Recently, I have found several websites that have intrigued me greatly. The first I am going to talk about is "Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Church".
This is a really creative group of people and they have mastered a lot of PR techniques. Their message is that unquenchable consumerism is not the democracy, freedom, and prosperity that our culture/society believes it is. Rather our spending habits and demands for cheap prices are very damaging to the parts of the world where many of our favorite products come from.
They walk through shopping centers in choir robes and sing, " Change-a-lujah!" They perform exorcisms on cash registers, and one of their favorite targets is Starbucks.
They charge that Starbucks doesn't pay a fair price for their coffee, and that only 3.7% of coffee imports are fair-trade certifiable. Another interesting accusation is that Starbucks has stolen coffee type names from Ethiopia and is blocking Ethiopia's attempts to protect its heritage through copyright controls. Read more here.
I myself have privately thought that Starbucks doesnt live up to the fair trade name it gladly ties on to sooth customers with social conscience... they have always been to slick and smooth, growing way too fast to not cut some corners.
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The lord works in mysterious ways. Rev. Billy is actually a Republican operative working for Karl Rove. He concocted a plan to funnel more money to Bush-ally Ethiopia so they can buy more tanks, bombs and bullets. It is not a conicidence that the guy he is attacking is a Democrat.
Also strange--Starbucks is the world's largest buyer of fair trade coffee. If they bought only fair trade coffee, they would buy all of it. Only 2% of the world's coffee is certified fair trade. The Fair Trade certification is mainly concerned with worker's rights while C.A.F.E. certified coffee is more focused on environmental issues and sustainable practices including workers rights. 60% of the coffee bought by Starbucks is either Fair Trade or C.A.F.E..
Also the Fair Trade organization slaps an 8-10 cents pound royalty on all fair trade coffee. These funds do not flow back to workers and may somewhat lessen demand for this coffee.
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