Latest / Coffee People Podcast / Etelle Higonnet, Founder of Coffee Watch
Transcript
- 0:00If you wouldn't mind, before we get started pronouncing your
- 0:03name for me. Sure, it's a weird name.
- 0:05It's an Iguene. It's Iguene.
- 0:08We're in France, we have a silent H like hotel becomes.
- 0:11Hotel. And at the end of words, T also
- 0:13becomes silent. And so I got this silent and
- 0:17it's so crazy. So it's just Iguene, but yeah.
- 0:21And my first name is a little bit like Estelle, minus the S,
- 0:24yeah. So I took French when I was
- 0:27younger and all I kept was. Oh hello, how are you today?
- 0:46Thank you for tuning into the Coffee People podcast.
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- 1:55Hey, good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Coffee People
- 1:58podcast. Thank you for being here today.
- 2:00I'm your host, Ryan Walt. You can follow or subscribe to
- 2:03this show wherever you're listening, but you'll only find
- 2:06the bonus context links and recaps to this episode on
- 2:09coffeepeoplepodcast.com. That's coffee,
- 2:13peoplepodcast.com. Our guest today is ET al.
- 2:16Igoni, the founder of Coffee Watch, an industry watchdog
- 2:21organization dedicated to quote the proposition that we should
- 2:25make the world a better place with each cup of coffee.
- 2:28End Quote. To paraphrase the Coffee Watch
- 2:31mission, they are dedicated advocates for human rights,
- 2:34social justice, and especially the climate through the lens of
- 2:39the coffee industry. So make sure you've got a cup of
- 2:43coffee to enjoy and head to coffeewatch.org to learn more as
- 2:47you listen to this episode featuring Etel Igonet, the
- 2:51founder of Coffee Watch. I wanted to, I mean, before we
- 2:59get too far into this show. And welcome to Coffee People,
- 3:03the podcast. Thank you so much for having me
- 3:05on your podcast. I'm just thrilled.
- 3:07Yeah. I'm thrilled.
- 3:09I'm so intimidated, honestly, by by you.
- 3:13I'm afraid that I'm going to say something dumb and you're going
- 3:16to be like a. Hush, I'm the dumbest.
- 3:19I was looking at this list. I found you've worked with the
- 3:22National Wildlife Association, Greenpeace, Climate Defiance,
- 3:26Friends of the Earth, and Coffee Watch, among others.
- 3:29I'm wondering I've worked for one environmental nonprofit.
- 3:33Is there one that you haven't worked for?
- 3:36You're too kind. No, look, I, I had such a great,
- 3:39lovely, wonderful experience at Greenpeace, which is my first
- 3:42real enviro experience. And I had previously done human
- 3:46rights work. So I just kind of my whole
- 3:49childhood, in adolescence, I wanted to do human rights work.
- 3:51And then like even during uni and then between uni and law
- 3:55school and after law school, I did all this stuff like Human
- 3:58Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
- 4:00But then after 12 1/2 years, I thought, wow, I don't think I
- 4:04can investigate another crime against humanity or rape for
- 4:07sure. I just, it was so sad, you know,
- 4:09it was kind of grim and I started.
- 4:11To, like, my hair fell out and I lost all this weight and I
- 4:14couldn't sleep. And so I thought, OK, what can I
- 4:16do that still, like, makes the world a better place, but maybe
- 4:18it won't cause me to have a purpose.
- 4:20Right. On environmental work.
- 4:21Yeah. Fighting climate change.
- 4:23So that's how I ended up and. I loved it and then that brought
- 4:27me to Mighty Earth where I was helped sort of set it up.
- 4:30It's a little bit I guess you could say almost like a spinoff
- 4:33of Greenpeace. A lot of us that started it were
- 4:35ex Greenpeace and it's it sort of filled some of the gaps that
- 4:39like Greenpeace wasn't working on like cocoa and rubber and
- 4:43high risk polymer photographies. And that even to this day was
- 4:47kind of my favorite job, even better than Greenpeace, if
- 4:49that's possible. And yeah, National Wildlife
- 4:52Federation, I also really loved. I just did that for one year,
- 4:54'cause then I had. A baby and he's the best thing
- 4:56in my whole life and I wanted. To take time off, but the other
- 4:59groups I've mostly just done like consultancies for or been
- 5:02on the board of or helped, you know, like Friends of the Earth
- 5:06and and yeah, climate to find. Some on the board.
- 5:09So I it's, those are like smaller things in my life than
- 5:13than the green peas and my dear, I guess you could say.
- 5:17I have so many questions about all of that, but the you just
- 5:20said and and I hope we can talk about it.
- 5:22If not, that's OK. But you have a baby.
- 5:25I do. Son.
- 5:26I have a son. Yes, you have a son and as you
- 5:30mentioned, it can be overwhelming and depressing.
- 5:33And you mentioned the climate and then the hell, the human
- 5:35rights. How do you, and this is
- 5:37something I was going to ask later, but I'm just going to ask
- 5:39now, how do you maintain hope for his future?
- 5:43Oh well. When you're facing this every
- 5:45day, that's a deep question to jump into first and we'll go
- 5:48backwards, but you're not thinking necess.
- 5:51I mean, I'm I'm thinking about my future and my dog's future.
- 5:54Selfishly, in all odds I will live him, which is the worst
- 5:58thing I've ever thought of. But you'll find one in a better
- 6:02place. I'm sure that I feel like dogs
- 6:04are are equal to humans and they're.
- 6:06Way, way, way. Yeah, they're better.
- 6:08They're. Better they will meet us in a
- 6:10better. Place but you have you have this
- 6:13little little person you know in some size and you have they have
- 6:18a future. How do you look at the world and
- 6:20say I want, I think things can be better for him.
- 6:24Oh, well, you know, I think that having a child and loving him so
- 6:28passionately and completely it, you know, not that I didn't
- 6:33love, obviously my husband's like maybe the best husband in
- 6:35the whole. World.
- 6:36She's like so hard. Kids heart and you.
- 6:38Great dancer and Brazilian barbecues and all that.
- 6:41And I love my family and my friends, but yeah, having a
- 6:44baby, it's just like, wow, my heart expanded an entire size
- 6:48and like, rocketed. Up into the stratosphere, I was
- 6:50so filled with love. And I guess what it did is that
- 6:54it also cemented my resolve to fight with everything I've got
- 6:59to make the world a better place for my son.
- 7:03Like I just cannot imagine now not working on climate change
- 7:09because I want to be able to look back, you know, when I'm
- 7:13old and grey, actually, I'm already old.
- 7:16I'm such a dinosaur. But when I'm older, I want to be
- 7:18able to look back and say to my son that, you know, I really did
- 7:22my best to give him habitable planet.
- 7:25That was more fair and that there wasn't much more I could
- 7:29have really done. And that it was, you know, it's
- 7:32part of loving him, I think. Well, that takes me to Coffee
- 7:37Watch, which is why I, you know, I reached out.
- 7:40You just celebrated one year of this organization that you, that
- 7:44you founded. What is it, you know, for people
- 7:48listening? I'm in.
