Episode 56 - Ethical Coffee

What is Coffee?

Coffee beans are the inner seed from the “cherry” of the coffea plant, which is native to Ethiopia.[1] Coffee is the world’s second most tradable commodity, after crude oil. There are four primary types of coffee: Arabica (coffea arabica), Robusta (coffea caniphora), Liberica (coffea liberica), and Exelsa (coffea liberica var. dewervrei).

Arabica is the most common type of coffee consumed in North America. Arabica beans are sweet less acidic in flavour than Robusta beans. They are farmed in areas with high elevations above sea level and where rain is prevalent. Arabica plants are delicate and prone to disease, which makes it challenging to grow in large quantities.

Robusta beans are most popular in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. It is not generally very popular because it can taste burnt or rubbery. But Robusta coffee is easier to grow and has higher levels of caffeine (which acts as a natural insect repellant). It is typically used in instant coffee and as a filler in dark roasts. There are some very good Robusta coffees, but this variety is usually seen as lower quality.

Liberica and Excelsa are both relatively rare coffee beans.

You can grow a coffee plant in your apartment, but don’t expect it to produce coffee cherries. Coffee plants are trees that yield mature harvests only after 4-7 years of attentive cultivation.[2]

There are lots of different coffee brewing styles (e.g., drip, pour over, cold brew, espresso, ristretto). Capsule coffee is a rising trend. More than 40% of U.S. households own an espresso pod machine. The global market for coffee pod and capsule machines is expected to double by 2025. 

There is also a wide variety of coffee drink types (e.g., espresso, americano, cappuccino, flat white, affogato, iced coffee) but we won’t get into those.

How Coffee is Made

When coffee cherries are picked, the beans are removed either through a “dry” or “wet” process. The dry process involves leaving the beans in the sun to dry and then running them through a grinder. In the wet process, you use water to wash the fruit away from the seed. The “green” coffee beans are then “cleaned” (inspected and sorted) and then roasted.

A (Brief) History of Coffee

Four hundred years ago, coffee was a “mysterious Ottoman custom” cultivated commercially only in Yemen.[3] Now it is an “unrivalled work drug” and a ubiquitous daily necessity.[4] It is also a cash crop produced by more than 25 million people in over 70 countries.[5]

The word coffee derives from the Arabic “qahwah”, meaning wine: coffee is the wine of Islam.[6] Early coffee cultivation took place in the sixteenth century on the hillsides of Yemen.[7] The Ottoman empire set up a coffeehouse as one of its first actions after conquering a new city, to demonstrate the civility of their rule.[8]

Coffee became a European luxury in the seventeenth century as Europeans brought the tradition back from visits in the Middle East. Coffee was especially popular in England. The first coffeehouse in London was established in the early 1650s, but by the turn of the 18th century there were several hundred coffeehouses there.[9]

British traders had more success trading for tea than coffee, which is one reason that England is today associated more with tea than coffee.[10]

Arab traders in Yemen monopolized coffee production until 1699, when the Dutch successfully introduced coffee to Java.[11]After that, coffee spread around the world through pathways of empire and slavery.[12] After the Dutch, the French colonial administrators took coffee to Africa. Then the Dutch introduced coffee to Suriname. Then a Portuguese official smuggled coffee from French Guiana to Brazil. The British began cultivating coffee in Jamaica and the Spanish established coffee in Cuba. By the end of the 18th century coffee was virtually everywhere in the Americas.[13]

The Coffee Industry

The total value of the global coffee industry was $465.9 billion in 2020 (this was a huge jump from 2019). 10.21 million bags of coffee were exported in 2020.

People around the world drink coffee, but the Aussies may be the most committed market. Even though the U.S. population is 12x the Australian population, the Australian coffee market ($7.8 billion) is more than half as much as the U.S. coffee market ($14 billion).

The world’s top coffee exporters include: Brazil, Vietnam, Colombia, Honduras, and Indonesia. Canada’s top coffee supplying countries are Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Mexico.

Around 125 million people globally depend on coffee for their livelihoods. Unlike some commodities, which are grown on large plantations, small coffee farms proliferate: smallholder farmers produce 80% of the world’s coffee.

Like other agricultural commodities, farmworkers receive very little of the value added from coffee. Coffee farmers typically earn only 7-10% of the retail price of coffee. The rest goes to traders, roasters, and retailers downstream.

In part, this has to do with the concentration of coffee buying and processing. Three coffee buyers control half of the global coffee trade (ECOM, Neumann and Volcafe). And 40% of coffee is processed by the ten largest coffee roasters, including Nestlé and Jacobs Douwe Egbers (JDE).

There is an interest in making the coffee industry fairer. Consumer research has found that 53% of U.S. coffee drinkers want to buy ethical coffee and are willing to pay $1.31 extra for a cup of coffee produced by a cooperative farmer.

Working Conditions

A Living Wage for Coffee Farmers

The low, and volatile, price of coffee is one of the biggest problems for coffee producers. Nearly 61% of coffee growers are selling their coffee at prices under the cost of production. While the global coffee industry has been growing, coffee farmers’ average incomes have not changed in the past 20 years, and has actually decreased when you factor in rising farming costs.

The low price of coffee is also a cause of child labour. Remember that coffee is farmed primarily by smallholders. Farmers will often pull their children from school into labour on coffee plantations, in order to produce enough to make a living.

Fairtrade Coffee

Fair trade is one solution to the problem of low coffee prices. Coffee is by far the leading fair trade product.[14] 

To provide farmers with a living income, fair trade estimates that coffee would need to be sold at $1.40 per pound. That is 40% higher than the current market price for coffee. And arguably even that price is not high enough. That is why the Fairtrade Minimum Price for coffee is $1.40 per pound (or $1.70 for organic).

On top of that, farmers receive a $0.20 per pound Fairtrade Premium, of which at least 25% is invested in productivity and quality initiatives. Co-operatives invest the rest in projects that they choose, which can be facility upgrades or things like community healthcare. Fairtrade coffee producers earned more than $94 million in Premium in 2017.

Forced Labour

Forced labour is a problem on some coffee plantations. For example, a 2019 investigation by Thompson-Reuters Foundation found evidence of widespread use of modern slavery on Brazilian coffee plantations.  

Environment

A 2008 study by Ben Salinas found that brewing and transportation are the two biggest sources of emissions from coffee production. The study shows that coffee growing and roasting both have a relatively small environmental footprint.

Coffee Growing

Sun Grown versus Shade Grown Coffee

Coffee has traditionally been grown under a shaded canopy of trees (shade grown), but recently there has been a shift to sun-grown coffee to meet greater demand. Sun-grown coffee is worse for the environment for two main reasons: it requires fertilizer and it is a cause of deforestation since forested area is cleared to make space for the plantations.

Coffee from Colombia, Brazil, and Costa Rica is usually grown on full-sun plantations. Whereas Peru, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Ethiopia usually produce shade-grown coffee.

Most, though not all, organic growers will use shade-grown methods. To be extra sure that your coffee is shade-grown, you can also look for Bird-friendly Certification. 

Water Use 

Approximately 130 litres of water are needed to produce one cup of coffee. For context, a kilogram of beef takes 15,400 litres of water. And a cup of dairy milk takes 255 litres to produce.

Most of the water used to produce coffee is used in the growing process.

Impact of Climate Change

Climate change is impacting coffee yields as pests infest crops. It is also changing the ideal altitude for coffee growing. For example, Fairtrade International has said that warmer temperatures could push Arabica coffee production higher up into mountains and forest reserves, potentially displacing communities and wildlife.

Brewing Method

There are debates about the best and worst ways to brew coffee, but a lot depends on the volume of coffee that you are making and how you are using the system. One thing we can say fairly definitively is that cold brew is the most environmentally friendly way to brew coffee, since it requires no electricity, provided that you use a reusable filter. Generally speaking, a brewing method will be more environmentally friendly if you have a reusable filter, waste very little product, and keep the machine on for a short duration.

There are some articles out there saying that coffee pods are good for the environment. I take issue with these articles.

So, what is true about them? The life cycle assessments have pointed to something that is generally right: single-serve systems tend to result in less coffee waste, and that be more sustainable.

Drip coffee has generally been found to have a larger environmental impact than single-serve coffee, because LCAs assume that people prepare too much coffee at one time and brew extra batches to retain freshness. However, wasted product is something the consumer can control.

And that can make a big difference for thre outcome of these assessments. For instance, a 2015 study finds that accurate amounts of drip-brewed coffee outperformed single-serve methods, while over-preparation and keeping the warming plate on meant the highest environmental impact. (This study also assumed that drip coffee was brewed using a disposable paper filter and conventionally packaged coffee, but that is not necessarily what people are using.)

Even if you waste less coffee using a capsule system, that still does not mean that single use-coffee pods are good for the environment. It means we need to be careful about over-producing coffee and keeping warming pots on. These analyses typically do not measure against single-serve measures like French press, which eliminate the waste problem while also avoiding the garbage problem of coffee pods.

Every minute approximately 29,000 coffee capsules are dumped into landfills worldwide. The pollution problem associated with single-use capsules is huge, and it is undercounted in these lifecycle analyses. That is because these studies build in rosy assumptions about coffee pods. Sure, single-use capsules might not be a problem big deal if you assume that coffee pods are always put in the recycling—which they aren’t—and actually recycled—which, again, they aren’t.

There is a debate about the relative merits of different capsules. In one study, biodegradable capsules perform the best. In another, aluminum pods are viewed as the best choice. But these studies assume that capsules are ending up where they need to – either being composted or recycled appropriately, and we know that that is rarely the case.

So, if you are going to stick with a coffee pod machine, the best solution is to go for reusable pods. We think that’s a great choice! Here is a guide to help you choose the right reusable capsules.

It might be more efficient to get coffee at a café, since they produce a high volume of coffee. But there are a lot of factors that would go into it, and we couldn’t find a study on this question.

Packaging

Most coffee packaging is not recyclable because of the coffee bag laminate. Some roasters will sell coffee by weight in a container of your choosing. Or you can try your local bulk foods store.

Accompaniments

How do you take your coffee? One great way to reduce the environmental impact of coffee consumption is to switch from animal milk to a plant milk (for more on that see our alternative milks episode). If you add sugar or a powdered creamer, consider the impact of these accompaniments as well.

What You Can Do

Buy Ethical Coffee

World Vision recommends looking for coffee that is Fairtrade International, Fair Trade Certified, UTZ Certified, or Rainforest Alliance Certified. Try doubling up with organic certification, to ensure that your coffee is shade-grown. You can also buy from local roasters that are committed to buying ethical coffee. These roasters may prefer a direct purchasing strategy instead of going with a certification program. That can be a good approach, if you trust that the roaster takes ethics seriously.

Brew Efficiently

Whatever brewing method you use, make it as efficient as possible by:

●      Avoiding single-use filters

●      Turning the machine off when you’re done

●      Not producing more than you need

●      Keeping the machine clean, so it operates efficiently

Support Responsible Supply Chain Legislation

Support legislation that would require big companies to take action and report on their efforts to address child labour, modern slavery, and other human rights violations in their supply chains.

