itreat 80% of your effluence.
And I'm like, yeah, that'slike a, that's a flex B.
So when you think about how likehalf of global coffee is certified,
yeah, but the certification schemesdo not play a living income price.

(37:37):
Do not deal with packaging to stopeverything from winding up in our
oceans or horrible landfills donot deal with chemical overuse
and misuse and effluent treatment.
Do not require really good, robustagroforestry systems that work
for carbon, for biodiversity,for farmer food security, for

(37:57):
farmer income diversification.
You realize it's likethis giant consumer fraud.
That's why huge, most perfectlynice people think they're
drinking something good.
And they're doing their best,and then they'd be shocked to
learn what it really is doing.
It's, it's unreal how theycan get away with putting

(38:21):
these certifications together.
Now, I get, you know, when youinitially put a certification together,
it may not be the best, it maynot be the best version of itself.
Like when I first started mypodcast, my first episode sucked.
Like, compared to how I feel about it now,you know, 1700 or almost 1800 episodes
later, when you put a certification inplace of an industry that's probably

(38:42):
not very well regulated because it'sworking in so many different countries,
especially in countries where regulationis probably not the focus, um, in, in
developing countries and and so forth.
And you can get away with paying peopleat a very, very, very low wage if
you know, a, a livable wage at all.
As you mentioned, manyof them are underneath.
And so I, I can understand when you firstput a certification in and it doesn't

(39:04):
really meet the, the best standards for.
The industry for the people growingit, you would expect that it would be
improved over time and that, that peoplewould, you know, the people who call it
out and say, Hey, you know what, I, I,it's not that I want this to go away.
It is, I want this to get better andI wanna work with you to get better.
So from a, from a coffee wash standpoint,your organization, when you look at

(39:28):
certifications like this, do you approachthe cer the certification companies
or the, the, the third party bodieswho manage these certification, uh,
organizations and then say, let's, youknow, this is, this is under serving.
You're not serving the communitywell, how can we make this better?
Do you end up, you know, putting alittle bit of pressure on them from

(39:50):
a, an activism standpoint, but also wewanna work with you to increase these
certifications and make them better?
I absolutely believe that thecertifications could do better
and should do better, and.
My dream world is one where I wake uptomorrow or the day after your podcast

(40:12):
comes out and all the main certificationsand coffee have said, oh wow, we're
going to pay living income price andstop dumping hazardous chemicals and
coffee and treat all our affluentand make sure that all the coffee is
packaged and compostable and recyclablematerials and like, where's the no
deforestation pledge for me to sign?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly.
That's my dream.

(40:32):
That's my dream.
Um, sadly, we're not there yet.
Um, right.
I certainly have tried, um,communicating with a number of the
coffee certifications, schemes us haveother organizations, and just recently,
um, coffee Watch worked with mm-hmm.
Which is a Brazilian organization that'swon many, many awards and their director

(40:55):
just won the Goldman award recently.
Right.
Just like the.
Green Nobel Prize, I guess you could say.
Um, and we worked with this otherNGO in Colombia as well to do an
investigation of, um, coffee in Colombia.
Literally we found abuses in thecertification schemes of fair trade,

(41:18):
of reinforced alliance of four C, whichis like one of the biggest in coffee.
Yeah.
Mostly for Nestle and cafepractices, which is like a
hundred percent for Starbucks.
Um,
we just did that report, butalready Coffee watch's first
report on, on abuses that we foundin Chinese coffee supply chains.

(41:43):
A lot of that was certified.
Did another report on abuses inMexican coffee supply chains.
A lot of that was certified.
Um, cafe practices like isalmost all of Starbucks coffees.
Certified by this thing called CafePractices, which was set up mm-hmm.
By Conservation International.

(42:03):
I'm sure you know of them.
They do a lot of ocean work,so you've probably across them.
Yeah.
Well they certify, um, Starbuckscoffee, and not only do they certify
all the environmental abuses we weretalking about, um, we also filed some,
a, a strategic litigation against, uh,coffee companies in the United States.