- 7:48I'm invested in the coffee community.
- 7:51I wasn't quite sure, you know, after one you want one year's
- 7:55barely anytime in the in the reality of a it's an amazing
- 7:59accomplishment. But like as far as like
- 8:01awareness goes, it's like this growing phase.
- 8:03So what is it for anyone in the coffee industry or anyone that's
- 8:06out and stumbles across it? If you can imagine Greenpeace
- 8:12hooking up with Amnesty International and having a baby,
- 8:16and that baby just wants to work on coffee, that's Coffee, Watch.
- 8:21It's basically like a human. Rights and environmental
- 8:24watchdog for the coffee industry.
- 8:27And I guess you know, there there are so many groups that do
- 8:32work on sustainability and coffee, but they tend to do it
- 8:35with companies, right? They tend to do it as
- 8:37consultants and they help companies roll out pilots for
- 8:42agroforestry or women's empowerment or whatever.
- 8:45But there there is, hasn't yet been until Coffee Watch came on
- 8:49the scene, really a watchdog group that was focused on, like,
- 8:53documenting abuses and fighting to combat those abuses, even
- 8:58though the abuses in the coffee industry are legion.
- 9:01You know, it's the number six driver of deforestation in the
- 9:04world. Like, that's crazy.
- 9:06Number six, that's not very good.
- 9:08You know, it's not like carrots. Oh my God, this is pretty
- 9:11serious. Like maybe that's something we
- 9:13should get on top of. And then also it's got, you
- 9:15know, millions of kids and thousands of slaves, and almost
- 9:18everyone who works in coffee is in poverty.
- 9:21And that's just not right, is it?
- 9:23You know, because most people. Who love coffee, including me.
- 9:26I love coffee. I need it.
- 9:27I can't live without it. Most people are good people.
- 9:31They're fundamentally good and they wouldn't want to drink
- 9:34slavery and child labor and deforestation and like dead
- 9:37Jaguars, if they knew they would be so sad, they would probably
- 9:39say no. What has been, well, I guess
- 9:44first, did people know who you were in the coffee industry?
- 9:47And I'm asking, right, They didn't know who you were, so no.
- 9:51I don't think so. In those first brainstorming
- 9:55sessions, or you're you're planning this and you're
- 9:58thinking about and reaching out, I'm assuming, or putting the
- 10:01name out there and saying we're going to do this.
- 10:02What was the response? Well, so, you know, every time
- 10:06we've done a report, like an investigation and then a report
- 10:12on abuses and coffee, like human trafficking or child labor or,
- 10:16you know, modern slavery or other really terrible things,
- 10:21we've definitely tried to send the reports to companies that,
- 10:26you know, we sort of go out there like in an agnostic way
- 10:30just to find the problems and then figure out, well, who does
- 10:33it seem to belong to? Who's supply chain does it seem
- 10:36to belong to? And then so it's not like we're
- 10:38looking for specific supply chains.
- 10:40Like I'm gonna get you. It's really not bad at all.
- 10:44But so whenever we find supply chain information, which
- 10:46sometimes you can't, honestly, sometimes it's not available
- 10:49because coffee is extremely opaque and not traceable, not
- 10:51transparent and not a clean like well ordered industry in that
- 10:55sense. But whenever we do find the
- 10:57information, we do try to send it to the companies.
- 11:01Usually they, they like maybe don't really seem to care that
- 11:04much. I mean, sometimes they sort of
- 11:07answer, sometimes, yeah, we get these.
- 11:12They tend to be a little bit boilerplate, the answers, You
- 11:15know, we've also, I should say, written to the certification
- 11:18schemes. Again, this is agnostic.
- 11:20It's not like we're going out to be like, oh, I hit the
- 11:22certification scheme, I'm going to find you.
- 11:25Good friend handed. No, we like have just found
- 11:28terrible stuff that is certified and so we did really try to
- 11:33reach out to the certification schemes that's.
- 11:36I guess like some of them have been more responsive and others
- 11:40like not fair trade, like much more responsive.
- 11:44You know, Foresee kind of started and then sort of like
- 11:48shut down and cafe practices like, yeah, basically just like
- 11:52wouldn't talk to us really. At first I thought they would.
- 11:55And then they just. Like, do you think that is
- 11:58because, one, it's hard to hear that you work in this area that
- 12:03is causes pain in any way or is harmful to our potential future?
- 12:09Do you think it it's that or AI mean?
- 12:11I'm assuming it's a combination. But also at this point in time,
- 12:15bandwidth, you're coming to them and saying this thing that
- 12:17you've worked on and created needs to change.
- 12:20Yeah. That's hard to.
- 12:21Do, but it's it's hard to do. So how do you approach the those
- 12:24conversations with, with the goal or the idea of motivating
- 12:29that change and keeping your expectations?
- 12:33You know, if it's me, I don't, I can't separate.
- 12:36So I go in and go, they're going to definitely do this 100%.
- 12:38It's going to be perfect. And then I'm like, Oh no, how do
- 12:42I fix it? How do you do that?
- 12:44Or how do you know? Where do you see?
- 12:47Can you put yourself on the other side?
- 12:49Oh, totally. Look, I think most coffee
- 12:51companies are filled with really good people, like normal people
- 12:55who, you know, wake up in the morning and, like, pet their dog
- 12:58and feed their kids and bring them to school.
- 13:00I just, you know, normal, nice humans, right?
- 13:02They're like, not like Doctor Evil, hey.
- 13:04Hey, hey, let me go and slave some small children in a coffee
- 13:09country that's not, I think, like how to start their day.
- 13:13I think most coffee industry folks are, are nice, but you
- 13:17know, why is it that they haven't responded so much?
- 13:19Well, there's I think a couple of reasons that you alluded to.
- 13:22First, you're right, it's scary like getting a message from
- 13:25someone you'd like haven't heard of saying that you've got human
- 13:29trafficking or modern slavery or child labor or like other crazy
- 13:33labor abuses in your coffee supply chain.
- 13:37That's probably like the worst message you're going to get that
- 13:39day, maybe that week, maybe people feel really sad and
- 13:43upset. So yeah, I think that's a big
- 13:48reason. There's like some cognitive
- 13:49dissonance to to accept and understand how bad the situation
- 13:53is. It's it's hard like and I I
- 13:57totally understand. I'm thinking about it from the
- 14:00coffee I'm drinking right now. I didn't go to the store and
- 14:02think I want coffee that is bad for something I want.
- 14:07I want coffee that I enjoy drinking and is also good.
- 14:10I mean it's the good place show problem right?
- 14:12Like you do bad things without even realizing it or you're part
- 14:16of it. Is there a?
- 14:18Lot of coffee industry people literally don't know how bad
- 14:20things are like, because their world is, is, is busy.
- 14:24They're thinking about price and timing and locations and
- 14:29shipping and artificial intelligence and Trump tariffs.
- 14:32And there may be some terrible super storms.