Canada started consultations in 2019. Bill S-216, An Act to Enact the Modern Slavery Act, would require large businesses listed on the Canadian stock exchange, or having a connection to Canada, to provide an annual report which would be posted publicly on the company’s website, as well as in a public government database. The Bill would also ban the import of goods produced by forced or child labour.

The Bill is currently in committee in the Senate (since 30 March 2021), having passed the second reading. That means that now is a good time to contact your Senators and Member of Parliament to ask if they support Bill S-216 and let them know that the Bill has your support.

Australia, the United Kingdom, California, and France already have similar laws (although in France the approach is a bit different). However, the Canadian legislation potentially goes further by amending the customs tariff to wholly exclude goods from entering Canada if manufactured by forced or child labour.

Endnotes

[1] Sedgewick. Augustine. (2020). Coffeeland: One Man’s Dark Empire and the Making of Our Favourite Drug. New York: Penguin Randomhouse LLC.

[2] Sedgewick, Coffeeland.

[3] Sedgewick, Coffeeland p.11

[4] Sedgewick, Coffeeland.

[5] Sedgewick, Coffeeland.

[6] Sedgewick, Coffeeland.

[7] Sedgewick, Coffeeland.

[8] Sedgewick, Coffeeland.

[9] Sedgewick, Coffeeland.

[10] Sedgewick, Coffeeland.

[11] Sedgewick, Coffeeland.

[12] Sedgewick, Coffeeland.

[13] Sedgewick, Coffeeland.

[14]Sedgewick, Coffeeland.

Episode 53 - Flowers

The Flower Industry

Four different types of products are sold in the flower industry: cut flowers, foliage, plants, and young plant material. This episode focuses on cut flowers.

The Demand for Cut Flowers

The cut flower industry is worth $100 billion worldwide. 60% of flowers are bought as a gift and another 20% are for weddings or funerals. Flowers Canada did a Consumer Research Study, which found that the two gifts millennial women most appreciate are wine and flowers.

How It Works

Flowers are grown, cut and packed on flower farms. Then they either go to a flower auction or through the direct flower trade. Florists buy flowers either through auctions or directly to wholesalers.

This short video shows what Dutch flower auction houses look like. 40% of the world’s imported flowers pass through auction houses in the Netherlands.[1] Fun fact: North America’s largest flower auction house is in Burnaby, British Columbia!

Cut flowers are typically shipped by plane, unless they are grown locally. For example, around 187,000 tons of flowers go through the Miami International Airport every year.

Globalization and the Cut Flowers Industry

Since the 1990s there has been a shift in production from Europe and North America to developing countries with warmer climates and cheaper labour. The four biggest cut flower exporters are: the Netherlands (55%), Colombia (18%), Ecuador (15%), and Kenya (15%).

The U.S. imports almost 80% of their flowers. Most flowers sold in the U.S. come from Colombia and Ecuador. Two out of every three flowers in the U.S. are imported from Colombia. In Canada, 55% of imported cut flowers are from Colombia, with 26% from Ecuador.[2]

Countries do specialize in certain flower varieties. Here is a list with the top global producer for a few flower varieties:

• Rose: Ecuador

• Tulip: The Netherlands

• Carnation: Colombia

• Orchid: Thailand

• Peony: The Netherlands

The Rise of Supermarket Flowers

75% of the cut flowers market is made up of online retailers and supermarkets. Supermarkets tend to buy lower quality flowers than high-end florists. But they do demand a great deal of uniformity and may require some form of environmental and/or social standards in their supplier codes.

Which is better: supermarket or florist? It’s hard to say across the board. Supermarkets will adopt standards as a risk reduction strategy, whereas florists are drawn to certification either to differentiate themselves or out of a general feeling of responsibility. But most florists (at least in Europe in 2011) are not actively engaged in social and environmental standards as a purchasing criterion or in communication to customers.

Workers’ Rights

As is common with agricultural products (see our episodes on tea and chocolate, for example), flower farm workers in developing countries generally receive low wages and their working conditions are not comfortable. Union busting is common practice in some countries and can be violent.

There are a few workers’ rights issues that are particular to the flower industry.

Special events drive the cut flower industry, especially Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Mother’s Day, and weddings. 77% of flower purchases involve a specific occasion. Because the industry is so heavily event-based, flower farms need a lot of labour in very short time windows. In places with less mechanization and weak labour protections, that means flower workers often have to work very long shifts around key holidays.

Another problem that is especially prominent in the flower industry is worker safety. Specifically, flower workers can be exposed to toxic chemicals without proper protective equipment. Because flowers aren’t consumed, flower growers are allowed to use more pesticides than food farmers.[3] Approximately one-fifth of the chemicals used in the flower industry in developing countries are banned or untested in the US. Without proper protective equipment, farm workers exposed to toxic pesticides can become sick and, in some cases, die.

Sexual assault and harassment have been well-documented in the flower industry in Colombia and Kenya. Like the tea industry, there are a lot of women working in flower farming because they are perceived as being better at handling the plants delicately. In Kenya, for example, there have been accounts of sexual assault as a regular practice and in some cases as a condition of hiring and promotion.

Environment

Transportation

Timing is crucial for the cut flower industry. 45% of flowers die before they are sold. Typically, the time from harvest to sale is 10-12 days. And it is important to keep flowers refrigerated throughout this period, so they don’t spoil. For that reason, cut flowers are transported primarily by air. Of course, this means that transport contributes significantly to the environmental footprint of cut flowers.

That is why some people suggest that consumers think about plant miles – i.e.: how far did the plant travel to get to you?

Greenhouses

However, the fact that flowers are transported by plane does not necessarily mean that it is always better to buy local, from an emissions standpoint.

That is because it takes a lot of energy to heat greenhouses to the temperatures necessary to cultivate flowers in cold places like Canada, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands.

A life cycle assessment commissioned by Fairtrade International found that “greenhouse gas emissions from air transport of roses from overseas are four to six times lower than  those from heating  the  greenhouses  in  the  Netherlands.” That study looked at the environmental impact of getting roses to Switzerland. So even though obviously the Netherlands is much closer to Switzerland than Kenya, Kenyan roses had a smaller carbon footprint.

So, if you are buying local it is also important to think about flowers that are grown in-season.

Water Use 

A single rose grown in Kenya takes ten litres of water to produce. So, the water footprint of a flower is relatively small (Quick reminder that a 6oz. steak has a water footprint of 2,551 litres).

However, some flower farms are more water efficient than others. And it can matter whether the flower farm is located somewhere that already struggles with water scarcity. Flower farms can impact local communities through water diversion for irrigation and water pollution.

Because of water scarcity in Kenya, the cut flower industry’s water use is a big issue there, for example. Flower producers in Kenya have been connected to pollution in water bodies like Lake Naivasha.

Pesticide Use

As discussed above, the flower industry uses a lot of pesticides. In addition to being a hazard to workers, pesticide use can pollute nearby freshwater and, in some cases, create ocean dead zones.

A study commissioned by Fairtrade International found that Dutch flower producers used less pesticides than Kenyan producers. But among Kenyan producers, fairtrade certified producers in Kenya used fewer pesticides, relative to non-fairtrade producers.

Packaging

Flowers often come wrapped in disposable plastic packaging, which is not ideal. If you can find plastic-free alternatives or buy a bouquet without packaging, do so.

Ethical Certifications

There is a truly overwhelming variety of ethical standards in the cut flower industry. Here is a chart that lists the most relevant standards for European flower and plant buyers:

Source: https://issuu.com/tradefordevelopmentcentre/docs/the_european_market_for_fair_and_sustainable_flowe at p.14

Describing all of these standards would be challenging. But it is worth highlighting a few.

Organic Certification

Organic certification means that pesticides and other harmful chemicals were not used to grow the flower. There are also some other environmental criteria that may be applied. Different countries have different organic labels.

Fairtrade

We have talked about Fairtrade on the podcast before. See the research note from our sugar episode for a detailed description. Fair trade is a social standard that includes values like decent and safe work, fair prices for producers, and sustainability.

Fairtrade has two different types of standards. One stream is for businesses that hire employees. Another is for smallholders who work in farmer co-operatives.

Rainforest Alliance

Rainforest Alliance is an environmental NGO. Its certification system includes social and environmental criteria.

Developing Country Standards

The four largest developing country flower exporters all have their own ethical labels:

• Florverde (Colombia)

• FlorEcuador (Ecuador)

• KFC Code of Practice (Kenya)

• EHPEA Code of Practice (Ethiopia)

Florverde Sustainable Flowers is a social and environmental standard for flower growers in Colombia. It was created based on a code of conduct developed by the Association of Colombian Flower Exporters (Asocolflores). Florverdes includes standards on a number of social and environmental topics, including working conditions, occupational health, sustainability, traceability. Flower growers apply for Florverde certification through independent third party certifiers. As of 2015, 40% of total exports of flowers in Colombia had Florverde certification.

European Standards

There are also a handful of ethical standards developed and used primarily in Europe.

• Fair Flowers Fair Plants (FFP) is a consumer label with social and environmental criteria used mostly used by Dutch growers.

• The EU Ecolabel is an environmental consumer label that assesses compliance with minimum requirements for sustainability or reduction of harm to the environment.

• Flower Label Program (FLP) is a social and environmental certification system mainly in Germany.

Business-to-Business Standards

Some ethical standards are not designed to communicate information to consumers. Instead, business-to-business standards are used by companies that buy a product and apply to companies that produce a product. There are three main sets of business-to-business standards in the flower industry.

The first of these is GLOBALGAP. GLOBAL GAP is a coalition of large European retail chains that defines the elements of “Good Agricultural Practices” (GAP) in areas like crop management, pest control, and worker health and safety. Some other labels (E.g., Florverde) are benchmarked against GLOBALGAP. GLOBALGAP applies to other industries as well. The flower industry standard is the GLOBALGAP Flower and Ornamental Standard.

Next is MPS (“Milieu Project Sierteelt”, which means Floriculture Environmental Project). It was set up as an environmental project by Dutch auctions but now it is active in more than 50 countries. MPS has a series of certificates in different areas. MPS-ABC is the environmental management system, but there is also a social standard (MPS-SQ) and a standard benchmarked against GLOBALGAP (MPS-GAP). Florimark is also a part of MPS and is a certificate for completing certain elements of MPS.

Finally, there is the Ethical Trade Initiative (ETI). ETI is a code of labour practice that focuses on ethical sourcing, used by a coalition of British companies. It is not a certification system, but companies are required to comply with ETI standards. They usually require suppliers to go through a pass/fail audit.

So, How Common is Ethical Certification?

One barrier to certification is low consumer awareness. Only about 10% of consumers are aware that sustainable flowers are available in flower shops. Consumer awareness is highest for Fairtrade.

Consumer awareness may be low, but ethical certification is common in the flower industry. A vast majority of European flower and plant growers participate in one or more certification schemes. “It is not uncommon for African and Latin American producers to hold 5 or more different certificates.” (Trade for Development Centre 2011: p.5)

Certification opens up market segments because some buyers require it. Or it can be a selling feature that differentiates a product or signals quality. For instance, although ethical certification is not required at Dutch auctions, certification through MPS-ABC, FFP, and Florimark are listed at auction.