(42:25):
Um, we filed against Starbucks, Nestle,Dunkin Donuts, McDonald's, and a couple
others for slavery in their coffee.
Wow.
And some of that was certified coffee.
So just to give you a sense of likehow bad it is, um, the Brazilian

(42:47):
Labor Inspection Department found3,700 slaves in coffee plantations.
Between 1996 and 2003, andthat's each of them, they only
inspected 0.1% of coffee farm.
Yeah.
So they're just scratch,literally scratching the surface.
They're just scratching the surface.
So we are talking about certified slavery.

(43:11):
Yeah.
As well as certifieddeforestation and forced labor
and child labor and hazardous.
Well, it's, it's really interestingbecause you're talking about these
major companies, like these majorcorporations, you know, Starbucks,
McDonald's, and so forth, and.
I know with the seafood industry,to use this as an analogy, the,

(43:33):
one of the biggest problems withthe seafood industry is not knowing
the supply chain from catching allthe way up to the final retail.
And there was, Oceania madesome interesting discoveries,
uh, scary discoveries really.
Whereas, like a lot of the, theseafood that was sold in seafood
markets a number of years ago,I think it was just around 2018.
2019, 50% of them were not theseafood that they were selling at.

(43:56):
And then it wasn't necessarily the,uh, the markets that knew about it.
It was the fact that they, throughoutthe, the, the supply chain things
changed and they didn't know how itchanged, so it wasn't being certified.
So you have, um, you know, MSC, the MarineStewardship Council who have come out
and they said that we've actually beenable to inspect and we follow, I think

(44:19):
it was over 400 different supply chains.
I know they, they sometimes identifyproblems even still within that, but at
least they know where this fish is comingfrom and where the seafood's coming from.
Was that the problem when you, when youstarted bringing lawsuits against these
corporations is they just didn't know ordidn't have control over the entire supply

(44:39):
chain going from the grow, the grow upto the, um, uh, the final sale at, at a
McDonald's or at a Starbucks or wherever.
Was that the, that the actual problem?
Do you know those little threemonkeys that everyone has on their
desk that says like, see no evil?
Yes.
Speak no evil.
Yes.
Yeah.

(44:59):
If you don't know Yeah.
What your supply chain is, isthat because you can't know or
because you don't want to know?
This is really important question.
That's the question, right?
Yeah.
The answer matters hugely for sure.
And I personally believe thatif you are buying coffee.

(45:21):
You must know Yeah.
Where your coffee's coming from.
And if you cannot figure thatout, you should not be in the
business of selling coffee.
Right.
You know, it's like if I was gonna sellyou a can of tuna fish, I should be able
to guarantee A, that it's tuna fish B,that it doesn't have a resty nail in it.
See, it doesn't have salmonella.

(45:43):
Yeah.
It wasn't made by slaves.
Right.
And it's the same with coffee.
Yeah.
You know, I think that we havecreated a system, which completely
broken, Andrew, completely broken.
Why is it that all these small holderfarmers who are so impoverished are not
counted as employees of coffee companies?

(46:05):
They dance to the tune ofthose coffee companies.
Coffee companies say jump.
They say how high?
Yeah.
Why?
Because they have no bargaining power.
You know, they often live in countrieswhere literally you cannot be in a union.
The number two coffee producingcountry in the world is Vietnam.
Like literally.
Unions are not legal there.
We did our investigation in in China intoabuses in Chinese coffee supply chains,

(46:28):
but literally unions are not allowed.
They're not legal, socan't protect the workers.
And that's not even counting thecountries where there's so much
violent union busting, like Guatemala.
Yeah.
And Mexico and Brazil wherebus and Ed slashed the coffee
unions and so many other unions.

(46:48):
So you know, if the farmersare basically the slaves or in
some cases actually the slaves.
Yeah, yeah.
The coffee industry, I shouldsay farmers and farm workers.
Mm-hmm.
Why is it that they aren'tcounted as employees?
Why is it that they aren't tabulated?