- 14:35And so there's shortages or there's droughts and then
- 14:37there's even more shortages. And then, you know, people like
- 14:40people are busy. You know, they have lives, they
- 14:43have real lives and I think this is a lot that we've brought to
- 14:47the industry in one year. You know, we, we always work
- 14:50with other NGOs. Like especially I love to work
- 14:53with local NGOs because I think that they know better than I
- 14:56could ever know. So like in Mexico, these two
- 14:58amazing groups, Pro desk and Empower, they did this like
- 15:04fantastic report on abuses in Mexican coffee and this we did
- 15:08one in China with China Labor Watch and in Colombia with this
- 15:12great local organization versus Porter Trabajo and and Roberta
- 15:16Brazil. And then in you know, it's a lot
- 15:19this with Brazil, China, Colombia, Mexico just in one
- 15:23year. And now we have more
- 15:24investigations coming that we've we've just done.
- 15:27If I was a coffee industry person, I'd be frankly like
- 15:29overwhelmed and exhausted and I would maybe shut down too.
- 15:33Maybe it's too much. Let's turn this back a little
- 15:37bit and I want to ask you just about, you said you love coffee.
- 15:41Do you remember, you know, a first experience with coffee
- 15:45that led you down to this, down this rabbit hole eventually?
- 15:50That's hard to say, but if I tell you like the first thing
- 15:52that I remember about coffee, my father's French, but his mom was
- 15:57Hungarian French, mostly Hungarian.
- 16:00So she sort of grew up in Budapest and but then, you know,
- 16:03came to France with my grandfather.
- 16:04But she would make these thick Hungarian coffees with her like
- 16:08Hungarian girlfriends. And it was, you know, almost
- 16:10thick enough for the splinters to.
- 16:12Offer and they'd have these very sweet Hungarian desserts and
- 16:15they'd play canasta and two of them would smoke not my
- 16:19grandmother, but her friends. And they'd just be like these
- 16:21bad ass old ladies smoking and like cards and drinking coffee
- 16:25and eating these delectable little like treats.
- 16:29And I just thought they were so cool.
- 16:31I thought I also just thought my grandmother was the cat's meow.
- 16:34So that's like my first real memory of of.
- 16:37Coffee being a thing, coffee being, being something that
- 16:40brought people together, that created like community, you
- 16:44know, that's my first memory of coffee, I guess.
- 16:48Fast forwarding into your life is you're working with Ng OS and
- 16:52and nonprofits. When did the coffee industry in
- 16:55particular kind of come to your attention as a place that you
- 16:57might want to focus on? Oh yeah.
- 16:59So when I went to Greenpeace, I ended up as their sort of like
- 17:05Southeast Asia research director and there's a lot of stuff going
- 17:08on in Southeast. Asia, that's not good for a
- 17:10Mother Earth. So I was sort of pulled in
- 17:12different. Directions, you know, there's a
- 17:14lot of overfishing and terrible, awful like, you know, fishing
- 17:17with slaves and bottom trawling and dynamite and cyanide.
- 17:20And then there's also a lot of oil and gas and coal exploration
- 17:27and, and coal mines and, and coal power plants.
- 17:30There's, there's just a lot that came across my desk.
- 17:33But the thing that really grabbed my heart was the
- 17:35deforestation work. And we, we mostly focus at
- 17:40Greenpeace on deforestation in palm oil and in pulp and paper
- 17:45in Southeast Asia. Those are the two Titans, 2
- 17:47Titans of deforestation in that region, just like cattle and soy
- 17:50are the big Titanic drivers in in this hemisphere.
- 17:55And but while I was there, I, I kept seeing all these abuses in
- 18:00rubber and coffee and cocoa. Just, I would see it when I'd go
- 18:05to the field, like literally would see child labor and
- 18:09deforestation. And I, I kept wanting us to work
- 18:12on these commodities. And even though we knew that
- 18:19coffee, cocoa and rubber are numbers 5-6 and seven of global
- 18:23deforestation, at Greenpeace, we just never really had the
- 18:27bandwidth to take. Greenpeace is so overwhelmed and
- 18:30underfunded. And ever since that moment, I
- 18:35just like, put this resolve into my heart that I would try to do
- 18:39whatever I can to turn around those industries.
- 18:41They get very short shrift, you know, basically nobody was like
- 18:45really working on. So when I went to Mighty Earth,
- 18:47we we ran these amazing campaigns in cocoa and rubber.
- 18:50It was really, I think fantastic and yay made a lot of change.
- 18:54But we still even at mighty never had the bandwidth to do
- 18:57coffee. So I just like thought, oh.
- 19:00Let's do that somehow, in some way.
- 19:03I well, you said one thing that Greenpeace is a organization
- 19:09that's been around a long time and people know that name.
- 19:11And to hear that they're underfunded is, you know, I
- 19:14mean, not surprising, but also I think when people think of
- 19:18nonprofits, this is going to be a 2 parter.
- 19:24I apologize. I'm notorious for asking wide
- 19:26questions. But the first is there's a lot
- 19:30of nonprofits out there that are competing for money.
- 19:34I mean, and, and, but businesses too, I mean, everyone is
- 19:37competing a little bit for, for something so they can do the
- 19:40thing that's they're passionate about and, you know, or they
- 19:43care about or feeds their family to use a, an overused cliche.
- 19:49So how did you go into this? How do you fund this?
- 19:52I mean, who's supporting it? Well, I should say a preface to
- 19:56that. You probably didn't know this,
- 19:59but it shocked the pants off me when I found out.
- 20:03Less than like 2% of global philanthropy goes to anything
- 20:07related to climate or environment.
- 20:10Less than 2%. It's like the, and if you very
- 20:13broadly define climate and environment, like it goes up to
- 20:152 1/2%, but that's really kind of cheaty and it's basically 2%.
- 20:20But OK, let's say 2 1/2% to, you know, that's still spectacularly
- 20:25crazy given that we're in a mass extinction and a climate chaos
- 20:27situation. And of that money that goes into
- 20:34philanthropy for climate and environmental stuff, less than
- 20:378% goes into agriculture. But that's nuts because
- 20:43agriculture is 1/3 of climate change and it is 80% of the mass
- 20:47extinction crisis we're in. And we are in a mass extinction
- 20:50crisis like species are disappearing more rapidly than
- 20:53basically like when a comet hits the Earth.
- 20:56And so all this money that goes to so many different NGOs that
- 21:00do so many different things, which I think are noble and good
- 21:03and like, I'm so happy they're doing that.
- 21:05It just, it basically means that climate and environment stuff is
- 21:09the orphan of global philanthropy.
- 21:12And sure, you could say they're like renewable energy companies
- 21:16that make a lot of money now and EV companies that make a lot of
- 21:19money now. And that's good for the planet.
- 21:21And it's a business. It's not a philanthropy, right?
- 21:23And see, but that's pretty recent that they've started to
- 21:25make money with like green tech and clean tech, right?
- 21:27That's not very recent. But anyways, one of the reasons
- 21:31I really wanted to work on coffee is because we're in this
- 21:35mass extinction. We're in this climate chaos
- 21:37situation. Agriculture is driving so much
- 21:40of that and it gets so little attention and funding.
