The Perfect Gift for Your Eco Conscious Valentine!

This Valentines Day spread your love even farther. Give to the Jane Goodall Institute, women and children in Nepal, small farm fair trade cocoa producers, chimpanzees, organic farming communities…it is a complete rippling effect Valentine with a rattan bow! What wife, mother, grandmother, girlfriend, sister, or best friend wouldn’t be touched by this perfect gift that gives back so much!

Four different gift options are available with Organic, Free Trade Milk or Dark Chocolate that gives to the Jane Goodall Institute partnered with either a Nepalese girl felt cosmetic or coin purse made free trade in Nepal supporting communities in Central Asia. Each option is ribboned with a rattan bow and backed with stamped recycled cardboard for support.

Bake It Forward with Fair Trade Chocolate!

I’m sure many of you have heard about the child slave labor at the cocoa farms in West Africa. The corporate chocolate giants are not doing much about it as they continue to fill our insatiable need for chocolate and make billions of dollars doing it. I won’t give up chocolate, but I can start buying fair trade and ethical chocolate. What else can you do about it? Emily at Bake it Forward has a yummy educational idea that I am going to try tonight.

How to Bake it Forward

1. Buy some fair trade chocolate in a store near you, or purchase it directly from a company online. If you’re not sure where to shop, check out the links to the left.
2. Bake something to share with 5-10 friends, family, and co-workers. Click here for recipe ideas.
3. Download the 8-per-sheet bake it forward tags or the 4×6 photo-sized postcards to print out and attach to your baked goods.
4. Give them away!

Share the story of slave labor and BUY fair trade chocolate. Divine Chocolate is not only fair trade, the West African farmers own 45% of the business! In addition, Endangered Species Chocolate (left), a local Indianapolis chocolate company, makes ethical chocolate that is non-GMO verified. Plus, 10% of their proceeds go to save endangered species! Endangered Species Chocolate partners with the Rainforest Alliance, the African Wildlife Foundation, and the Ocean Conservancy, to name a few.

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Our favorite addictions are becoming fair trade!

I don’t know about you, but right now I am tempted daily by all the chocolate holiday treats and need my latte just to keep up with all this Christmas Spirit!

Starbucks is already the world’s largest purchaser of Fair Trade coffee and now they also switched their European espresso to 100% fair-trade. What started out in UK and Ireland covers all of the Europe. That is an estimated $2,800,000.00 annual payment to small scale coffee farmers around the world. To learn more about Starbucks commitment visit www.starbuck.com/sharedplanet

Now on to Chocolate...

Kraft Foods has come out with a new line of premium dark chocolate called Cote d’ Or which is Rainforest Alliance Certified. Not an easy task. Nestle is also in talks to source and certify the Kit Kat bar as fair-trade. Can you believe that this is the bestselling brand of chocolate bar in Britain? This new bar will initially be rolled out in Ireland and the United Kingdom. Find out more information or to read the press release.

So not only have the scientists proven that coffee and chocolate are actually good for you but now these large companies are making us feel even better about consuming that Mocha Latte!

And just for giggles…check out the award-winning Gamling911.com writer Jenny Woo who was dipped in chocolate at a fundraising event to support the positive benefits of plastic surgery.

She admitted that although Cocoa butter is good for your skin…she had the bugs following her for days after the dip.

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