(47:10):
Why aren't you responsible for theirhealthcare, their pension, their
social security, their protective gear?
Why don't you have to takeresponsibility for the eff flu?
Why don't you have to take responsibilityfor the HH ps, the highly hazardous
pesticides, which all wind up in thesoil and in the water, and in our oceans.
Mm-hmm.
I just think there's this plausibledeniability where the industry has

(47:32):
decided we don't want those peopleto be our employees because then we
would be completely responsible fortheir poverty and their slavery.
So we're outsourcing it andwe're just calling it the free
market, you know, so Fair enough.
That's the system that we have.
Yeah.
Now we just have to fix it.
We have to ensure that those farmershave rights, that the farm workers have
rights, that they're paid a living income.

(47:53):
Mm-hmm.
That the companies treat their affluence.
I think the key is let's make sure thatthe industry can't say, I don't know.
Yeah.
I don't care.
Yeah.
That's not an okay answer.
That's like not a viable answer.
And, and so that's why, hence the lawsuitsbeing brought to some of the corporations
and be like, look, you may not have known.
But we don't know if you actually didknow and just ignored it, or you just

(48:15):
didn't want to know and let it go.
But we want you to know, we wantyou to make it your, uh, your,
your first priority to know whatis happening at the production site
and all the way through, just likeMcDonald's does with their fish now.
Like they, they are very proud of itand they, they advertise it a lot that
I, I think that's, that's, so, it'san interesting way of doing things.

(48:37):
It's like, okay, we'regonna bring these lawsuits.
'cause you need to know that thisis wrong and you need to, you
need to find out if you're gonnabuy and make money off of this.
Like a lot of money, especially some ofthese, these companies who have really
focused on creating coffees and cafes andand stuff at other fast food restaurants.
And then you're going back to, to belike, okay, now let's start from the
beginning and if we were gonna do it probproperly, this is how we would do it.

(49:02):
Now if Coffee Watch is coming into thisand you want them to do it properly.
You know, what's, what's thefirst step you start at the,
the, the site of production?
Like you start at the farm and, andhow do you change an industry that has
already taken down a lot of foreststhat has already made monoculture,
um, that has already has, you know,the, the, these, these slaves that

(49:24):
are, that are working on these farms.
How do you go in and change that culture?
'cause I can't imagine that theseare corporations in charge of this.
This is probably a lot of.
Let's just say nasty individualsand companies that are, that are
in charge of this, that are notwilling to play by the rules.
Well, so Andrew, you know, it'sreally interesting to think about

(49:44):
what has worked in the past.
Mm-hmm.
In other industries.
So you talked about slavery in seafood,which I used to work on more back
in the day when I, a green piece.
You know, you look at howmajor supermarkets like
Walmart got so super involved.
Yeah.
You talked about how McDonald'sgot so super involved.
Well, guess what?

(50:04):
Around 60% of global coffeeis bought in supermarkets.
Yeah, true Supermarketsfigured it out for seafood.
I'm sure they can figureit out for coffee.
Yeah.
McDonald's is one of the topcoffee servers in the world.
Yeah.
You know, I bet.
I think that just as.
The industry that uses palm oil, whichincludes like, you know, people who do

(50:24):
shampoo and cosmetics and cup of noodlesand cookies and, um, detergent and
lipstick and all these companies that,that, that use palm oil change everything.
Yeah.
50% of what you leave thesupermarket with is palm oil in it.
A lot of companies like Unilever, etcetera, they figured out how are we
gonna get completely traceable palm oil?
How are we gonna getdeforestation free palm oil?

(50:46):
You know, we saw deforestation for palmoil has gone down in a lot of places.
We know that forced labor inpalm oil with really curbed.
Right.
We know that seafood, slavery, a lotof companies have stepped up and done
immense amounts of stuff to fix it.
We know companies have done this kindof work before and they can do it again.

(51:08):
These are adjacent industries.
Maybe one of the closestadjacent industries is cocoa.
Yeah.
But you know, there are good modelsfor going deforestation free.
There are great modelsfor going traceable.
We know exactly how to do deforestationfree and traceable coffee today.
Just like actually thereare compostable pods.
Yeah, there arecompostable pods, you know.