- 21:44And coffee of the big seven drivers of deforestation has
- 21:47gotten like no attention for deforestation.
- 21:49A little bit more for the human rights problems, slavery, child
- 21:52labor, but basically not much. So This is why I wanted to do
- 21:56Coffee Watch is because of this funding that's like so
- 21:58underfunded. And so that's why there's no
- 21:59work on it. And that's why it doesn't get
- 22:01better. But then how did we fund Coffee
- 22:03Watch? I mean, I put a lot of my own
- 22:04savings into it. I just also did not get paid at
- 22:07all for any of my work. And a lot of wonderful people
- 22:11from all different corners of my life, friends from Greenpeace
- 22:15days and Amnesty days and Human Rights Watch days and Mighty
- 22:17Earth days, and all these wonderful people have all leaned
- 22:21in to help like pro bono and lo Bono.
- 22:23I'm so grateful. I'm such a grateful recipient of
- 22:26their largest We could never. Do any of this stuff without
- 22:29them? And then we did get like some
- 22:31money from small dollar donors that actually kind of worked.
- 22:35But almost no philanthropies give any money because this is
- 22:39the worst year for philanthropic giving after Musk cut USAID and
- 22:45then also Trump cut the UN budget by a third because that's
- 22:49like what the US used to give. Well, why do you?
- 22:52We don't need that. And so and.
- 22:55Also, Europe had to reroute a lot of its environmental and
- 22:58human rights doning giving for Ukraine when the US kind of
- 23:04pulled out of that. So there was this like, trifecta
- 23:06of USAID collapsing, the UN budgets, like hemorrhaging and
- 23:11kind of collapsing, and then European money drying up.
- 23:14And so unsurprisingly, they're not that many rich people who
- 23:18stepped in to fill the void. I mean, some did, and that's
- 23:20great. And then very grateful to them.
- 23:22But yeah, it's the in general, this has been a terrible year
- 23:25for environmental and human rights groups, and Coffee Watch
- 23:28was no exception. But we're lucky because just
- 23:30through love and generosity, we managed to soldier through.
- 23:36I think of it, are you familiar with like a, an old camp style
- 23:40stool with three legs and just simple platform, You know that
- 23:44it always feels like you're about to fall.
- 23:46That's what I kind of imagine this situation is.
- 23:48You're always about to fall and then when something happens like
- 23:52USAID going away. Yeah.
- 23:54Boom, you start tipping and then the goal is to stop bit before
- 23:58it hits the ground and somehow just get back to status quo.
- 24:02And that's so intense and so overwhelming.
- 24:05You know, my personal nonprofit experience wasn't great in, in
- 24:10that I saw a lot of waste and I was certainly an idealist, but I
- 24:15also, I also realized that the people, it wasn't waste because
- 24:21they were trying to waste. It was waste because sometimes
- 24:24the problem is bigger than you know, how to handle or the
- 24:27things that you're doing are only these, they're only
- 24:29attacking the problem from 1 angle.
- 24:31And it's hard to see that, that bigger picture.
- 24:36I I'm wrapping this into, you know.
- 24:38You, if you look at how NGO's sometimes are in effect tool or
- 24:43a little bit like slow or bureaucratic or whatever and you
- 24:46think, well, oh, that's so annoying, we should cut their
- 24:49money. But in fact, you know one reason
- 24:51often why they can be that way is because they don't have
- 24:54enough money to hire a really good COO and a super top notch
- 24:59HR person. Because all the best Co OS and
- 25:02HR. People are going to go make like
- 25:035 times as much in the private sector.
- 25:06And so these Ng OS end up being, you know, a little bit
- 25:09dysfunctional, often not because they have too much money and
- 25:12they want to waste it, but because maybe sometimes they
- 25:14also don't have enough. Sure, and they're run by people
- 25:18who are passionate, not people who necessarily, when I have the
- 25:21skills for this, they're not. That's not the thing.
- 25:23You mentioned you didn't get paid, which was part of my
- 25:27question, is there's this idea that nonprofit workers do it
- 25:34because they're passionate, but they shouldn't be doing it for
- 25:36money. I see an inherent flaw, right?
- 25:40I see a flaw in that, in that, to your point, some the best
- 25:44people may not go into that field because they have goals as
- 25:48well. The funny thing is, once I had a
- 25:50baby, I also like realized there's so few things that I
- 25:53really need in life. You know, I bike him everywhere.
- 25:58We're lucky to live in Denmark and I just like.
- 26:01It's literally, it's the cost of a bicycle and a little baby
- 26:03basket. And I bike him everywhere and
- 26:05he's happy and we like sing songs and.
- 26:08You know, we don't need to have a lot of fancy stuff to be
- 26:10happy. So I think, yeah, more than ever
- 26:13since I had my son, I realized I'd rather do something that
- 26:17feels super meaningful than something that makes a lot of
- 26:21Benjamins, I guess. Although I'm not AI, don't
- 26:24object to Benjamins. If anyone listening to this
- 26:26podcast wants to donate like $5 or $100 to Coffee Watch, please
- 26:30do. So I was mostly bringing it up
- 26:32because I, I think people end up taking advantage of nonprofit
- 26:36workers because they know they want to do it no matter what.
- 26:39So they're like they, they'll give the money, but only if it
- 26:42goes to this thing. And salaries is generally not
- 26:45one of those something I try to draw attention to that you
- 26:49mentioned that you're in Denmark, a both coffee mad
- 26:55country, pro biking country, as you mentioned, which I love.
- 27:01Also a place where I, I maybe 10 years ago, I read there was AI
- 27:08can't think of his name. But at the time, a relatively
- 27:10well known environmental scientist from Colorado in, in
- 27:14the US who was in the news because he picked up his family
- 27:18and moved to Denmark. And the reason he did is because
- 27:20he said, well, my best guess is that if there's a safe place to
- 27:23be in the future for my kids, Denmark is that place.
- 27:27Are you? Seeing.
- 27:29Are you seeing climate migration happening in Denmark?
- 27:32Are you seeing an awareness of Denmark?
- 27:35Or I mean, maybe that's changed. I'm not up on it on that
- 27:38day-to-day where to go. But do you see people looking to
- 27:42Denmark as a leader in that area or as a place that may be a
- 27:45refuge at some point? So I would say that the climate
- 27:51dude you mentioned from Colorado's desire to move to
- 27:54Denmark to keep his kids safe is both very charming and also
- 27:58probably really naive. Because the best estimates we
- 28:01have is that there is going to be 1 billion humans on the move
- 28:06because of climate change in the near future.
- 28:09That's billion with AB and that includes both ID PS like
- 28:13internally displaced people and refugees.
- 28:16But what it means is we are only now seeing the absolutely
- 28:20tippity, tippity, tip, tip, tip of the iceberg that is coming
- 28:23our way. You could say that a lot of
- 28:26people who have fled Syria are in a way climate refugees.
- 28:31And, you know, a lot of people leaving West Africa to come to
- 28:35Europe, although less to, you know, they, they come more to
- 28:38Italy and France than they do to Denmark.