Generally, certified flowers and plants do not receive higher prices than non-certified products. Certified flowers do go for higher prices at auction, but typically this is due to differences in product quality.

The Slow Flowers Movement

The slow flowers movement encourages consumers to buy flowers grown locally, seasonally, and ethically. Slow also means flowers that are grown “in a considered manner and not rushed through with all sorts of chemicals and artificial interventions.”

What Can You Do?

You can start by looking for flowers that have ethical certification. Ask your local florist or supermarket where they get their flowers! If you are not impressed with the answer, think about finding alternatives. This article from World Vision has a few links to florists that offer fair trade and organic options in Canada.

In general, it is better environmentally to get a potted plant than cut flowers, because they last much longer. For this same reason, you should avoid potted plants that are “designed to die” like poinsettias. Before you buy, Google the plant to ensure that it is not endangered. To get you started, here is an A to Z guide of common house plants.

Endnotes

[1] Business Wars Daily Podcast. (24 February 2021). COVID Ransacked the Cut Flower Industry. Business Wars Daily Podcast episode 653.

[2] Richardson, Courtney. (2014). Love Hurts. Alternatives Journal 40(1): 56-56.

[3] Dundas, Mairead. (7 June 2019). Toxic Cocktail: The Secret Within Your Flowers. France 24 https://www.france24.com/en/20190607-down-earth-pesticides-toxic-chemicals-slow-flowers-bouquets-agriculture-netherlands.

Episode 48 - Chocolate with Samantha Luc

For this episode we were joined by Samantha Luc to talk about chocolate. Samantha is a former professional chocolate eater! She used to be the Head of Traceability and Tastings and Education at Soma Chocolatemaker. Now she is working with companies across a variety of industries to support their traceability efforts with Wherefour ERP.

Here are Kristen’s research notes in preparation for this episode.

Chocolate: The Basics

The essential ingredient in chocolate is fermented and roasted seeds of the theobroma cacao tree.[1] 90% of the world’s cacao is grown by 2.5 million farmers working 5-10 acre family plots.[2]

Today, most of the farms are in Western Africa.[3] The top four cocoa producing countries are all in Western Africa: Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, and Cameroon. That is due to an increase in cocoa production in Western Africa, while chocolate production has remained stable throughout most of the world. The market share of Western African cocoa has increased from 55% to 74% since 1990. And in particular, Western Africa is a major supplier of ‘bulk cocoa’, as compared with fine or flavour cocoa. Western Africa produces more than 80% of bulk cocoa.

Once cacao beans are harvested, they are fermented, dried, roasted, crushed, and ground into cocoa powder.

History of Chocolate

Chocolate has been consumed since at least 1500 BC. It originates in Meso-America, where it was initially consumed by the Olmec, and later the Maya and the Aztec, as a drink (xocolatl, or bitter water). Chocolate was used as a currency and in rituals.

Much like sugar, chocolate was at first reserved for the elites in Europe.[4]  In the mid-1800s, aided by technological innovation, chocolate started to become a product consumed by mainstream Europeans.[5] 

Around that time there was also invention of the chocolate bar, which is how we mostly think about chocolate today. The first chocolate bar was made and sold by Fry and Sons in 1847 and in 1875 Henri Nestlé developed milk chocolate.

And in order to increase crop yields, cacao production shifted from the criollo variety to the forastero, which is dominant today.[6] Criollo cacao is typically seen as better tasting, but forastero cacao is easier to grow and produces a higher yield. (However, there is some dispute about this and cacao varieties can taste quite different depending on where they are grown).

People and Chocolate

Chocolate and Colonialism

Chocolate production and colonialism are inextricably connected. Chocolate was brought to Europe by Christopher Columbus. And colonialism changed the geography of chocolate production. The expansion of cacao production, especially in the 20th century largely occurred in Western Africa rather than Central and South America, where cacao trees are native.

The first large scale production of cacao in Africa began in the Portuguese plantations found on Sao Tome and Principe. Colonial governments were often responsible for coercion and dangerous working conditions on cacao plantations.

Cocoa Producers and Poverty

Since the 1980s, the average cocoa price has halved (adjusted for inflation). This is a problem because low prices push cocoa producers into situations of poverty.

In Ghana, cocoa is supply managed through a managing board called Cocobud, which buys all of the cocoa and sells it at a fixed price. Côte d’Ivoire liberalised under pressure from the IMF in the 1990s, but is now starting to re-regulate prices. Both countries have agreed to a minimum export price of $2,600/tonne, which a ‘Living Income Differential’ of $400/tonne to be used to guarantee that farmers receive about $1,800/tonne. Although this is good news, $2,600/tonne is about the same price farmers received before the cocoa price collapsed in 2016 – and back then cocoa farmers’ average incomes were below the $2.40 per day threshold for extreme poverty.

Child Labour

Child labour is endemic to cacao production in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. A survey done by researchers at the University of Chicago and commissioned by the US Department of Labor, 45% of children living in agricultural households in cocoa growing areas were engaged in child labour. Child labour in cocoa has actually increased by an estimated 14% in the last decade.

Environment and Chocolate

Deforestation is a huge global issue: in 2017, for example, 40 football fields worth of tropical forest were lost every single minute. This isn’t all from chocolate, but I think it’s important to put deforestation in context.[7] About 40% of Ivorian cocoa is estimated to have come from inside protected forest areas (making it illegal).

Challenge

Kristen’s Challenge

My ethical chocolate is a Camino brand dark hot chocolate mix that I bought from my local waste-free grocery store. All of its ingredients (except sea salt) have organic certification, Fairtrade Certification or both. The cocoa is from CONACADO (the National Confederation of Dominican Cacao Producers), which is an organization of small-scale cacao producers in the Dominican Republic. The sugar is from a worker co-operative in Paraguay called Manduvirá.

Camino is a brand that’s run by an Ottawa-Gatineau-based co-operative called La Siembra. They were North America’s first importers of Fairtrade Certified cocoa and sugar. La Siembra see themselves as “100% fair-trader[s]”. They use Fairtrade Certified ingredients in all of their products, and they aim to build direct relationships with small-scale co-operative producers as much as possible. They are also supporting a new fair trade certification called SPP (the Small Producers Symbol), which is the first fair trade farmer-owned certification system and is seen as a more robust fair trade standard.

Endnotes

[1] Secret Life of Chocolate. Part 1: Origins. (6 December 2020). The Food Programme, BBC Radio Four.

[2] How Chocolate Works. (19 November 2013). Stuff You Should Know Podcast.

[3] “How Chocolate Works”, Stuff You Should Know.

[4] “Secret Life of Chocolate. Part 1: Origins”, The Food Programme.

[5] “Secret Life of Chocolate. Part 1: Origins”, The Food Programme.

[6] “Secret Life of Chocolate. Part 1: Origins”, The Food Programme.

[7] Chocolate and Sustainability. (18 November 2019). Business Wars Podcast.

Episode 24 - Wine

The wine market isn’t as concentrated as the beer market. The largest wine producer in the world, E&J Gallo, only has 2.7% of global production. Wine is made in at least fifty countries worldwide. The top five wine exporting countries are France (30% of wine exports), Italy (20%), Spain (9%), Australia (6%), and Chile (5%). All Canadian wine is produced by “small wineries” (wineries that sold less than 200,000 litres of wine)

Human Rights and the Wine Industry

South African Wine and Apartheid

A 2011 Human Rights Watch (HRW) Report, “Ripe with Abuse”, drew attention to human rights condition at South African wineries. A documentary called Bitter Grapes also examined this issue. South Africa’s legacy of apartheid has “continued to haunt the wine sector”.

Farm workers often live in substandard on-farm housing. In one case documented by HRW, a family was living in a converted pig stall with no electricity and water. The structure didn’t even provide shelter from weather. They had been living there for ten years. On-farm housing puts workers in really precarious positions, because when they are fired they lose not only their income but also their home. An estimated 930,000 workers were evicted from housing South African farms between 1994 and 2004. Although there are legal requirements around evicting farm workers, land owners frequently break those rules.

The work is usually seasonal and the pay is very low, especially for female farmworkers. At its extreme, some vineyards in South Africa were paying workers in alcohol rather than wages. Vineyard owners have been documented paying under South Africa’s minimum wages.

Working conditions are generally poor on these farms. Workers often don’t receive contracts or copies of their contracts. Part of the problem is the lack of labour inspectors: there are just over 100 labour inspectors for 6,000 farms and workplaces in the Western Cape. And labour inspectors give farms prior notice when they do inspect.

Farm workers face obstacles in unionizing, especially the fear of discrimination or being fired. For that reason, union density in the Western Cape agricultural sector is 3%, compared with 30% in South Africa’s formal sector as a whole. 2012 South Africa’s Wine Industry Ethical Trade Association launched an ethical seal for unfair labour practices.

Human Rights and Wine Elsewhere 

Although South Africa is most famous for human rights abuses on vineyards, it would be a mistake to assume that it is the only place where these problems persist. Agricultural work is among the most exploited industries.

Fairtrade Wine

One option if workers’ rights are a concern for you is to go for Fairtrade wine, if you’re buying from somewhere like South Africa, where labour protections might not be very strong. If you are looking for wine from South Africa, Argentina, Chile, or Lebanon, there are Fairtrade options available. In Canada, there are at least four wine brands that you can get with the Fairtrade seal. The United Kingdom appears to have a wider range of Fairtrade wine available.

Migrant Labour and Wineries

Canadian wineries rely on migrant labour (seasonal agricultural workers) to do a lot of the work on grape farms. That is common for wine produced in other wealthy countries.

So, the story of labour on Canadian wineries is in a very real sense the story of how we treat seasonal agricultural workers. On that metric, you might want to check out wine from Saskatchewan: it is the province that has done the best job of protecting the human rights of temporary foreign workers, according to a 2018 report by the Canadian Council for Refugees. TFWs there have access to healthcare with no waiting period – which isn’t the case for many provinces – and does a good job of legislating and enforcing worker protections. The federal government and the province of Newfoundland and Labrador fared the worst on this scorecard, with a C or D rating in every category except one (access to permanent residence was a B for Newfoundland, while enforcement of rules and regulations was a B for the federal government). Of the four major wine-producing provinces – Ontario, British Columbia, Quebec, and Nova Scotia – British Columbia has the best protections according to the report (although it wasn’t great either, and there are barriers to accessing healthcare for seasonal agricultural workers). 

COVID-19 and Grape Farms

Farm owners are receiving $1,500 per worker to cover the costs of the required two-week quarantine. In BC, fruit farms rely heavily on backpackers to work during the harvest. They aren’t part of the temporary workers’ program, and it’s expected that this labour source won’t be available. The hope is to train a domestic workforce for the June harvest.

Environment and Wine

Pesticide Use on Vineyards

Grapes are disease- and pest-prone crops, so conventional grape farming uses large quantities of pesticides. Vineyards represent 3% of agricultural land in France, but 20% of phytosanitary volumes and 80% of fungicide use.