(51:31):
Um.
There are billions of single use aluminumand plastic capsules that have gone to
landfills and oceans, um, over time.
But now there's compostable pods.
Let's you know, we and, and notfrom some MoMA wearing hippie dippy
corner shop run by a mom and pop.
No, Nespresso ne especially.
That's a major company.

(51:52):
Yeah.
It's like owned by Nestle.
Right?
Nespresso.
Nestle owned Nesto.
It's the world's biggest coffee company.
20% of Global Coffee Nest Nestle.
So, okay.
We know that we can do compostablepos, we know we can do cups for coffee
that are not lined with plastic.
They're made out of recycledpaper and not virgin paper, and
that don't go into the oceans.

(52:14):
We know how to fix the cups.
We know how to fix the pots.
We know how to do deforestation free.
We know how to do traceable.
We even know how to think aboutrolling out a living income in coffee
because the cocoa industry has made somany strides in thinking through how
to deliver a living income to cocoafarmers who've been right to also very

(52:36):
impoverished, um, in horrible conditions.
Much like much like coffee.
So the good news, the badnews is things are bad.
The good news is there'sso many solutions mm-hmm.
Where they're at the tip of ourfingers, and sometimes they're even
deployed by the same exact companies.
That are very present in coffee, that arealso super present in seafood or coffee

(52:59):
and cocoa or coffee and soy or coffee.
So there, there are multiple differentmodels of making things more sustainable
and making things more equitable.
Correct.
Uh, and and yeah.
And, and more environmentally friendly.
Correct.
That's really, that's really interesting.
Now for, for, uh, for people who drinkcoffee, you know, they're probably
listening to this being like, oh my gosh.

(53:20):
Like, how do I know if my coffee fallswithin one of these bad category areas?
Or if my coffee is, is good.
You know, how, how doesone figure that out?
Like if, you know, even if it hasa certification on there, you're
like, is this certification real?
It's a lot of work for someone whojust wants to have a cup of coffee.
So how do, how do coffeeconsumers figure this out?

(53:46):
Well, I have good newsand bad news for coffee.
Okay.
So let's get the bad news out of theway first and then focus on the good.
If you drink coffee regularly,you almost certainly are
drinking slavery, child labor,deforestation, and ocean destruction.
I'm sorry, but I think it's mm-hmm.
That's a hard pill to swallow.
That's just the truth.
Yeah.

(54:06):
Your coffee is killing jaguars andwhales, however, instead of sitting there
and like sobbing your eyes out mm-hmm.
Or going into some doom scrolling,downward spiral of despair, you
should think about yourself as apowerful, beautiful, change agent.

(54:28):
Mm.
Don't sit there and self flatly becauseyou've been unwittingly complicit in
horrible abuses of people in planet.
No focus on all the greatthings that you can do now.
Mm-hmm.
That's what matters.

(54:48):
Because I think also just as I, sorryto interrupt, but just also too,
I think I, I think there's peoplewho feel bad that this happens.
Like, oh, what do I do?
And people who wanna do it,and then there's other people
who are gonna argue against it.
No, this certification's, you know,like how you, you always hear that
with an argument when somebodysays, reveal something to you.
I see this in, in, in oceans all thetime when we say something, oh, this

(55:09):
is actually bad, or Climate changeis doing this, they'll argue against
it almost as a defense mechanism tosay, no, I'm not doing anything bad.
It's not like, I think the, the bigthing to say, and I always tell my
eyes, it's not necessarily your faultthat you're drinking coffee and you're
contributing to this by drinking coffee.
I don't want people to say, and,and I'm sure you're the same

(55:29):
way, is that this is your fault.
The, the, the, the reality of it isjust the way the industry is built.
We are bringing you information to say,Hey, there's a lot of flaws in this
industry, and it can, it can get better.
So here's how we work it to do better.
Right.
Is that That's correct.
I think that's absolutely correct.
So I would say, you know, if your firststage and hearing all this is denial,

(55:53):
like, oh, this woman is crazy, right?
Please go visit coffee Watch.
You can read all her reports.
I am telling you theabsolute honest to God truth.
Mm-hmm.
This data-driven, this is not a joke.
I do not come from likerando weirdo groups.
I've worked at some of the world's topenvironmental human rights organizations.