- 28:40But a lot of those people are also climate refugees in a way.
- 28:45But you know, Somalia, like, you know, people talk about how the
- 28:47fishing industry got destroyed. It's not that they're like
- 28:51climate refugees. They're environmental refugees
- 28:53in the sense that what are you going to do?
- 28:54You can't fish anymore. All the fish are gone.
- 28:56You want to be a pirate? I mean that sounds.
- 28:58Terrible. So all your other option is what
- 29:00to like emigrate. So I think, you know, right now
- 29:03it's true there are migrants coming to Denmark and to Europe
- 29:06and to the US to, you know, and what might feel like large
- 29:11numbers to us today, large enough certainly to like, help
- 29:16omit the rise of the far right and my home country of France,
- 29:19you know, the far right endlessly talks about
- 29:21immigration in France. But the crazy thing is, unless
- 29:24we get a handle on this climate chaos, we're gonna see what we
- 29:29have now. But like times 100 it will be so
- 29:32crazy worse. I don't really think any place
- 29:36will be that safe to you. No, I mean you said something
- 29:40that I just that I, I people are going to see me smiling and it's
- 29:45not because I'm happy about some of the things we're talking
- 29:47about. It's because I'm relating to
- 29:48them in my own personal way. But obviously the show's about
- 29:51you. And but I think I, I, I say this
- 29:55to my wife a lot. It where we talk about this a
- 29:59lot. I don't just say it to her like
- 30:00randomly as she's like making dinner or something, or I'm
- 30:02making dinner. But it, it's that none of these
- 30:06arguments that we're having politically or cross borders is
- 30:11going to matter much if you can't travel because there's
- 30:14going to like, we've already changed how we travel because of
- 30:16storms. We're we're campers and we've
- 30:19changed how we do that. We consider that when we book
- 30:22flights now we've done all those little things that it, you know,
- 30:26you're a little bit like a frog in a pot.
- 30:27It's slowly getting warmer and you're just adapting and
- 30:30adapting and adapting. But there is going to be a
- 30:32tipping point where all of these arguments are all these little
- 30:36things that we are using to make our life more comfortable or to
- 30:41stand on a platform that maybe we believe in or maybe as
- 30:46popular at the moment. And, you know, generally
- 30:48speaking, they're not going to matter much if there isn't a, a
- 30:53future, you know, economics will will.
- 30:56I'm AI don't want to be a cynic, but I'm also someone who is
- 31:03keeps that in mind and is just a little bit wary of overwhelming
- 31:09myself. I think at this point in my
- 31:10life, I've gotten to a point where I went so far trying to
- 31:14do. I mean, honestly, it's inspiring
- 31:16talking to you because I think it's a challenge for anyone to
- 31:19to maintain confidence and positivity.
- 31:22And obviously you're on the show and and you, I'm assuming
- 31:25there's moment quiet moments where you go Oh man.
- 31:28But at the same time at. Least once a month.
- 31:32You know, at the same time, I want to be an engaged citizen,
- 31:35but I think I it's getting harder for me to know the best
- 31:38way to do that, the best way to work towards the future.
- 31:41And when I read your coffee watch posts on LinkedIn or on
- 31:47social media or wherever, I saw one at the end of the year, you
- 31:50that, hey, let's stay positive. Here's some things that are
- 31:53good. Those are great, but they also
- 31:57feel like the smaller end of, you know, what I'm getting every
- 32:00day And how do you man, you know, how do we manage that?
- 32:04I think that's the question. And you're you are teaching us
- 32:08to some extent or we're looking to you, whether it's your job or
- 32:11your role or not to say you've chosen coffee watch why you
- 32:16know, I think. This is a super deep, deep
- 32:19question. This really goes to the heart of
- 32:21things, doesn't it, you know? Do we have hope that this is
- 32:25going to turn around? Yeah, I think that's it.
- 32:27Do I have hope it's going to turn?
- 32:29Around. Yeah.
- 32:30Well, so here's what I want to say.
- 32:32At first, I wish I was with you so I could give you a giant
- 32:34squeezy hug. Like a huge hug.
- 32:37I'm like hugging you so hard right now.
- 32:40And I want to like hug you to give you hope and give you a
- 32:43hope hug. And I want to give all your
- 32:45listeners. It's a huge, huge squeezy hope
- 32:47hug too, wherever you are. Please, like, let me invade your
- 32:51personal space in your mind and just hug you so hard because,
- 32:54you know, sometimes this thing of climate chaos and mass
- 32:56extinction and slavery and you know, deforestation and, and
- 33:00child labor and poverty, it feels very overwhelming.
- 33:02It's true, it's true. But think about it this way.
- 33:06It is not too late. And we can absolutely be our
- 33:10best selves. And there are so many solutions
- 33:14that are already tested that are real, that are out in the real
- 33:17world. And like, here's a good way of
- 33:20thinking about it. You know, right now, coffee is
- 33:21the number six driver of deforestation in the world.
- 33:24Number six. That's bad.
- 33:25That means it is both driving climate chaos and mass
- 33:29extinction. So sad, bad, not glad, but we
- 33:33can stop that and we can stop it super fast.
- 33:36Like now. The technology to stop
- 33:38deforestation is cheap as shit. Sorry, I probably should not
- 33:41swear on your show. Oh, that's fine.
- 33:42We say curse words all the time. It's super cheap.
- 33:46We have like satellite maps that are amazingly good.
- 33:50We've drones, we've smartphones. It is so easy to stop
- 33:53deforestation in its tracks today compared to like 20 years
- 33:56ago or whatever. So we can stop that
- 33:58deforestation on a dime like this year.
- 34:01The industry can just stop it and change it.
- 34:02That would be really cool. That would be like the coolest
- 34:04source Rex, wouldn't it? But we can even go further than
- 34:07that because actually coffee was so amazing.
- 34:11It's this plant that loves trees, effing loves to be in a
- 34:15forest system. It actually is made to grow in
- 34:19forest originally. Like that's how coffee was
- 34:22coffee Valentine's Day hearts for us.
- 34:24Like there's no tomorrow. And we can totally grow all of
- 34:28coffee in an agroforestry system, which is shade grown.
- 34:32Agroforestry just means shades like a fancy.
- 34:34I'm sorry. That's like a stupid fancy way
- 34:36to say shade. Shade grown coffee is for real.
- 34:39Literally great for the planet and will stop biodiversity lost
- 34:45so much. Like you can have 19 times more
- 34:48biodiversity, yay. And you can have more than
- 34:51double. The carbon.
- 34:52Whoop. Whoop.
- 34:53Just with coffee. So think about it, there's like
- 34:5512.5 million farms in the world. If all those farms became like
- 35:00the Mack daddy awesome super mega agroforestry stars that we
- 35:04know they can be. If we did that in the next 5
- 35:07years. If the industry invested and
- 35:09coffee lovers and drinkers invested and governments and
- 35:12everybody got off their stupid butts and got serious about it
- 35:14and collaborated and made it happen, then.
- 35:17Coffee would be saving the mother effing planet with every
- 35:22cup, which is so cool. We can totally do that.