Some of those pesticides, including glyphosphate, have been identified as toxic or otherwise linked to adverse health consequences. In France, Valérie Murat launched a lawsuit in 2015 on behalf of her father, James-Bernard Murat, a vine grower who died from cancer. His death was officially recognized as being linked to his profession by the agricultural mutual society (MSA, la Mutuelle sociale agricole). Murat had sprayed three different pesticides containing the chemical sodium ar nite, which is now banned as a cancer-causing poison. Valérie wants his death recognized as manslaughter.

23 schoolchildren were hospitalized in Bordeaux in 2014 after a nearby vineyard sprayed a fungicide.Public attention to the issue of pesticide use in France has prompted some government actions. Glyphosphate is set to be banned by 2021. And the government is set to create no-spray zones to separate sprayed crops from people living and working nearby. One problem is that some winegrowers compensate for pesticide use with mechanization, which increases the carbon footprint of the operation.

Organic Wine

One option is to buy organic-certified wine. Organic agriculture doesn’t use pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides. Organic production doesn’t guarantee that an operation is environmentally-friendly on all metrics. For instance, organics rules may not govern water management. And it doesn’t take into account carbon footprints.

The LCBO is actually featuring organic wines right now.

Biodynamic Certification

Vineyards can also be certified as biodynamic farms. Biodynamic farming uses organic methods, but the standards are stricter and have things like biodiversity requirements. Biodynamic agriculture is similar to organic farming, but it also emphasizes some spiritual and mystical elements. It was created in the 1920s by Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian “philosopher, social reformer, architect, esotericist, and claimed clairvoyant.” The oldest biodynamic accreditation is the Demeter label. Kristen’s personal view: a little kooky, but mostly harmless.

Salmon-Safe Vineyard Certification

If you are buying wine from Oregon, Washington, or British Columbia, you can buy wine that is certified as Salmon-Safe. Basically, it means that the grapes were farmed according to standards that reduce vineyard run-off, protect water quality, and enhance biodiversity. As far as I could tell, it’s basically an add-on to organic or biodynamic certification

Climate Change

It has become an increasing point of discussion that organic =/= low-carbon. Some wineries are making commitments to reduce their carbon footprints. If climate change is the most important metric for you, you can look for wine with the Carbonzero certification.

Carbonzero is a carbon neutrality standard that requires emissions measurements and offsets (although carbon offsets are imperfect).

You can also get wine that is LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified. LEED is a certification operated by the Canada Green Building Council. It looks at things like water usage, energy efficiency, and sustainable site development. Stratus Vineyards was the first Canadian winery to obtain this standard, which it did in 2005.

Boxed versus Bottled

The most environmentally-friendly way to consume wine is to have it filled somewhere (en vrac method), but that option isn’t available most places – especially right now.

Bag-in-box wine is lighter than glass, so on carbon footprint you might be better off, especially if the wine has to travel a long way. Both glass and cardboard are recyclable, but the plastic bag and spout probably aren’t.

Tetra-paks have the carbon savings advantage of bag-in-box wine, but the drawback is that it’s made of a fusion of polyethylene, paper and aluminum. So you need special equipment to recycle them. As a result, the global recycling rate of Tetra Paks is 26%. And the recycling is actually downcycling, as compared with glass – where you pretty much get the same output from recycling.

Animal Welfare

We covered this in the vegetarianism episode, but you can go to Barnivore to find vegan alcohol options, including wine. Again, many wines aren’t vegan because they are clarified using fining agents that are made of casein (milk protein), albumin (egg whites), gelatine (animal protein), or isinglass (fish bladder protein). Fining agents can be vegan though, for instance activated charcoal and bentonite (clay). Many organic wines aren’t vegan, but some are.

Major Brands and Ethical Consumer’s Wine Guide

Barefoot Wines, the biggest selling wine in the world, is made by E&J Gallo Winery, scored relatively well on Ethical Consumer’s company rating. They scored an 11.5 out of 20, which is the top of the “amber” category (out of green, amber, and red).

E&J Gallo doesn’t report on environmental performance, doesn’t independently verify, and doesn’t have targets for improvement. So Ethical Consumer gave it their worst rating for environmental reporting. E&J Gallo also got a worst rating for supply chain management. This is because “It was considered to have a reasonable approach to discrimination, and forced and child labour, but did not mention freedom of association, living wages, or working hours. The company was considered to have a poor supply chain policy.”

On the other hand, Ethical Consumer recommends avoiding Constellation Brands products.

Episodes 12, 13, and 14 - Clothing

People

Fast Fashion

Fast Fashion has gotten a lot of buzz recently. Hasan Minhaj devoted an entire episode of The Patriot Act to it. CBC did a documentary on fast fashion, called Fashion’s Dirty Secrets. There have also been books published on fast fashion, like Fashionopolis by Dana Thomas or Over-Dressed by Elizabeth Cline.

Zara is often the brand people think about when they think of fast fashion. It is the world’s largest fashion brand, producing more than 450 million items in 2018.[1] Zara was a pioneer in fast fashion, and it has changed the apparel business paradigm. Other retailers have since gotten on board.

Essentially, under the model of fast fashion, brands take designs from top-tier fashion designers. Then they produce a cheaper version with worse fabric and sell it at low prices to middle-market consumers.[2] It’s called fast fashion because production and sales have been sped up.[3] Between 2000 and 2014, the number of garments doubled: 100 billion garments are now produced annually.[4] That amounts to fourteen new garments annually for everyone on the planet.[5]

In a way, fast fashion has democratized or massified fashion – bringing high design to regular consumers. But fast fashion has also caused a lot of problems

As a result of fast fashion, we have lots of poor-quality clothes and we don’t wear them for very long. On average clothing is worn seven times before being disposed of,[6] mostly to landfill. Shoppers buy five times more clothing now than they did in 1980.[7] In 2018, the average consumer bought 68 garments.[8] 

French designer Jean Paul Gaultier has said: “The system doesn’t work… There aren’t enough people to buy them. We’re making clothes that aren’t designed to be worn. Too many clothes kills clothes.”[9]

Offshoring and the Fractured Supply Chain

Another important change, to set the context, has been the globalization of clothing supply chains. This change is often called “offshoring”, which basically means relocating factories in countries with low labour costs. Offshoring has changed the industry dramatically over the last thirty years. In 1991, 56.2% of all clothes purchased in the United States were American-made. By 2012, it was 2.5%.[10]

And today that supply chain is not only offshore, it’s also fractured. Fabric is woven and dyed in one place, cut in another, sewn somewhere else, and then zippers and buttons are attached in another location.[11] Brands rarely own the factories that make their clothes. They contract to suppliers, who often subcontract to other suppliers.

Together, this creates challenges for ensuring workers’ safety and rights. And that matters: “fashion employs one out of six people on the globe, making it the most labor-intensive industry out there – more than agriculture, more than defense. Fewer than 2 percent of them [garment workers] earn a living wage.”[12]

The fashion industry’s supply chain has roughly six stages:

1.     Planting and harvesting the raw materials (e.g., cotton)

2.     Weaving the fibre into cloth

3.     Finishing and shipping the cloth to distributors

4.     Producing the garments

5.     Shipping finished products to the warehouse

6.     Distribution from the warehouse to the storefront

Within each of these stages, there can be different steps. For instance, dyeing isn’t included in here, but it will occur in most cases. For blue jeans the supply chain will also typically include distressing at a washhouse. These steps may occur in different locations.

Sweatshops

The garment industry has had sweatshops since the Industrial Revolution. In the 1830s, the invention of the lockstitch sewing machine made possible mechanization of clothes-making.[13]

Cotton mills in particular were horrorscapes. Both Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote about the conditions they observed in cotton mills, where death, mutilation, rape, and illness were common. Engels was so horrified by what he saw that he called mill work a new form of enslavement.[14]

One of the most famous incidents in historical sweatshops was the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which took place in 1911. 146 employees died in that fire (123 women and 23 men). The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire was NYC’s worst workplace disaster until 9/11.[15]

After a lot of activism, workers’ protections were introduced. In America, Frances Perkins, Labour Secretary under FDR, introduced a number of legislative protections for workers, which cleaned up the manufacturing industry.[16]

Unfortunately, when production moved offshore in the 1990s, “the old-style sweatshop system came roaring back to life.”[17] The EU is still a major apparel exporter, but most garments are exported from Asia. China is the top apparel supplier, followed by the EU, Bangladesh, Vietnam, India, Hong Kong, and Turkey.

Offshore sweatshops today look a lot like the sweatshops of the 1800s and early 1900s. They are hot, unsanitary, dusty, and unsafe. There is often no food or clean drinking water. Workers work long hours for low wages. They often don’t get breaks and are forced to work overtime for no pay. Buildings are often locked. Workers sometimes can’t talk to each other. And as most workers are women while most supervisors are men, sexual assault and rape is endemic.

In wealthy countries like the US and Canada, there are domestic sweatshops, too. When the FDR-era reforms got rid of legal sweatshops, sweatshops became less common – but they didn’t disappear entirely. There are still sweatshops in wealthy countries, but they exist illegally and are run by organized crime. Because of their illicit nature, these sweatshops are also hubs for human trafficking and money laundering. [18] Domestic sweatshops are a particular problem in the US, and especially LA, because of the large undocumented immigrant population. About half of the apparel manufacturing workers in LA are estimated to be undocumented workers who make as little as $4 per day.[19]

Rana Plaza

Beyond the generally shitty working conditions, there are still frequent sweatshop disasters on the same scale or larger than the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.

One of the most famous ones took place in Bangladesh in 2013. On 13 April 2013 there was an explosion at the Rana Plaza garment factory. It ripped a hole in the wall. Engineers wanted to condemn the building immediately, but the owner refused.[20] The next day, workers returned. The power went out and, as backup generators went on, the building began to quake. Then, “It went down.”[21] Rana Plaza was the deadliest garment factory accident in modern history. 1,134 people died and another 2,500 were injured.

The infuriating thing, though, is that it was the third high-profile sweatshop disaster in Bangladesh within three years. A December 2010 fire at the That’s It Sportswear garment factory killed 29 and injured more than 100. Gap had just finished inspecting the factory.[22] In November 2012, a fire at the Tazreen Fashion factory killed at least 117 and left 200 injured.[23] Sears, Walmart, and Disney products were produced there. Overall, between 2006 and 2012, more than five hundred Bangladeshi garment workers died in factory fires.[24]

After a 2010 fire, NGOs created the Bangladesh Fire and Building Safety Agreement. It went unsigned until winter 2012.[25] Then, a handful of companies signed on when ABC News ran a story on the 2010 fire. Most other brands did not act until after the Rana Plaza explosion. And even then, a number of brands went with a watered-down voluntary agreement called the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, which was not legally binding.

There have been some changes since Rana Plaza, but unsafe sweatshops still exist there.[26] And as of 2017, 95% of buildings in Dhaka still do not have a fire exit. A recent study found that firms support factory safety but aren’t willing to increase prices, so factories have to absorb these costs themselves. And although the incidence of sweatshops went down after Rana Plaza, there are still problems of low wages, long working hours, overtime, abusive supervision, and union busting. The optimistic way of framing this is that activism and public pressure can work, but it needs to be sustained in order to really generate progress.