(56:13):
Yeah, for sure.
I graduated from Yale Law School.
Everything we do gets aliable and a defamation check.
I promise.
I'm telling you the truth.
Yeah.
It comes from denial to anger.
You feel angry about this.
Okay, that's fine.
Don't feel angry at yourself.
Right.
Don't feel angry at the past.
Right.
Let's move through that.
Maybe the next stage is bargaining.
Oh, well I drink certified coffee.

(56:33):
How bad can it be?
Mm. Actually bad.
Right?
Let's be ready.
Bad.
Let's move through.
Denial, anger, bargaining,depression, acceptance to action.
You know.
You drink coffee every day, that meansyou can change the world every day
and make it a better place every day.
Ah, I like that.
Okay.

(56:54):
Coffee can absolutely be avehicle for saving the planet
and making people's lives better.
Mm-hmm.
And just think about it this way.
You can break it down into littlesteps, and you can start working
your way through these habits first.
Don't ever get a disposable cup.
Just don't do it right either.

(57:16):
Don't drink that coffee or plunkyour little butt down on a chair
and sit down and drink it rightthere for two or three minutes.
It'll be nice.
You can talk to someone.
You can like make a friend or bringyour uncle, bring a reusable mug,
or, or whatever other ones do.
Yeah.
Yeah.
PO pods.
Never get a pod that is justgonna wind up in our oceans.
Don't do that.

(57:36):
Mm-hmm.
Please don't do that.
If you love whales, don't do it.
Yeah.
Don't.
Don't get a compost of aone or, again, skip it.
How important can it be to you?
Just know that if you do the wrongthing, you're voting to put it in a
seal's tummy, and if you do the rightthing, you're saving the planet.
Hmm.
That's a powerful thing.
You just made the planet a better place.
You paid for something really good.

(57:58):
Right, right.
Another organic chemicals, they're allconnected, are what goes into our bodies.
What goes into the soil, what goesinto rivers, what goes into oceans.
Coffee is a very HHP thirsty crop, usesa lot of highly hazardous pesticides.
Don't do that.
Please don't do that either.
You can buy organic coffee,which is really chemical free.

(58:21):
Rainforest Alliance is likemaybe a B minus, and Fairtrade
is like a b plus on chemicals.
Okay, so those are not perfect,but they're better than nothing.
They're better.
Yep.
Or you can just take a picture ofyourself with your coffee cup and tweet
or Facebook or Insta or whatever thecompany and say, I am your loyal customer.
I wish you made organic.

(58:42):
Or just ask at the counter.
Ask at the restaurant.
Ask at the cafe.
Almost every chain has one organic option.
Just try that.
Yep.
That's something you can do.
If you can buy coffee that paysa living income, please do that.
You don't have to do it every time.
You don't have to do it whenyou're late or rushing or on

(59:05):
the go, but stock up on that.
Make a habit of it.
There is coffee that pays a living income.
How do you know?
How do you know which one?
Like which brands?
Check, check, check every time.
Okay.
When you're buying, check if, ifthey do it, they will say they do it.
Google Living Income, call me.
So it's not just like on a certification.
It says we provide livablewages for no certification.

(59:26):
No certification.
It just says on the package weprovide livable wages for our farmers.
That's correct.
And farm workers.
Okay.
And, and most of the companies thatdo that tend to be smaller, mid-size,
so they don't serve every geography.
So depending on whether, whetheryou Canada or the US or Europe or
Japan or Korea, it'll be different.
Yeah.
Might.
And it might be a little harder toget than your regular grocery store.
You might have to order itonline or something like that.
So order it online and justmake a plan Every month I'm

(59:47):
gonna order one bag, two bags.
Yeah.
Every week, depending onhow much coffee you drink.
Gotcha.
That's a huge thing.
Or if you can't do that, youcan donate money to a charity
that works with coffee farmers.
So if you're gonna impoverish themby buying low cost coffee, you can
give back to their communities.

