Tuesday 2 February 2010
Monday 2 February 2009
Monday 30 July 2007
Thursday 26 July 2007
Monday 12 March 2007
Monday 12 February 2007
Got a Coffee
Whenever my boyfriend and I try to get a coffee at the city centre we struggle to find an "independent" coffee shop. In fact we had not found it yet (and I guess never will).
Glasgow City Centre is full of Coffee Neros, Subways and , yes of course, Startbucks.
My cultural background has made me specially skeptic of the quality and true advantages of THAT so called coffee chain. In my bannana-producer-country, Mexico, people pay the same price rates as in the UK. You would expect to pay 2 pounds for a Macciato, which in Mexican pesos is equivalent to 40 pesos, worth for a whole meal in a decent restaurant. In Mexico Starbucks is a big thing to do, an amusement for the day.
Luckly, at Dear Glasgow Green it is not so flamboyant, rather is considered a O.K coffee shop that could be afforded any day by almost everybody. Moreover, people acknowledge it as politically correct and as a logical result intellectually brightening.
But guess what, on January 29 2007 my very personal aversion for Starbucks was supported with true facts. The Guardian published a report on the efforts of Tadesse Meskela, spokesman of the Ethiopian coffee growers, and Nick and Marc Francis the makers of "Black Gold", a documentary that denounces the REAL state of the coffee makers in that continent.
Some of the most interesting facts in this report are that Starbuck's annual turnover of 7.8 billions of dollars is almost the same as Ethiopia's entire gross domestic product. That could be easily explained because of the price paid by the company to the coffee producers, other of the irrecularities of 'fair' trade. The premium´s coffees can sell for a fair trade export at about $1.60 a pound. After deducing costs the growers get about $1.10. Roasters can sell the coffee on at $20-26 per pound. While in Glasgow as all over the Starbucks world, retailers make about 52 expressos from a pound of coffee, worth up to $160 a pound.
But that is not the only unfair trade. Although only buys about 2% of Ethiopia coffee- accounting $6-8m of the country's $400m annual exports it has used its muscle within the National Coffee Association of America to block trademarking attempts to reverse the balance in favor of the African country. Starbucks fears so much the real fare trade, that it has even threatened to stop buying Ethiopian coffe, but since they buy so little, that would not matter at this point.
For me and my boyfriend that is a reason good enough to never buy from a hypocrite company that shows the faces of poor farmers to make us believe it is good to buy from them.
Glasgow City Centre is full of Coffee Neros, Subways and , yes of course, Startbucks.
My cultural background has made me specially skeptic of the quality and true advantages of THAT so called coffee chain. In my bannana-producer-country, Mexico, people pay the same price rates as in the UK. You would expect to pay 2 pounds for a Macciato, which in Mexican pesos is equivalent to 40 pesos, worth for a whole meal in a decent restaurant. In Mexico Starbucks is a big thing to do, an amusement for the day.
Luckly, at Dear Glasgow Green it is not so flamboyant, rather is considered a O.K coffee shop that could be afforded any day by almost everybody. Moreover, people acknowledge it as politically correct and as a logical result intellectually brightening.
But guess what, on January 29 2007 my very personal aversion for Starbucks was supported with true facts. The Guardian published a report on the efforts of Tadesse Meskela, spokesman of the Ethiopian coffee growers, and Nick and Marc Francis the makers of "Black Gold", a documentary that denounces the REAL state of the coffee makers in that continent.
Some of the most interesting facts in this report are that Starbuck's annual turnover of 7.8 billions of dollars is almost the same as Ethiopia's entire gross domestic product. That could be easily explained because of the price paid by the company to the coffee producers, other of the irrecularities of 'fair' trade. The premium´s coffees can sell for a fair trade export at about $1.60 a pound. After deducing costs the growers get about $1.10. Roasters can sell the coffee on at $20-26 per pound. While in Glasgow as all over the Starbucks world, retailers make about 52 expressos from a pound of coffee, worth up to $160 a pound.
But that is not the only unfair trade. Although only buys about 2% of Ethiopia coffee- accounting $6-8m of the country's $400m annual exports it has used its muscle within the National Coffee Association of America to block trademarking attempts to reverse the balance in favor of the African country. Starbucks fears so much the real fare trade, that it has even threatened to stop buying Ethiopian coffe, but since they buy so little, that would not matter at this point.
For me and my boyfriend that is a reason good enough to never buy from a hypocrite company that shows the faces of poor farmers to make us believe it is good to buy from them.
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