A garment factory fire in New Delhi killed 43 people in December 2019.

Child Labour

The garment industry is also a hotbed for child labour. Child labour has been an unfortunately common practice in the apparel industry going back to the advent of mechanized clothing production. Lots of sweatshops have children working in them.

For example, in 2016 “H&M, Next, and Esprit were found to have Syrian refugee children sewing and hauling bundles of clothes in subcontracted workshops in Turkey.”[27]

Sometimes children are lured from their homes to work in sweatshops. For instance, a report by the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) and the India Committee of the Netherlands (ICN) found that: “recruiters in southern India convince parents in impoverished rural areas to send their daughters to spinning mills with promises of a well-paid job, comfortable accommodation, three nutritious meals a day and opportunities for training and schooling, as well as a lump sum payment at the end of three years.” (from the Guardian) But in reality, “Girls and young women are being lured from their home villages by false promises and are working under appalling conditions amounting to forced labour” (SOMO and ICN).

Bangladesh, China, Egypt, India, Pakistan, Thailand, and Uzbekistan are particularly notorious for child labour in the textile and garment industry.

Child labour occurs at different phases of the supply chain, from the production of cotton seeds (Benin), cotton harvesting (Uzbekistan), yarn spinning (India), and “cut-make-trim” garment production in factories (Bangladesh). An investigation by SOMO found that 60% of the workers at spinning mills in India were under 18 when they started working there (the youngest workers were 15).

Forced and child labour in Uzbekistan’s cotton industry is particularly egregious. “Every year […] approximately 1m people – including teachers, doctors and students – are dumped in Uzbekistan’s cotton fields to pick “white gold”. They are taken from their jobs and their schools, sometimes threatened with expulsion or dismissal or physical violence, and compelled to meet quotas to help the government earn some hard cash.” (From the Economist) This is a unique case of state-sanctioned mass mobilization of child and forced labour.

The Uzbekistani government sets cotton quotas. If famers don’t fulfil their quotas they can be kicked off of their land. But farmers can’t afford extra farm hands for harvest, so state officials order state employees (e.g. doctors and nurses) and students into the fields. A study by the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London found that between 86 and 100 percent of schools in the districts that they studied were subject to compulsory recruitment of children in grades 5-9 (ages 11-14). Students were employed in the cotton harvest for between 51 and 63 days without breaks and under unsanitary, unhealthy, and nutritional conditions.

The Responsible Sourcing Network has convinced 314 companies to pledge to eliminate Uzbek cotton from their supply chains. You can check out the list of brands here. As a result of advocacy efforts, the export of Uzbek cotton has been reduced from 2.5 million bales to 0.7 million bales in the last decade. The pledge was launched in 2011. American Apparel, as of December 2019, still has not signed the pledge. It is one of the last remaining American brands to do so. Polo Ralph Lauren is another non-signatory. I also did not see Roots Canada on the list.

Outside of Uzbekistan, child labour in the garment industry may not be state-sanctioned, but this does not make it any less harmful.

Forced Labour

The fashion industry is also one of the biggest sources of modern slavery. The Walk Free Foundation estimates that $127.7 billion USD worth of garments imported annually by G20 countries are at-risk of modern slavery.

Last year it was revealed that China is operating forced labour camps in Xinjiang province. Uighurs detained in “re-education camps” are reportedly working in factories producing cars, cotton, and clothing. Brands so far have said that they haven’t found evidence that the labour in these factories is forced, but investigative journalism has come to a different conclusion.

Women’s Rights and Sexual Assault

Fast fashion is fundamentally a gender inequality issue. Approximately 80% of workers in the garment industry are women between the ages of 18 and 35.

Rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment are big problems in sweatshops. For instance, a study by the Fair Wear Foundation and Care International found that 43% of women interviewed in Vietnamese factories said they had suffered at least one form of violence and/or harassment in the last year. Research by ActionAid found that 80% of garment workers in Bangladesh have either seen or directly experienced sexual violence or harassment in the workplace.

So Why Is Everything So Shitty? 

Here is where the fractured supply chain comes in: when disasters and abuses like these happen, brands often claim that they are not responsible, that the sweatshops in questions were not authorized suppliers. Basically, big brands have approved suppliers, and those approved suppliers subcontract to sweatshops. When a scandal happens, brands that claim to be sweatshop-free will “often claim they had no idea their “approved” contractors were subcontracting to sweatshops.”[28]

Are Things Getting Better?

Not really, no. These problems are fundamental to how fast fashion works: there is a need to get clothes made really quickly and really cheaply. People and the environment inevitably suffer.

There have been some changes, though. The first industry shift was a move toward supplier codes of conduct. In the mid-1990s, American apparel brands faced criticism over offshore sweatshops. “In response, some started drafting “codes of conduct”: a list of standards that a company expects its suppliers to respect.”[29] Levi Strauss approved fashion’s first code of conduct in 1992.[30]

The independent audits that are used to enforce the codes aren’t great. Visits are often announced in advance. And the monitors themselves have no oversight, so things like bribery can happen.[31] Still, this IS progress. In 1998 about 15% of company codes of conduct included freedom of association and collective bargaining, and now nearly all do. [32]

Another big move is transparency: it is becoming more common for brands to publish supplier lists.[33] Fashion Revolution and other NGOs have been instrumental in pushing fashion brands to be more transparent.

How You Can Act to Promote Human Rights in the Clothing Industry

Fashion Revolution

Fashion Revolution promotes a more ethical and sustainable fashion industry. Their manifesto is pretty holistic (it covers dignified work, fair and equal pay, labour rights, cultural appropriation, solidarity, environmental impact, the throwaway culture, transparency and accountability).

Fashion Revolution was founded in reaction to the Rana Plaza disaster. It is most well-known for publishing an annual Transparency Index. But Fashion Revolution also organizes Fashion Revolution Week and runs the #whomademyclothes and #imadeyourclothes campaigns.

Fair Wear

Fair Wear is an organization that is working to promote worker and human rights in garment production. They focus on the sewing, cutting, and trimming processes because those are the most labour-intensive parts of the supply chain. 133 brands have signed onto the Fair Wear Foundation’s Code of Labour Practices. You can check them out here.

Environment

The environmental impact of clothing comes from three different stages of production: the impact of producing the fabrics from which clothing is made; the impact of moving those fabrics around, turning them into garments, and selling them; and the impact of clothing disposal.

Fabrics

Fashion’s environmental footprint is mostly from manufacturing textiles – so, growing or making, then spinning, dyeing, and finishing the fabrics.[34] Examining the environmental impact of clothing means looking at the different fabrics that make up our clothing. The most commonly used fabrics in clothing today are cotton and polyester. They make up 75% of the global fibre market.[35]

Polyester

Polyester is everywhere. It is present in 60% of clothing.[36] There has been a 157% increase in the use of polyester between 2000 and 2016.[37] That is because polyester is the backbone of fast fashion: “it is the cheap, easy-to-produce material that an industry built on low price and speed depends on.”[38]

Polyester is plastic. It is made from fossil fuels, which are non-renewable and contribute to climate change. The demand for polyester and other plastics drives investment in petrochemical refining.[39]

Polyester has a huge waste problem. Because it is plastic, polyester does not readily biodegrade. And we really have no plan for what to do with the massive volumes of polyester we are producing. Right now, only a very small amount of polyester clothing uses recycled plastic, and typically this is from plastic bottles rather than plastic clothing.[40] And of course, go back to our laundry episode to hear more about how it sheds plastic microfibres.

Given that polyester is everywhere, if you want to buy the best version of the stuff, try to seek out recycled polyester or polyester that is certified hazardous substances free.[41]

Other synthetics – Spandex, Nylon, Acrylic, Polyurethane, PVC

There is a variety of synthetic fibres in clothing, and they are all slightly different. Nylon is present in 5% of clothing, making it the second most common synthetic fabric, next to polyester. Acrylic is the third most common synthetic material. It is present in 2% of clothing. It is a cheap alternative to wool. Spandex makes stuff stretchy. Polyurethane is used in things like coatings and faux leather

Most synthetics seem to have problems with carcinogens, and they all take a lot of energy to make.[42] As with polyester, Elizabeth Cline recommends looking for synthetics with safe-chemistry labels, as well as recycled synthetics.[43] She also recommends avoiding all polyvinyl chloride (PVC), which is used for vinyl and some faux leather, since it often includes a chemical that is linked to endocrine disruption.[44]

Cotton

Cotton makes up about a quarter of global fibre production.[45] The majority of cotton is grown in China, India, and the United States.[46]

Cotton can be tricky to grow, so usually it is farmed with a lot of pesticides and fertilized. As a result, cotton uses about 6% of all pesticides, which is more than any other major crop.[47] Twenty percent of insecticides are devoted to producing conventional cotton, even though it is grown only 2.5 percent of the world’s arable land.[48] The WHO has classified 8 out of 10 of America’s most popular cotton pesticides as hazardous.[49] These pesticides can poison workers, as well as the people and environment around cotton farms (when it gets into the air, water, and soil).[50]

Cotton is also super thirsty. Growing one kilo of conventional cotton requires 10,000 litres of water (2,600 gallons). And processing cotton requires even more: about 5,000 gallons for a t-shirt and a pair of jeans.[51] The good news is that organic cotton can be grown with up to 91% less irrigated water than conventional cotton.[52]

And almost 60% of all cotton is grown in water-scarce regions.[53] That means stuff like this happens…

The Aral Sea in Central Asia was once the world’s fourth largest lake, but today it has almost completely dried up. That is because in the 1950s the Soviets began using the rivers that feed the Aral Sea to irrigate surrounding agricultural area. It is a practice that has continued into today. As the Aral Sea has dried, it is releasing salts and carcinogens into the air, which has caused throat cancer and respiratory diseases for people in surrounding villages. How is this relevant to the fashion industry? Well, because the river is being used to irrigate 1.47 million hectares of cotton.

Where you can, try to find organic and/or fairtrade certified cotton, as well as recycled cotton.[54]

Viscose Rayon (Cellulosic Fabric)

This fabric type will show up on labels in a variety of ways, including viscose, rayon bamboo, modal, lyocell, eucalyptus, and Tencel. Some of these are identical and others are slightly different. But basically, all of these fabrics are made by chemically dissolving food from eucalyptus, beech, or bamboo trees; the chemical pulp is then reformed into a fibre.[55]Viscose or rayon (which are the same thing) makes up about 70% of this category of fibres.[56]

Cellulosic fabric and its compatriots are essentially a cheaper cousin to silk or cotton. Cellulosic fabric is also often marketed as ecologically conscious or sustainable, even though it may not be. So, you really have to be careful about greenwash with these fibres. There are some forms of viscose rayon that can be more sustainable (like lyocell).