(01:00:08):
Right.
For Christmas.
Yeah.
Or you can give this a Christmas presentto all the coffee lovers in your life.
Yeah.
And I would say if you are someonewho cares enough to just ask the
barista, the manager, the waiter,the Metre D Ask, please ask.
Because every time you askthe, that filters up all the

(01:00:31):
way eventually to the C-suite.
And the same goes with social media.
Go on their social media.
And just tag them and say,please do better if you want.
You can go on our Coffee Watch website.
We have a place where youcan take lots of actions.
You can sign every good petition that'sout there for sustainable coffee.
Mm-hmm.
Petitions.
It takes you one minute toclick all those petitions, but

(01:00:53):
that's a really big difference.
We have a list of thefilms that you can watch.
You can screen them with yourfriends who are coffee drinkers.
Mm-hmm.
Just spreading the word withfive or 10 other humans on
planet Earth is a powerful thing.
Hosting a screening, that's likea more fun way of doing it than
sitting down and watching someonelike me telling you sad, bad news.

(01:01:17):
Maybe your friends are more into films.
Yeah.
That's a great way to go.
The petitions.
Buying from the heart, sendingmessages on social media.
Mm-hmm.
Posting screenings, askingin your coffee shop.
All those things are powerful, and ifyou live in a democracy like Canada
or the US or Europe, then pleasecontact your lawmaker just once a

(01:01:41):
year and ask them to do something.
There are laws on the books thathave been proposed that would
totally clean up global coffee.
Yeah.
Sometimes it's a matter of like makingup a big stink about it to Yeah.
Yeah.
Make sure our government representativesare like, oh, this is an important
aspect to, to our people.
Here's a great example.
Germany has this sustainable supply chainlaw called the Lefa Cat and Gazettes.

(01:02:04):
There wasn't enough popular supportfor it, and although many people in
Poles said that they loved it, a lotof really vocal negative industry
captured the ear of the new chancellor.
He said he wants to cancel the law.
You know, people power matters.
If you're in a democracy, you canpass laws and you can protect laws.
Yeah, yeah.

(01:02:24):
And laws are a game changer.
We have a law in the books in Europecalled the EUDR one in the UK called
the UK DR in German, in Germany,they have that supply chain law.
And Canada, there's some goodlaws in the US We have the Forest
Act that got bipartisan supportin the house and the Senate.
There are laws, you can,you are not in North Korea.

(01:02:45):
Right.
If you're listening to this podcast,you're definitely not living in Exactly.
And probably you're not living inRussia or China and that you are free.
That's amazing.
You're effing free.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a democracy.
If you drink coffee every day, Ijust ask you that once in your life
or once a year, you do something forgood lives to change global coffee.
And if that's all you ever do, yeah.

(01:03:06):
That would still be amazing.
Yeah.
That would make you a herofor sustainable coffee.
Perfect.
I love the, I love the call to actionbecause I think this is important.
I think, I think coffee lovers, everytime I, I, you know, my wife's a coffee
lover, she always wants to do better.
You know, my kids love theircoffee, they wanna do better.
Everybody that I know, they love theircoffee, they love their specific coffee,

(01:03:28):
and they wanna do better for the peoplewho are growing the coffee for them.
And I think this is, this is important,um, to, to be able to get out and, and,
you know, it's, it's really interestinghow, you know, at first if I told
people, yeah, I have someone fromcoffee watch on, you know, I have a
telephone coffee watch, and they're like.
What, how does that haveto affect the oceans?
Well, it does affect the oceans 'causethe entire supply chain, when you think
about it, plastic ends up in the oceans.

(01:03:49):
You have the cups, you have, you know,the, the, um, the little containers,
the pods, they end up in the ocean.
The chemicals end upin the ocean from that.
And it hurts.
It harms wildlife and our wild systems,whether it be on land, in fresh
water or in the marine realm, uh, italways, it always makes a difference.
So, tell, I wanna thank you for,for bringing this to our attention.