- 35:25And there's already so much scientific literature, in fact,
- 35:29like this amazing scientist who's on my board, Eduardo, so
- 35:33many, but he's like a God of agroforestry.
- 35:35He's published so much. Everybody cites him.
- 35:37He's so much smarter than me. We created this agroforestry
- 35:40electronic library of all the scientific publications and how
- 35:43do you do it? How do you avoid the pitfalls
- 35:45and make it amazing? It tastes better.
- 35:48It buffers your coffee from climate chaos.
- 35:51It's great for biodiversity, it's great for carbon.
- 35:53It's this huge win for farmer food security because you can
- 35:56plant trees of like the stuff that farmers want to eat and
- 35:59income diversification. So the farmers are no longer
- 36:02hostage to the vicissitudes of market shocks.
- 36:05Like if you're a coffee farmer, you do just coffee and the price
- 36:08is high, amazing. If it goes low, you're fucked.
- 36:12If I have like 5 different crops, all five of them have to
- 36:16go bust on the world market for me to go bust so I don't have to
- 36:19pull my kids out of school. But you might have to pull your
- 36:21kids out of school. So actually these biodiverse
- 36:25shade grown agroforestry coffee systems are amazing for farmer
- 36:29well-being too. So actually like, I think I just
- 36:32want to give you and all your listeners so many hugs and hope
- 36:36and like, we can, yes, we can. We can make it better with every
- 36:39cup. Everyone can make it better,
- 36:41whether you're drinking it or you're a bar Vista or a
- 36:43restaurant owner or coffee shop owner or like whoever you are,
- 36:47you know you run a church, a synagogue, a university, an
- 36:51office like buffet. You know all of us can make it
- 36:55better, isn't it? That's so cool, right?
- 36:57Isn't that? I think it's cool.
- 36:59I think it requires a lot of communication, which I worry
- 37:02about. So that's, you know, is, is a
- 37:05little bit of coffee smarter advice for the people listening.
- 37:08You mentioned a lot of wonderful potential things that have to
- 37:12happen, but they're obviously roadblocks.
- 37:15What, and I know this is going to be very general because it's
- 37:18a wide spectrum of people who, whatever they do in their life
- 37:22may be different. But what do you say to people
- 37:24like me who are just over here going, I want to do something in
- 37:27my, my life. I don't work in this field.
- 37:30How do people, how do people help work towards that goal of,
- 37:35of jumping over those roadblocks that you're, you're seeing and
- 37:38pointing out and, and trying to tell people we can do this.
- 37:42What is the thing that we have to do as collectively?
- 37:45Because I think there's a big difference between there seems
- 37:49to be a big disconnect between the work of an organization
- 37:53versus the collective of us who are just going to buy our bag of
- 37:55coffee at the local spot or wherever it is.
- 37:58It's true, but so I would say first thing is like, educate
- 38:01yourself, but don't go into a doom spiral of despair and like
- 38:05scroll about the worst things. The only reason to learn about
- 38:08the bad stuff is to avoid it and change it and fix it and learn
- 38:11about the good stuff that can change the bad stuff, right?
- 38:14So like definitely educate yourself about the slavery and
- 38:17the trafficking and the child labor and poverty and
- 38:19deforestation and coffee, but don't do it in order to feel bad
- 38:22about yourself or the world. Like don't feel bad.
- 38:24Be gentle to yourself, be kind to yourself.
- 38:27Just learn about it in order to be part of the change.
- 38:29And then the second thing is buy a different coffee, like consume
- 38:33different coffee just in your own life.
- 38:35It doesn't have to be perfect all the time.
- 38:37Just do the best that you can and buy coffee that matches your
- 38:40ethics. And then if you've gotten that
- 38:43under your belt and you want to do like one step more, you could
- 38:46become a coffee ambassador. You can start gifting coffee to
- 38:51people on their birthdays or when you get invited to
- 38:53somebody's house for brunch or you go to a holiday with your
- 38:58friends and your family and you stay with them and you bring a
- 39:00house gift. Or for like Christmas or
- 39:02Hanukkah or whatever Mother's Day, you can give a really
- 39:06ethical coffee. And with a note that says like,
- 39:08I love you, you love the planet, you're an awesome person.
- 39:11This coffee is like equally awesome to you.
- 39:13And I think you're going to like it.
- 39:14It's tasty. I love it.
- 39:15I love you. This coffee loves the planet and
- 39:17it's good for farmers and forests.
- 39:18And if you even can find the courage to change the coffee
- 39:23that's served at your office, at your institution, at your
- 39:27university. If you can find inside of
- 39:29yourself the courage to just go talk to your favorite barista or
- 39:33the manager at your cafe where you go all the time.
- 39:36Or if you have like, a sister-in-law who runs a
- 39:38restaurant or a childhood friend who's a chef, just talk to those
- 39:43people and try to get system change.
- 39:46Because every office, university, bowling hall,
- 39:49mosque, synagogue, church, like every institution that changes
- 39:53its coffee sends a market signal and raises awareness.
- 39:57And, you know, I think that we have this immense, gorgeous
- 40:04power and that we don't even realize how strong we are until
- 40:08we try to unleash that power. But almost all of your listeners
- 40:12could probably be amazing ambassadors for coffee
- 40:15sustainability if they choose to do that.
- 40:18And they don't have to be perfect or do it all the time.
- 40:20They can be like episodic, but every little bit matters.
- 40:24I really believe that. So, and I'm going to challenge
- 40:26you just a little bit with the one thing that I see as being a
- 40:31stumbling block for people in what you just said, which is a
- 40:34great, you know, first step. How do people know?
- 40:38How do you find coffees that you believe are ethical in that way?
- 40:42You know, what's the resource for them is coffee watch?
- 40:44Do do they do that? Do you say, Hey, this is a
- 40:46company we've, you know, like B Corp for whatever its problems
- 40:50might be? Part of that is it gives people
- 40:53on the outside and easy way any certification to see if
- 40:56something matches their value to a point.
- 41:00I say to a point, always take that with a grain of salt,
- 41:02everyone. But you know, how do people, how
- 41:06do you suggest to your friends and family this is how you find
- 41:10ethical coffees when I'm not around to tell you?
- 41:12Yeah, we'll share with you what I know.
- 41:15Yeah, I I get this question all the time.
- 41:18So we made a whole section on the website that's about like
- 41:20how to buy ethical coffee and you can just click on it and it
- 41:23explains all the different things you can think about.
- 41:26The good news is there's ethical coffee almost everywhere in the
- 41:29world. The bad news is sometimes it's
- 41:31not available everywhere. So if you're like in Denmark,
- 41:34you could get slow forest coffee.
- 41:35If you're in London, you can get kissed the hippo coffee.
- 41:37If you're in Indonesia, there's orangutan coffee.
- 41:40In the US, there's all this like Smithsonian bird friendly
- 41:43certified coffee. So we try to like, make it
- 41:48easier for people all over the world to buy more ethical coffee
- 41:51by kind of walking them through all the different issues and
- 41:55also explaining what is this certification do and what does
- 41:58it not do? And then you can make up your
- 42:00own mind about like, what matches your ethics, right?