Cellulosic fibres take a lot of energy to produce and the materials have a higher greenhouse gas impact than the manufacture of polyester or cotton.[57] They also produce a lot of waste: 70% of the tree becomes waste in the manufacturing process.[58]

And cellulosic fabric is driving deforestation. Ancient and endangered forests are being used in the manufacture of these fabrics. This includes the Amazon and Indonesia’s rainforests. But Canada’s boreal forests and Great Bear Rainforest are also being threatened by these practices. The NGO Canopy is working with clothing companies like Levi Strauss & Co., Marks & Spencer, and H & M to protect forests.

If you are going with a cellulosic fibre, try to look for lyocell (also called Lenzig Tencel), since it is the most sustainable cellulosic fabric. Look also for safe-chemicals certifications, and buy from brands that are working with Canopy.[59]

Wool and Leather

Although we did not focus on animal welfare in this episode, it is worth noting the environmental impact of animal-based fibres.

Leather has a big carbon, water, and land use footprint – we’ll do a full episode on leather, but let’s just mention that here.

Wool can be sustainable, or it can be bad for the environment – a lot depends on where it is produced and how the animals are raised.[60] Although there are different wools out there, sheep’s wool is 95% of the market.[61] Cashmere comes from goats.[62] Wool production can cause erosion when animals overgraze.[63] Cleaning raw wool creates high quantities of wastewater.[64] Also, it produces a lot of methane.[65] On the other hand, wool lasts longer than most other fabrics, so Elizabeth Cline recommends buying timeless wool products and mending them to make them last.[66] She also suggests buying organic and safe-chemicals-certified wool.[67]

Check out our Winter Gear episode to learn more about choosing between animal and synthetic materials.

Bast Fibres (Linen, Hemp, Jute, Ramie, Flax): Best Fibres

Linen is the oldest known fabric. It is a natural fibre, cultivated from the flax (linseed) plant. Together, bast fibres are about 5.5% of the global fibre market.[68] Bast fibres use less energy and fewer chemical inputs, so these fibres can be cultivated sustainably.[69] There are few environmental issues with purchasing these fabrics, but why not also look for recycled or organic bast fibres?[70]

Buying Conscious Fabrics

Whichever fibre you choose, there are a few certifications that you can look for to signal effort on one aspect of environmental stewardship.

The first set of certifications are safe-chemicals certifications, which guard against the use of hazardous materials. Some common safe-chemicals certifications include: Cradle to Cradle (C2C) Oeko-Tex, and Bluesign-approved.

Next, organics standards prohibit the use of pesticides. Some organics labels to look for in clothing include: Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS), Organic Content Standard (OCS), and Cradle to Cradle (C2C) certified.

You can also look for fairtrade member and certified products. Fairtrade essentially means that the workers producing a product have been paid fairly and experience some level of safety in the workplace. See our sugar episode for more on fairtrade certification, but one label we will mention here is Fair Trade USA.

Garment Production and Distribution

Water Use

The fashion industry uses a lot of water. “If fashion production maintains its current pace, the demand for water will surpass the world’s supply by 40 percent by 2030.”[71]

Emissions

Fashion also has a big emissions footprint. Apparel and footwear production accounts for 8.1% of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. And clothing production is growing at a swift pace, meaning that emissions from textile manufacturing are projected to grow by 60% by 2030.

Some companies try to use carbon offsets to improve their image, check our episode on this subject to see where we land on that.

Pollution and Hazardous Chemicals

We talked about plastic microfibres in our laundry episode. But it is worth remembering that synthetic fabrics pollute waterways when they break down in the washing machine.

In addition to plastic microfibres, toxic chemicals are a big problem in the clothing industry. 46 million tons of chemicals are used to process textiles annually, and ten percent pose a potential risk to human health.[72] Some are even linked to cancer.[73]That is a problem for worker health and the environment, as well as for us because chemicals can remain on the clothing that we buy.

In 2011 Greenpeace released a report revealing that suppliers of major clothing brands are polluting the Yangtze and Pearl River deltas with toxic, hormone-disrupting chemicals. The report focuses on pollution from two facilities in China (the Youngor Textile Complex and the Well Dyeing Factory Limited). Greenpeace took samples of wastewater discharges from the two facilities and found that alkylphenols and perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs) were present in the wastewater. These two facilities were linked to major brands including Abercrombie and Fitch; Adidas; Bauer Hockey; Calvin Klein; Converse; H&M; Lacoste; Nike; and Puma.

Greenpeace followed up this report with another one on the presence of nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPEs) in clothing. Their analysis of clothing bought from 15 leading clothing brands, and found that two-thirds tested positive for the presence of NPEs above the limit of detection.

Why are NPEs bad? NPEs wash off of the clothing and break down into nonylphenols, which then accumulate in the food chain. Nonylphenols are hella toxic. So even though NPEs are banned in some places… they can still end up in the water supply when people wash clothing produced with NPEs elsewhere.

Tools for Seeking Out Conscious Brands

If you are interested in finding conscious brands, there are some tools out there to help!

The Good on You App and website rates the ethics and sustainability of fashion brands. Done Good is a web directory of conscious fashion brands. You can buy directly from the website. Rank A Brand assesses and ranks consumer brands on sustainability and social responsibility. There is, of course, also Fashion Revolution’s Fashion Transparency Index, which focuses on supply chain transparency. (For more on this, see our very first episode!) And you can also consult the Ethical Fashion Report. 

End-of Life

We, as a society, are throwing out so many clothes. Every second, the equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles enters landfill or is burned, which amounts to a $500 billion USD loss in value due to clothing waste. In the United States, 23.8 billion pounds of clothes are thrown in the garbage annually, which is about 73 pounds per person![74] Clothing is the fastest-growing category of waste in US landfills.[75]

In addition to the problem of waste from landfilling clothes, this can be an environmental problem. Natural fibres slowly decompose. When they are trapped in the landfill, they release methane, which is super bad for climate change.[76] Synthetic clothing can take hundreds of years to biodegrade, but the hazardous chemicals they are made out of can be released into the air or ground as they slowly break down.[77] For every 2 million tons of textiles we keep out landfills, we can reduce carbon emissions equivalent to taking 1 million cars off the road.[78]

Escaping Fast Fashion

Trying to incorporate ethics in clothing can be overwhelming. But the overall message to take is that we do need to reject the mentality of fast fashion, since the business model itself is causing a lot of problems.

More than 70% of the average wardrobe is going unworn.[79] Being more intentional about your wardrobe is an important first step. And, of course, just wearing what you have for longer is the biggest way to have an impact. But if you’ve got a fast fashion wardrobe full of shitty materials that wear out quickly, that can be tricky. So, what do you do?

You can work towards building a conscious closet.

The Conscious Closet

What is a conscious closet? According to Elizabeth Cline, author of The Conscious Closet: “A conscious closet is a wardrobe built with greater intention and awareness of our clothes, where they come from, what they’re made out of, and why they matter.”[80]

There are lots of different tools and strategies to build a conscious closet, and the mix that works best for you will be different than for everyone else. But Cline identifies three Fashion Personality Types that can help to guide you. Minimalists buy for keeps, have a more timeless look, and want to cut clutter from their lives. Style Seekers are maximalists; they want statement pieces and lots of change. Traditionalists are somewhere in the middle.

There are six components of a conscious closet:

1.     For-keeps: clothes you already own, love, and want to keep wearing;

2.     New-to-you: swapped, borrowed, handmade, hand-me-downs, resale, secondhand, thrifted, vintage;

3.     Rentals;

4.     Quality: timeless pieces that are built to last;

5.     Better Big Brands: clothes by the big brands that are on the right path, compared to their peers; and

6.     Conscious Superstars: the most pioneering, ethical, and sustainable brands.

Conscious Closet Inventory and Cleanout

Cline suggests starting with a Conscious Closet Cleanout, which is a good way to really examine what you own, how often you wear it (if at all), what it’s made of, et cetera. But this isn’t like Marie Kondo-ing your wardrobe. Cline wants to emphasize that you should not throw anything away.

We reproduced this impact inventory card from Elizabeth Cline’s book, The Conscious Closet.

Here are some quick tips for doing a conscious closet cleanout. First, purge by season. Focus on in-season clothes only. So, look at sweaters in winter and sundresses in summer. Your decision-making will be better this way. Also, it will be easier to responsibly deal with end-of-life (donation etc.) if the clothing is in-season. Next, if you love it, keep it. Don’t shame yourself for things you’ve already bought. Building a conscious closet takes time. Third, pay attention to what you wear most, and why they make you happy.

Eventually you will want to find your magic wardrobe number – how many clothes you need, which will be different for everyone. Cline suggests that minimalists can be happy with 50 pieces or fewer, but style seekers might want 250+ items and that’s okay. You can use a fashion fast or a capsule wardrobe to get a better sense of what your number is. De-cluttering your wardrobe is an important element of building a conscious closet, but you don’t want to go too far.

When deciding what to get rid of, here are a few tips. Aim for balance and look for things that go together. Look for pieces that don’t go with anything else. Then, either find a way to make them work or prune them. Cut back on trendy pieces. Learn from items you’ve never worn. When you are eliminating bad fabrics, focus on which fabrics wore out more quickly and what brands produced them. If you are even a little unsure, keep the item for a while and give it another go. And repair items if you can!

Reuse Plan

When you are getting rid of clothes, how do you deal with it responsibly? Cline calls this a “Reuse Plan”.

There are four different ways that you can consciously get rid of clothes, but you need to really think about the item, and which is the best fit.

1.     Donate or give away: do that when clothes are in a clean and wearable condition.

2.     Sell or swap: do this for your highest-value, on-trend, and in-season pieces when they are in pristine condition.

3.     Repair: do it where you can and either keep it for yourself or put it in one of the first two categories.

4.     Recycle: when items are worn-out beyond repair, do this.

Donations

Charities only sell about 20-25% of what we donate. The rest gets exported overseas or downcycled (turned into mattress stuffing, insulation, or rags). [81]

Exporting clothes sounds nice, but it is actually a big problem. Used clothes exports have tripled in fifteen years – the US exports 1.7 billion pounds of clothes annually.[82] Most exported clothes go to sub-Saharan Africa, where second-hand dealers distribute and sell it.[83]Although this sounds nice, the volume and low quality of the apparel that is donated means that those second-hand dealers aren’t able to make a living anymore; many are living in extreme poverty.[84] And ultimately a lot of this stuff ends up as garbage. One NGO found that 40% of all used clothing imported to Ghana is immediately landfilled rather than worn or resold.[85]

So, how can you donate effectively? Investigate first: make sure that you are giving to a reputable charity. Vet clothing donations bins. You can do this by looking for bins that are clearly marked with the organization’s name and going to their website. Find out what their acceptance policies are and where they send the clothes that they collect. Depending on what you are donating, you can often donate directly to those in need: homeless shelters, crisis centres, and churches. If you can meet a direct clothing need, this can help assure that your donation won’t end up in a landfill.

For example, Kristen’s building has a Diabetes Canada bin. The website says that their clothes are collected by the linked social enterprise National Diabetes Trust. It delivers clothing to Value Village, though, and they are not transparent about where unsold clothing goes. Kristen didn’t love this option.

Dress for Success Toronto is a charity that provides support, professional attire, and tools to help women achieve economic independence. Dress for Success international has a high (91.4%) charity rating. Kristen ultimately decided that this was the best option for the item she wanted to donate (a pair of dress pants).