(01:04:10):
Really do appreciate it.
I'd love to have you backon to get updates on, on
where we are in the industry.
Um, but also, you know, if peoplewant to get a hold of your, go to
your website, can you just let peopleknow what the, that website is?
Yeah, absolutely.
Please come to our website.
That's where you can find all thosewonderful petitions and things like that.
It's just coffee watch.org.

(01:04:32):
Awesome.
And there is a a, and I'll putthe other link to it as well.
There is a, a link on there.
Right at the top it says actions,and that's where you can sign the
petitions, you can volunteer, youcan host screenings, and then you
can understand how to buy more,uh, why more responsible coffee?
So again, thank you so much, Atel.
We really appreciate it.
I'm, I'm so happy to haveshared this time with you.

(01:04:54):
I'm so thrilled to appear with youhere, and I just think that, you know,
I wanna leave people with a feelingof immense hope and beauty and that
there's so much possibility for change.
Yes.
And I think we've seen itbefore and we can do it again.
Absolutely.
Wonderful.
Stay on the line andwe'll, uh, we'll chat soon.

(01:05:15):
And thank you so much.
We really appreciate.
Thank you Itel for joining meon today's episode of the How
to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
It was great to have you on.
It was great to be able to find out allabout this industry, a lot of stuff.
I had no idea what was going on frommodern slavery to monocultures and loss
of biodiversity to deforestation being oneof the top seven triggers of deforestation
or reasons for deforestation.

(01:05:36):
It's unreal.
I can't believe that's even a thing,but if you think about how many people,
you know, drink coffee and how popularit is and what the best way to go and
how to find out which is the best coffeecompany or coffee brand or type of
coffee to go with is a really difficultthing to do just like it is for seafood.
And it just kind of goes to show that itcan happen in any industry and then having
that site from grow to consumption forcompanies to be able to see that whole

(01:06:00):
supply chain is really, really important.
So it's nice to see somebody like Ateland her staff of Coffee watch be able
to work within this industry, eventhough it's not an industry that has
a lot of attention to it, which is.
Boggles boggles my mindwhen she first started.
People weren't reallypaying attention to it.
So I'm glad somebody is, andI'm glad there are more and more
people who are doing so now.

(01:06:20):
And so if you want to go to find outmore about how to, you know, drink coffee
better, Astel mentioned, go to coffeewatch.org, all one word, coffee watch.org.
And if you want to take action,I'll put the link in the show notes.
You just have to go on the top menu bar.
Over to the far right by the donatebutton, so you can donate as well.
But right by the donate button, there'sa list of actions that you can do.

(01:06:42):
You can volunteer, you can assignpetitions, and you can find out
how to buy more responsible coffee,and of course, host screenings
for coffee type documentaries.
So thank you so much for joining us, Atel.
Thank you for joining us on thisepisode of the podcast, because this is
something that we always wanna learn.
We'll learn new things, learn howthings affect the ocean, learn
how things affect the planet.

(01:07:02):
The deforestation is a hugetrigger for planetary disaster.
As well as plastic pollution in the ocean.
So it's always great to be ableto find out more ways that we
can find solutions in a industrythat would make a big difference.
'cause there's so many people thatdrink coffee and making better
choices can make huge differences.
So I want to thank Itel for joining us.
If you have any questions or comments,please lay them in the comments below.

(01:07:25):
You're watching this on YouTube, andof course, if you're watching this on
your favorite podcast app, which is theaudio version, you can get ahold of me.
Going to speak up for blue.com/contact.
Fill out the form, send me an email.
You can also go to at How toProtect the Ocean on Instagram
that's at How to Protect the Ocean.
Send me a dm. Love to hear from you.
Other than that, thank you forjoining me on today's episode of the

(01:07:46):
How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
I'm your host, Andrew Lewin fromthe True nor Strong and free.
Have a great day.
We'll talk to you next timeand happy conservation.