- 42:03So, for example, organic, it's really nice not to poison the
- 42:07planet, isn't it? I mean, like, we're in something
- 42:09called the insect apocalypse. If you Google insect apocalypse,
- 42:12The New York Times had this amazing article and Manga Bay as
- 42:15well. And so we're like, it's it's
- 42:18terrible what's happening to insects, right?
- 42:19And and pesticides are pretty bad.
- 42:21For insects, they're designed to be bad for them, isn't it?
- 42:24And so if you buy chemical free coffee, like organic certified
- 42:28coffee, at a minimum, it's not immediately driving the insect
- 42:33apocalypse and therefore the mass extinction crisis that
- 42:36we're in. And for what it's worth, a lot
- 42:38of coffee workers also get poisoned.
- 42:40Like women who are pregnant are exposed to terrible things and
- 42:45kids are working with exposure to chemicals and also like
- 42:49adults. Should not do we?
- 42:51You know all. Men too, nobody should have to
- 42:54like be poisoned for when they're growing coffee and, and,
- 42:57and, and when I say poison, literally like we do have this
- 43:00report from Dad Watch from 2012 of coffee workers like actually
- 43:04getting hospitalized and dying because of pesticide stuff and
- 43:08not having the right PPE and things like that.
- 43:10So often if you're very poor and you're, you're a disempowered
- 43:13coffee worker without a union or whatever you'd like, just don't
- 43:16get good PPE and then you're touching terrible stuff and it's
- 43:18OK. So the rest is history.
- 43:20So if you're, if all you can do is buy organic coffee, that's
- 43:24great. It's organic does not guarantee
- 43:27a living income. It doesn't look at human rights
- 43:31really. It doesn't guarantee no
- 43:33deforestation. So organic is kind of
- 43:36incomplete. It's as if I you said it said
- 43:39sing me the alphabet and I would say ABCDQRSZ.
- 43:46He'd be like all. Right.
- 43:46Well, that's definitely. Partial credit, you know, so or
- 43:50so, some certifications do great things even if they don't do
- 43:54everything that we would want them to do.
- 43:56And I try to explain to people on the website what all the
- 44:00certifications do and don't do. So it's all there.
- 44:03And you don't have to buy perfect coffee, you just have to
- 44:07buy better coffee. And all you have to do is try I.
- 44:12Would like to introduce you to someone who's making a a
- 44:15statement right now. Is this a super super cute dog
- 44:19that I'm going to want to kidnap?
- 44:21Probably. Oh my God, look at you.
- 44:29You're too cute. Hold on.
- 44:33So this is our first episode of season 16, so it's only
- 44:36appropriate that you see who accompanies me on every show.
- 44:39Oh. My God.
- 44:40This is keto. Cutie patootie.
- 44:45This is his whole life. This is what I why I worry about
- 44:49the future is because I assume you'll live forever.
- 44:52I would be amiss as we're coming up.
- 44:54You know, I feel like I could ask you questions for hours and
- 44:57hours and you'd have answers. But I heard a rumor that you
- 45:01were targeted by hit hit men, hit persons.
- 45:03Is this true? Is this a rumor?
- 45:06It would be terrible of me to not ask that.
- 45:08I have to know. Look, it was such an interesting
- 45:11experience. I went to Gabon, which at the
- 45:15time had a different government, right?
- 45:16Because now they've they've had a change.
- 45:19But at the time, it was a pretty ruthless dictatorship that's
- 45:22been in power for a long time. And we had investigated in, in
- 45:27my previous job that I was doing at the time, we'd investigated
- 45:30deforestation for like palm oil and rubber.
- 45:32This is before my coffee work ever started.
- 45:35And the government of Gabon was involved in like a joint venture
- 45:39with a company. And we sort of exposed all these
- 45:42problems and it made like huge waves and caused a lot of
- 45:46change. And I'd heard from a couple
- 45:50people that the government was very annoyed.
- 45:52With our work, but I didn't really take it that seriously
- 45:55because a lot of governments get annoyed with their work over the
- 45:58years. But anyways, I went after the
- 46:01campaign and I thought everything was fine and then
- 46:07like I was supposed to leave the country and my driver vanished.
- 46:13And these like people at the hotel, it immediately helped me
- 46:18find this other car. And I thought maybe the driver
- 46:21had like a huge family emergency or something or got super sick
- 46:24or whatever and I wanted to stay and figure it out and try to
- 46:29help him if anything had gone wrong.
- 46:31But like I. Had to also get a flight so.
- 46:33I just went with this car and I ended up really bonding with
- 46:39these two dudes for these huge super buff like like the Rock,
- 46:43but Gavinese like amazingly buff dudes and then I.
- 46:47Realized they were wearing like army boots and had all this like
- 46:51little army paraphernalia and stuff.
- 46:53And as we were like bonding and chatting one of them started to
- 46:57say fuck it, I can't do this I hate our president.
- 47:00I was like what? Oh my God.
- 47:02Well, you said it first and and then they they ended up just
- 47:07being so nice. They even like held up this
- 47:09little sheet for me so I could pee on the side of the road and
- 47:12and then we. Got close to the capital and one
- 47:20of them pulled out this wee wee you thing what is it called in
- 47:24English? Like you put on the siren, a
- 47:26siren, but like one of those, you know, little policey sirens
- 47:28that you put on the roof and with a magnet and he put it on
- 47:31the roof and I. Was like, what?
- 47:33What is that? I've never seen this.
- 47:36And he said, OK, this is very serious.
- 47:39Don't ever come back in an airplane to this country ever
- 47:42again. You are now our sister.
- 47:44I have given you my WhatsApp. If you need to come back, you
- 47:48will come back, like via a road. Here's the roadblock where I
- 47:51will come and meet you. You message me.
- 47:53Don't tell anyone else right now.
- 47:57We're gonna go really fast. Like just run through you're
- 48:02talking about. And I and they were just so
- 48:04nice. And at the end we like, hugged
- 48:06and yeah, anyways, took kind of Long story short, it was a
- 48:10little scary. I, I've only known you for about
- 48:1445 minutes, but I believe that you could have charmed a hitman.
- 48:19I, I, I'm wondering before we lose, before we end up running,
- 48:24you know, through the, the stop sign at the end of the show.
- 48:28I mentioned at the beginning you were celebrating one year of
- 48:30coffee watch. Yeah.
- 48:33I'm wondering what it means to have have reached that milestone
- 48:35for you and and where you see this going.
- 48:39Well, you know, I would have loved to do so much more, but it
- 48:43did feel like we accomplished a lot.
- 48:45We, you know, looking back on that one year mark, we went
- 48:50from, I don't know, like 0 to over 1,000,000 views on social
- 48:55media in just like 6. Months.
- 48:56That was pretty neat. And we put out seven reports and
- 49:00we got like hundreds of articles in the press about our work.
- 49:04That was so gratifying. You know, you never know if
- 49:06people will think that your stuff is interesting or just
- 49:08like random twaddled. They're like.