It is also crucial that you follow basic used clothing etiquette. First and foremost: always, always, always clean your clothes first. It’s the best way to keep them from ending up as trash. Remove personal belongings from pockets. And tie your shoelaces together! That way the shoes don’t lose each other when they go through re-sorting. You should also mend and repair donated clothing whenever possible. Tears and stains often result in immediate landfilling: usually clothes aren’t getting repaired by the second-hand market. And never leave your donations outside unattended, because they can get rained on and then they will be landfilled.

Recycling

Most clothes are recycled through downcycling: the clothes you recycle are turned into lower-quality products like rags or insulation. That doesn’t solve the waste problem because these still eventually end up in a landfill. But it does increase the length of their lifespan, and that is good.

There are companies working on recapturing cotton that can be used again in exactly the same way as virgin fabrics, which is neat. Hopefully in the future that will be possible and affordable!

For now, though, how do you recycle clothes responsibly? If you are donating your clothes to major charities or thrift shops, a lot of it is likely already being recycled.[86] But ask to make sure! Kristen asked her local Value Village and found out that they do not do this: unsold items get shipped to Africa, where they are most likely landfilled.

There are also in-store garment recycling options. Brands (like Patagonia) sometimes will recycle or repair their own clothing, taking responsibility for end-of-life. A few other brands offer to take and recycle clothing of all brands. Depending on where you live, you may also be able have municipal clothes recycling, so look into this.

In Toronto, where Kristen lives, there is not a municipal clothes recycling program. But H&M, American Eagle, Puma, and North Face all have recycling programs that will accept any brand of clothing. All four brands use the same company (I:CO) to sort and reprocess the clothes, so is very likely that it makes no difference which of these programs you use. Clothes donated through this program are most likely to be downcycled, assuming they are in good enough condition.

Selling and Swapping

If you want to resell your clothes, you have a few options. You can use an online service that takes on the process of selling clothes for you, like thredUP and the RealReal. You can try to sell clothes yourself online through websites like Poshmark. Or you can sell in person through consignment stores.

The types of clothing that do well in the resale market include: on-trend and recent purchases; luxury and designer brands; and in-season items. If you bought something but never wore it and the tags are still on, resale might be a good option – especially if it is from a high-end brand.

Bypass resale if your clothes are damaged; if they are basics; or if they are kids’ clothes, menswear, or workwear. These do not sell well.

You can also organize a clothing swap with friends or a community group. Cline has some suggestions in her book for setting up a clothing swap. But here is another article with quick tips.

Clothes Rentals

Clothing rentals can be a great option if you are the kind of person that needs a lot of trendy pieces in your wardrobe. There are lots of options for renting from clothes rental companies, as well as a few where you can rent items from your wardrobe.  

There are basically two different kinds of clothing rental options: onetime rentals and monthly subscription plans. Rental companies will clean and repair clothes, so no worries there. With rentals, there are shipping and packaging concerns to think about. But this is minimal in comparison to the environmental impact of making clothes.

Your location will determine what your clothes rental options are. In Toronto, there are a few companies.

Dresst is a Toronto-based clothing rental subscription company. When you purchase a membership, you can rent a set number of items for each month. At the end of the month you return the item(s) and they clean it and rent it to someone else. Dresst charges $49/month for one item or $99/month for three items.

Fitzroy is a dress rental company in Toronto. If you are in need of a luscious party gown, this is a great option. Most of the rentals were around $100.

Reheart is a rental website where you can lend or rent. As a lender you get a cut of the profits from renting your item (less than 50%, but Reheart deals with cleaning et cetera). It can be a good way to de-clutter.

Escaping fast fashion is about valuing your clothes more, from the time you are deciding whether to purchase (or rent) them until you have responsibly disposed of the item. Try to think about clothes as an investment, rather than something disposable. Ultimately, you’ll save money and love your wardrobe more!

Endnotes

[1] Thomas, Dana. (2019). Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes. New York: Penguin Press at p.1.

[2] Thomas, Fashionopolis at p.31.

[3] Thomas, Fashionopolis at p.31.

[4] Thomas, Fashionopolis at p.34.

[5] Thomas, Fashionopolis at p.35.

[6] Thomas, Fashionopolis.

[7] Thomas, Fashionopolis.

[8] Thomas, Fashionopolis at p.3.

[9] Cited in Thomas, Fashionopolis at p.36.

[10] Thomas, Fashionopolis at p.5.

[11] Thomas, Fashionopolis at p.35.

[12] Thomas, Fashionopolis at p.6.

[13] Thomas, Fashionopolis.

[14] Thomas, Fashionopolis at p.45.

[15] Thomas, Fashionopolis.

[16] Thomas, Fashionopolis.

[17] Thomas, Fashionopolis at p.47.

[18] Thomas, Fashionopolis at p.41.

[19] Thomas, Fashionopolis at p.40.

[20] Thomas, Fashionopolis.

[21] Shila Begum, worker at Rana Plaza, quoted in Thomas, Fashionopolis at p.57.

[22] Thomas, Fashionopolis.

[23] Thomas, Fashionopolis at p.55.

[24] Thomas, Fashionopolis at p.54.

[25] Thomas, Fashionopolis.

[26] Thomas, Fashionopolis.

[27] Thomas, Fashionopolis at p.6.

[28] Thomas, Fashionopolis at p.42.

[29] Thomas, Fashionopolis at p.50.

[30] Thomas, Fashionopolis.

[31] Thomas, Fashionopolis at p.51.

[32] Thomas, Fashionopolis at p.65.

[33] Thomas, Fashionopolis at p.65.

[34] Cline, Elizabeth. (2019). The Conscious Closet: The Revolutionary Guide to Looking Good While Doing Good. NY: Penguin Randomhouse.

[35] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[36] Thomas, Fashionopolis at p.199.

[37] Thomas, Fashionopolis at p.199.

[38] Cline, The Conscious Closet at p.162.

[39] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[40] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[41] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[42] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[43] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[44] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[45] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[46] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[47] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[48] Thomas, Fashionopolis at p.70.

[49] Thomas, Fashionopolis at p.70.

[50] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[51] Thomas, Fashionopolis at p.71.

[52] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[53] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[54] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[55] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[56] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[57] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[58] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[59] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[60] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[61] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[62] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[63] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[64] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[65] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[66] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[67] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[68] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[69] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[70] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[71] Thomas, Fashionopolis at p.71.

[72] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[73] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[74] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[75] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[76] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[77] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[78] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[79] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[80] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[81] Thomas, Fashionopolis at p.194.

[82] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[83] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[84] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[85] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

[86] Cline, The Conscious Closet.

Episode 10 - Sugar

This episode featured the inimitable Alexandra Sundarsingh, a PhD student in the History Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Lex is an historian of food, migration, and labour. She is also part of the Canadian debate illuminati, which is how she and Kristen became friends. Lex highly recommends that you check out the book Sweetness and Power by Sidney W. Mintz – which Lex drew on for some of the information in this episode. (Actually, Lex wants you to gift this book to pretty much everyone you know; we’d endorse that).

We were really excited to link Lex’s expertise on the history of sugar to some of the present-day practices of the sugar industry. So, the research note below focuses primarily on modern human rights abuses in the sugar industry. There is also some information about sugar and the environment, which Kristen collected but did not discuss – like, y’all, we had been recording for two hours and we thought, ‘Let’s maybe save this for a future episode.’ But we’ve put the notes here just in case you want to know what we found.

Background

What is sugar?

Sugar (sucrose) is produced from two major sources: sugarcane and sugar beets. We did not talk about corn syrup (fructose) in this episode, but it could have (probably will have) an entire episode to itself. We also didn’t talk about maple syrup.

Sugarcane is a grass that reaches 10-20 feet. It grows in warm, humid conditions, typically near the equator. It is a perennial. Sugar beet is a 3-5 pound off-white root crop. It can grow in temperate climates with warm days and cool nights. More than 145 million tonnes of sugar is produced annually in 120 countries.

Here are some different kinds of sugar:

·      Granulated sugar: pure sucrose, the most common form of sugar;

·      Icing sugar: powdered granulated sugar with cornstarch to prevent caking;

·      Brown sugar: produced by crystallizing the golden coloured syrup (before purification?) or mixing molasses syrups with white sugar

·      Liquid sugar

·      Other specialty sugars (e.g. plantation raw, organic)

How is sugar made?

Sugar-making is a multifaceted process. Briefly, here are the steps of the process:

·      Sugar plants are cultivated and harvested;

·      Then they are washed and sent to sugar refineries for processing;

·      Processing sugar starts by slicing sugar beets or crushing sugar cane;

·      Then the sugar is extracted by essentially stewing the sugar in hot water to make a juice;

·      Next, the pulp is removed;

·      Then the sugar is purified using a lime solution and concentrated by boiling it at a low temperature;

·      After a thick juice is produced, it is crystallized, spun in a centrifuge, and dried/cooled;

·      Finally, the sugar is packaged and distributed.

There’s a really good video on sugar beet production from How It’s Made. If you are interested in making your own, here is a link to a DIY process. To be honest, though, it seems a lot less efficient than the manufacturing process. But hey, if you’ve got sugar beets on-hand, you do you. The fibre that remains as a by-product of the sugar refining process is used to generate electricity, or it can be manufactured into paper goods or pelletized for animal feed.

Where does our sugar come from?

Most of the sugar that we consume (60-70%) worldwide comes from cane sugar, while the remainder is from sugar beet. Depending on where you live, that proportion can be very different. Fun fact: sugar beet rose in popularity as a result of a blockade of French trade lines during the Napoleonic wars.

The top five global sugar cane producers are Brazil, India, China, Thailand, and Pakistan. If we’re talking about both kinds of sugar, the only major change is that the EU takes third place. Brazil alone accounts for more than half (52%) of the world’s sugar market. 

Almost all Canadian sugar (90%) is from imported raw cane sugar. The remaining 10% is beet sugar, mostly from Alberta. When we import the raw cane sugar, it is processed by Canadian refineries in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.

Albertan sugar beets are processed by a Canadian company called Rogers Lantic – the product of a recent merger of an east coast sugar company (Lantic) and a western Canadian company (Rogers). All Canadian sugar beets are processed by a refinery in Taber, Alberta. If you’re buying Rogers sugar with a black stamp on the bag that starts with the number 22, you’re buying Albertan beet sugar. There is also some sugar beet production in Ontario near a processing plant in Michigan.

Canada’s sugar industry is essentially dominated by Rogers-Lantic and Redpath Sugar. There are Canadian sugar refineries in Quebec, Ontario, Alberta, and BC. Aside from the Taber facility in Alberta, Canadian sugar refineries all process cane sugar.

Labour Abuses and the Sugar Industry

Human rights and cane sugar farming

Historically, sugar cane has well-documented links to slavery. But what are the practices today? Well, in short: it’s not great. Child labour, forced labour, and bonded labour are still prominent facets of sugarcane cultivation today.

Children between the ages of five and fifteen are engaged in child labour on sugar plantations. They may work as unpaid family helpers or migrate with their parents to find work on commercial plantations during harvest season. In El Salvador, for example, Human Rights Watch found that nearly all of the boys aged fourteen and older harvested sugarcane. And it’s important to remember that this is dangerous work.

Sugarcane may be produced using forced labour in Bolivia, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Myanmar, Pakistan, India, and Guatemala, according to Know the Chain. In Brazil, there are approximately 25,000 – 100,000 people in slavery, virtually all of whom are involved in agricultural work. Sugarcane production is one of the major sources of Brazilian slave labour. Most slaves work on estates in the extremely remove eastern Amazon region, occurring out of view of the population. As researcher Justin Campbell describes:

“Enslavement typically begins with a hired contractor, known as a gato, who recruits impoverished men from the slums of large cities or poor, rural villages. By offering cash up front and the promise of decent wages, he is able to entice these men to leave their homes for work on a distant estate. The men are then driven hundreds or thousands of miles to a remote ranch or plantation, where they are informed that they are in debt for the costs of transportation, food provided on the trip, and even tools. The debts are never erased; the illiterate workers have little recourse and are thus enslaved.”[1]

Research by the Conversation found that even among Bonsucro-certified sugar mills in Brazil (where workers are required to provide at least the legal minimum wage) workers’ earnings fall short of what is needed for a decent standard of living. Sugarcane is sometimes called the “hunger crop” for the poverty experienced by plantation workers.

And more generally, sugarcane workers experience negative health impacts. There was recently an epidemic of kidney disease across Central America, with rates rising by as much as 41% in some places (Nicaragua; 27% in Guatemala; 26% in El Salvador; 16% in Costa Rica). The suspected cause was heat stress from working in unsafe conditions on sugarcane plantations.

Canadian sugar beets and Japanese-Canadian internment

Canadian history: so fun! So many human rights abuses! Did you know that some of the Japanese-Canadians that were interned during WWII were forced to work on beet sugar farms? Well, they were. About 4,000 Japanese-Canadians were sent to work on sugar beet farms in Alberta and Manitoba to fill labour shortages (of about 12,000 total interned). Fuck you, William Lyon Mackenzie King.

Canadian sugar beets and the exploitation of Indigenous people

From the 1940s to the 1980s, thousands of Indigenous families were recruited to work on sugar beet farms across the prairies. Essentially, farmers would go into northern Métis reserved to offer families work harvesting sugar beets. Labour conditions were horrendous – 12-14 hour shifts with no food or water and very low pay. Living conditions were just as bad. In some cases, families received no accommodations and slept in their trucks. In other cases, they slept in tents. Indigenous workers were also subject to racism. Families continued to return because they had few other alternatives. The Department of Indian Affairs would cut off social assistance and apprehend children if they did not work on the sugar beet farms.

This practice only stopped when journalists with the Winnipeg Tribune exposed the labour conditions in Winnipeg in 1975. After that, Indigenous farm workers organized to demand better conditions. That struggle, in combination with the availability of farm machinery, ended the practice in the mid-1980s. (So yeah white Canadians did effectively nothing)

Labour practices on beet sugar farms today

What about human rights and sugar beets? We were not able to find a lot on this, but sugar beet farming today is mostly mechanized, so the labour practices are likely not so bad. However, this does prompt an ethical question of whether the guise of buying ethical – which if you’re buying beet sugar means buying from the global north – is perpetuating international income divides. That’s a tricky ethical question and at some point in the future we want to give it a full episode, because it’s a theme that we expect will recur.

For now, though, we’ll say this: we don’t think that buying beet sugar (or switching to substitutes like maple syrup) is really the right way to approach the problem. Definitely, switching to stevia is a bad way to go (see below). Instead, we think the best you can do is to: (1) support fair trade sugar and (2) support political change. More on fair trade later.

Labour practices in Canadian sugar refineries

It was tricky to find information about labour practices on sugar refineries. At least some sugar refinery workers are unionized, though. Lantic Roger’s Sugar workers in Taber, Alberta are unionized through UFCW (local 383); Lantic Suger workers in Montreal also unionized; and workers at Redpath sugar refinery in Belleville also unionized through UFCW. So even though labour issues might come up at sugar refineries, when we’re talking about labour abuses in sugar we are usually talking about sugar extraction – and mostly sugarcane extraction.

Environment and Sugar

The environmental impact of cultivating and processing sugar includes: loss of natural habitats; water use; agro-chemical use, discharge, and run-off; and air pollution (according to a study by WWF). Because sugarcane deteriorates as soon as it is harvested, it needs to be quickly transported to a refinery; in contrast, sugar beets can be stored for months.

Land use

We were unfortunately not able to find much on whether sugarcane or sugar beets are relatively more land intensive. Articles seemed to point to the fact that both divert land use. A European sugar lobby (le Comité Européen des Fabricants de Sucre) study found that sugar beets are 50% less land intensive, but this is a pretty biased source (Europeans grow sugar beet).

In 2019, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro lifted a ban on cultivating sugarcane in the Amazon rainforest and other areas of primary forest. This surprised even the sugarcane industry, which views the move as an unnecessary reputational risk. Sugarcane in Brazil is used for biofuel as well as sugar. Bolsonaro’s decision has been uniformly criticized by environmental groups. Sugarcane plantations threaten biodiversity and can cause deforestation.

Water use

Producing a 0.5 litre bottle of pop uses between 170 and 310 litres of water. Less than 1% of this is from the actual water in the final product. Most of the rest (95%) comes from the supply chain. A large portion of this comes from sourcing the sugar.

Sugarcane is a more water-intensive crop than sugar beet:

●      1 kg of sugar from sugarcane = 390 gallons of water

●      1 kg of sugar from sugar beets = 243 gallons of water

Oftentimes, to grow sugar producers will siphon water from local populations in water-stressed regions.

Air pollution

Harvesting process for sugarcane involves torching the fields to strip the crop of leaves. That causes air pollution.

Emissions

There is a lot more variability in how emissions-intensive sugar beets are, compared with sugar cane. At the high end, sugar beets and sugarcane are comparable. At the low end, sugar beets have a smaller carbon footprint. One of the big factors underlying this gap is transportation. Sugar beet is processed directly into white sugar (fewer steps than cane sugar) and generally at nearby factories.

Sustainability Labels for Sugar

Want to buy sustainable sugar? Here is some information about the ecolabels you might see.

Rainforest Alliance certification

Sustainable Agriculture Standard includes rules on biodiversity conservation; improved livelihoods and human wellbeing; natural resource conservation; and effective planning and farm management systems

Bonsucro certification

Bonsucro is a sustainability standard for sugar cultivation and processing. Producers must adhere to seven principles: obey the law; respect human rights and labour standards; manage efficiency to improve sustainability; manage biodiversity and ecosystem; continuously improve; adhere to EU directives; and organization of farmers (smallholder standard only).

Fairtrade

What is fair trade?

Fair trade is a set of movements, campaigns, and initiatives that have emerged in response to the negative effects of globalization, especially the often unjust and inequitable nature of international trade.[2] Fair trade began as a small church and Third World solidarity movement in the early postwar period.[3] Generally speaking, fair trade standards include values like decent and safe work, fair prices for producers, and sustainability

What fair trade labels are out there, and which is best?

There are five recognized fair trade labels: Fair Trade International (certified by FLOCERT); Fair Trade USA (certified by SCS Global Services); Fair for Life (certified by Institute for Marketecology (IMO)); the World Fair Trade Organization (a membership organization that recognizes its members by determining their adherence to 10 principles of fair trade); and the Fair Trade Federation (which is similar to WFTO).

Artificial Sweeteners

There are a bunch of artificial sweeteners out there, and we’ll do an episode on them sometime. But we do want to talk briefly about biopiracy and one artificial sweetener – Stevia – because it came up in the episode.

Stevia – Product of Biopiracy

Stevia is actually a product of biopiracy. Stevia rebaudiana is a plant native to eastern Paraguay and Brazil. Indigenous Guaraní peoples have traditionally used it to sweeten tea and medicine. In the late 1800s, stevia was identified in Western science as a sweetener.

Stevia is commercialized as steviol glycosides, which are ‘high-intensity’ sweeteners. Actually, it is not legal to sell Stevia leaves in EU, US, or Swiss markets. That is essentially because there has been little commercial interest in pursuing an approval process for Stevia leaves. Whereas steviol glycosides have been approved. “In practice this means that the products of large multinational corporations are able to access markets far more easily than products based on the traditional use of whole stevia leaves” (from the Bitter Taste of Stevia). Which is especially fucked because companies will play up the “natural” character of Stevia

The Guaraní have received negligible benefits from the global market for Stevia. This is in violation of their right to benefit from the use of stevia, as established under the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Nagoya Protocol. Today Stevia is grown in many countries outside of Paraguay. China is now the main producer and exporter of Stevia leaves. Stevia is primarily produced by smallholder farmers.

“In Paraguay, the average smallholder producer has only 5-10 ha of arable land available, and cultivates Stevia in crop rotation with other crops such as cotton, cassava, sesame or soy bean. Similarly, in China, Stevia is typically produced by contracted smallholders on plots of […] 667 square metres” (from the Bitter Taste of Stevia).

The largest Stevia (steviol glycosides) producers are the multinational corporations Cargill, Stevia First, and DSM. There is currently an effort to produce steviol glycosides through synthetic biology (SynBio) instead of producing them from leaves. Essentially, that would mean that you wouldn’t need to cultivate stevia farms to produce steviol glycosides. If that happens it could hurt smallholder farmers in Paraguay and elsewhere.

Sugary Drinks

Ethical Consumer recommends reducing packaging and food miles by making your own sugar at home, using Fairtrade and organic ingredients

But SodaStream has some of its own issues. It has been criticized for being complicit in Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights because of its operations in the West Bank. And it was recently bought by Pepsi, which has a number of ethically questionable practices.

Call to Action

Looking for something concrete that you can do? We’ve already recommended a few actions above. As a reminder, you can always seek out more ethical sugar by buying fair trade. It is also important to help keep human rights in the sugar industry on our political radar: tell your friends about what you’ve heard; stay informed; sign petitions and support organizations (like Know the Chain and Human Rights Watch) that work to uncover human rights abuses in sugar and elsewhere. But here’s one action we would recommend taking right now: contact your MP and ask them why Canada hasn’t ratified the Nagoya Protocol.

Endnotes

[1] Campbell, Justin. (2008). A Growing Concern: Modern Slavery and Agricultural Production in Brazil and South Asia. Human Rights and Human Welfare, https://www.du.edu/korbel/hrhw/researchdigest/slavery/agriculture.pdf, p.131-2.

[2] This is from an edited volume: Raynolds, Laura, Murray, Douglas, and Wilkinson, John. (eds.). (2007). Fair Trade: The Challenges of Transforming Globalization. NY: Routledge.

[3] Ibid.

Kyla’s Notes

An interesting and well-sourced article with more on how sugar affects the brain.

An idea of average sugar intake.

More on the Maple Syrup Heist.

More info on residential schools.

Even more info on residential schools, from Secret Life of Canada, a podcast we love.