- 49:11That is so boring. So it's always nice when people
- 49:15like, want to. Write about your stuff.
- 49:17And if, if, if they care too, then you know, because
- 49:20newspapers are seen by so many more readers than we would ever
- 49:24have, then that brings, I think, millions of people to, to learn
- 49:27the truth about some of what's happening in the coffee
- 49:30industry. So I do feel like it was a good
- 49:32year for raising awareness. And so I feel proud of that.
- 49:38I feel a little bit sad that the certification schemes haven't
- 49:44all just immediately stepped up to pay a living income price for
- 49:48farmers. Maybe I'm I'm really naive, I
- 49:52promise. So my father says I embody the
- 49:54endless triumph of optimism over experience.
- 49:56And I probably and I am kind of a naive like stupid optimist
- 49:59person, but. I, I, I'm dumb.
- 50:03I literally thought that when we started talking with them, the
- 50:06certification schemes would be like, shit, We did not realize
- 50:10how bad it is. We will ensure that all the farm
- 50:13workers get a living wage and that all the farmers get a
- 50:18living income reference price for their coffee.
- 50:21We will figure out a way. And I yeah, that just like
- 50:26hasn't happened at all. And half of global coffee is
- 50:29certified. So that that was very sad to me.
- 50:34And I also don't understand why more like small sustainable
- 50:38coffee companies haven't called the certification schemes to say
- 50:40like what the F&F, why are we not doing better?
- 50:44How can we have these problems? Like I'm paying you to make us
- 50:47sustainable. I thought that there would be
- 50:50thousands of calls from CE OS and C OS of coffee companies to
- 50:54the certification schemes to say like change this so that.
- 51:00You know, the awareness raising was great.
- 51:03It was a huge learning thing for me to set up an NGO.
- 51:06I've never done that before. And I'm so immensely grateful to
- 51:08everyone that helped on the journey.
- 51:10My, my staff and consultants and friends and they're just the
- 51:13best. They're like, they're like the
- 51:16cats meow. But I'm sad that the
- 51:21certification schemes didn't step up to improve a lot really
- 51:24quickly, because I thought that would happen.
- 51:26I'm not so surprised that the coffee companies haven't stepped
- 51:30up because usually it takes a bit more pressure for really big
- 51:33companies to change a business model.
- 51:35Like slavery is so cheap, right? And child labor's so cheap you
- 51:37don't have to pay kids so. So then what is the, what is the
- 51:42next year look like for you? You know, now you have this, you
- 51:45know, I'm assuming you're still processing the first year, but
- 51:49as you keep going day by day, what does the future of Coffee
- 51:52Watch look like? Well, so we did a bunch of new
- 51:55investigations for the in the coffee harvest season recently,
- 52:00and we found horrible information about sexual
- 52:03violence and coffee and child labor and coffee and migrant
- 52:06abuse and coffee and deforestation in other
- 52:09countries. Like, because we'd done our
- 52:12first report on deforestation in Brazil for coffee because it's
- 52:15the number one coffee producer, but we started looking at all
- 52:19the other top coffee producing countries and mapping, you know,
- 52:22deforestation. So we have all those reports to
- 52:25put out. As best we can.
- 52:30And hopefully that will change things a bit more.
- 52:32You know, sometimes it just takes a little while for people
- 52:35to really hear the bad news and put it in their heart and be
- 52:39like, OK, I got to do better. And maybe that's what will
- 52:43happen next year. I'm inspired by your optimism.
- 52:47I It doesn't come naturally for me, certainly, but if I were to
- 52:51to run into you in person and want to take you to a coffee
- 52:55shop and buy you something, a cup of coffee or a tea or
- 52:57something, what is it that you drink when you stop somewhere?
- 53:00A suit. Let's just presume it's
- 53:02ethically sourced. Everything is wonderful about
- 53:04this, this particular cafe. My favorite is oat milk lattes.
- 53:08My husband makes one for me every morning.
- 53:11That's a good husband. Yeah.
- 53:14And how can people listening? We're going to share all the
- 53:18links coffee watch.org and your social media, your coffee watch
- 53:22on on blue sky, which I always like.
- 53:26How how can people support you or what should they?
- 53:29Where should they go to find motivation to support you?
- 53:34Yeah, well, so I mean, one thing that would be amazing is for
- 53:38just two people to for. Them to follow us on social
- 53:41media. We do try to put out a lot of
- 53:43really helpful, useful information about what does good
- 53:47look like, good companies and good change and good ideas about
- 53:51reforming coffee. And there's also, I think I
- 53:54would say maybe a little bit more sad bad news.
- 53:57About the problems in coffee. But all of that you can get on
- 54:00our social media and we're on every platform, even like some
- 54:04of the sadder, worst platforms like Twitter.
- 54:07Which always makes me feel a little.
- 54:08Cringy. We're there too, so you can
- 54:10follow us on social. That would probably be like the
- 54:12number one thing I would ask people to do.
- 54:14And you know, we would never turn down a donation.
- 54:17However much you spend on coffee per day or per week or per year,
- 54:22please. Give it to us and we'll do our
- 54:24best to help make the coffee industry a A.
- 54:27Friendlier to forests and farmers and people in planet
- 54:31alike. And then I would say, yeah, you
- 54:33know, don't even worry about Coffee Watch.
- 54:36Like, the real thing to do is just to change your coffee and
- 54:40become a coffee ambassador with all your friends and family and
- 54:43workers that coworkers and whatever institution you're in.
- 54:47Like, honestly, fuck me. Fuck Coffee Watch.
- 54:49Just, you know, be a coffee. Sustainability ambassador, like
- 54:53if you did that, then I would, I would kiss you.
- 54:55I'd be like, thank you. That's the best gift you could
- 54:58give me. Yeah.
- 55:02Etel, thank you so much. Just for, you know, the hour
- 55:05and, and sharing a little bit about what you do.
- 55:08There's a lot more I'm sure we can chat about in the future
- 55:10and, but hopefully this gets people started and heading to
- 55:13coffeewatch.org and learning more about it.
- 55:15And any last piece of advice you'd like to share or just a
- 55:20thought in general for anyone listening.
- 55:22Did we miss it? You know, coffee is so special.
- 55:26It's this thing that brings us together, it's what you do with
- 55:31your friends, it's the thing you start your day with.
- 55:35And many of us like, really love it.
- 55:38But we should give back some of that love to coffee, I think.
- 55:42And it's not so hard to do. And if everybody tries a little
- 55:50bit even, I really think we can make the world a better place
- 55:54together. I think it's not too late.
- 55:56I'm a huge believer in the immense power that millions of
- 56:00coffee drinkers have. You know, some companies, they
- 56:04have millions of dollars and it's hard to fight them, but we
- 56:07have millions of people. Who are good people?
- 56:10And that's better. So that's lame.
- 56:13That's how I'd like to. I think that.
- 57:11This is my simply good coffee Brewer insulated thermal pot
- 57:17which is extremely heavy duty. It keeps my coffee hot.
- 57:29I think I did that pretty good.