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Coffee and the Environment: The Hidden Cost of Your Daily Brew · How To Protect The Ocean

• 0:00
  Most people drink coffee every day without a second thought yet you know
• 0:04
  that it's one of the top drivers of global deforestation and ocean pollution.
• 0:10
  Tell Hiney a human rights lawyer turned environmental activists discovered
• 0:14
  that coffee is tied not only to deforestation, but also to slavery,
• 0:19
  toxic chemical use, and the degradation of critical marine ecosystems.
• 0:23
  After years investigating abuses in cocoa, rubber, and seafood industries, tell
• 0:28
  founded coffee, watch to expose how the coffee supply chain harms both people.
• 0:34
  And the planet.
• 0:35
  Her research revealed that many certified ethical coffee brands
• 0:39
  still fall short, failing to ensure living wages, environmental
• 0:43
  protection, or even traceability with some link to modern slavery.
• 0:47
  In today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast, it tell shares.
• 0:51
  How you can make simple, powerful changes in your daily coffee habits
• 0:55
  to protect rainforest, defend human rights, and safeguard our oceans.
• 1:00
  Let's start the show.
• 1:04
  Hey everybody.
• 1:04
  Welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
• 1:07
  I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's
• 1:10
  happening in the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to
• 1:13
  live for a better ocean by taking action.
• 1:16
  And today we're talking about coffee and you're probably wondering, Andrew,
• 1:19
  why are we talking about coffee?
• 1:22
  You don't even drink coffee, and that is true.
• 1:23
  I do not drink coffee.
• 1:25
  Not that I don't like coffee.
• 1:26
  I don't think I've ever actually tried coffee to the point where I'm
• 1:29
  like giving it a really good shake.
• 1:31
  I am actually just not a coffee drinker.
• 1:34
  There's no worries of me ever drinking coffee.
• 1:36
  I have no urge to drink coffee.
• 1:37
  And that's fine.
• 1:38
  There's nothing wrong with that.
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  And I have nothing against people who drink coffee.
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  I actually enjoy the smell of coffee.
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  My wife has coffee and it smells great in the house when she does have that, but
• 1:47
  it's really difficult to know if you are drinking coffee that's actually good for
• 1:50
  the planet, for people who are growing it and so forth, just like seafood.
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  So I wanted to have someone on the podcast to talk about how to choose the proper
• 1:59
  coffee and how to go forward and make sure that you can drink conscious free coffee
• 2:03
  to make sure you can get through your day.
• 2:05
  So I had to tell Higonnet on the podcast today, she is the founder and executive
• 2:11
  director of Coffee Watch, where they look at all things coffee related and looking
• 2:16
  at the entire supply chain and finding out what is good and what is bad, and
• 2:20
  oftentimes terrible within this industry.
• 2:23
  And how we can make it better.
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  So she's gonna talk about her journey from human rights lawyer in conflict areas like
• 2:30
  war zones that have to deal with torture and so forth, all the way to the coffee
• 2:34
  industry and how that's kind of related and from a human rights perspective.
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  We're gonna talk a lot about that.
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  We're gonna talk about the coffee industry.
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  We're gonna talk about how some of the major corporations can have a
• 2:44
  huge difference just like they did in the seafood industry, and how we can
• 2:47
  find more ways to live sustainably just by drinking a cup of coffee.
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  It's gonna be a great show.
• 2:55
  Before we get into the interview though, I would like to say if you want to find
• 2:59
  out more ways that you can be guided towards living for a better planet
• 3:02
  and a better ocean, you can do so by joining the undertow that's go to Speak
• 3:05
  up for blue.com/join the undertow.
• 3:08
  That's speak up for blue.com/join the undertow.
• 3:12
  All one word.
• 3:13
  You can join our community of action where we guide you to make better choices,
• 3:17
  not only from a knowledge standpoint and learn about the ocean, but say,
• 3:20
  Hey, how do we buy the right coffee?
• 3:22
  How do we buy the right seafood?
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  How do we make sure that we're drinking outta the right containers and so
• 3:27
  forth, and making sure we're making healthy choices not only for us, but
• 3:30
  for our planet and for our ocean?
• 3:32
  Go to speak up for blue.com/join the undertow.
• 3:35
  Here's the interview with Itel Hiney from Coffee Watch Learning
• 3:39
  all about coffee and how to make better choices for better planet.
• 3:43
  Enjoy the interview and I will talk to you after.
• 3:45
  Hey Itel, welcome to the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
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  Are you ready to talk about all things coffee and the environ?
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  I am so excited to be here.
• 3:55
  Nice.
• 3:55
  I'm very excited too.
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  This is something that's very new to me.
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  I'm not a coffee drinker, full disclosure.
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  Uh, but I know so many people who drink coffee, including everybody else
• 4:05
  in my household except for my dogs.
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  And even I feel like my dogs would drink it if it was on the ground.
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  So, you know, let's, let's just put that out there.
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  Um, but I know like coffee is such a huge part of everybody's life.
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  You know, you hear people say, I can't function without my coffee.
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  There's t-shirts, like, but coffee, you know, they all have these types of
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  signs and everybody loves their coffee.
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  But when you think about where coffee comes from, how it's made, how it's
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  farmed, who farms it, you know what the process is, how it affects the
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  environment, there are a lot of things that go into it that we are not really.
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  Uh, uh, told about, or, or aware of in terms of what happens within the coffee
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  industry and are we drinking coffee?
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  That is one sustainable, actually free trade.
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  You hear people talk about free trade coffee.
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  So we're gonna get into all these different questions and really dispel
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  some of the myths and really understand how the coffee industry works in 2025 and
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  what we can do as people who drink coffee can do to make it better and, and, and
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  just have a better conscious when they're actually buying coffee and, and making
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  sure they're making the right decision.
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  So, uh, without hopefully interfering with their lives too much or paying,
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  uh, the wazoo for, for coffee, right?
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  So we're gonna get into all that, but before we do, Al, why don't you let
• 5:20
  us know who you are and what you do.
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  Sure.
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  Well, it's such a pleasure to be here on your show.
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  I am a human rights and environmental activist and lawyer.
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  You can probably tell from my name I'm French American.
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  Uh, but I, yeah, I, I went to the United States for university and from law school
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  at Yale and worked, um, a little bit into war crimes, tribunals, and that
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  sort of set me on this trajectory of.
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  Trying to combat crimes against humanity.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  So after the war crimes courts in Sierra Leone and in Cambodia, I
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  worked with Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, mostly in
• 5:59
  war zones and post-conflict areas.
• 6:02
  Wow.
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  And the International Human Rights Law Institute.
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  So the first like 12 years of my life were dominated by a somewhat
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  grim reality of documenting Yeah.
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  Really awful things that people do to one another like rape
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  and torture and killings.
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  But I'm, I'm actually a very positive glass possible kind of person.
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  I know that sounds crazy.
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  And I, I do believe in fundamentally in, in the goodness of humanity.
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  And I had this moment where I realized that one reason there's so
• 6:34
  many wars and conflicts is because.
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  You know, we're entering an era of climate chaos, and it's
• 6:42
  already turbocharging, huh.
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  And deepening conflicts and making conflicts appear where
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  none were before and making them worse when they interesting.
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  And so I decided to go work at, at Greenpeace.
• 6:55
  Um, okay.
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  Combat climate change as best I could.
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  And I ended up as research director for Greenpeace in Southeast Asia,
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  working a lot on oceans and actually trying to, um, combat seafood
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  slavery as well as overfishing, but also just a lot on deforestation
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  and other environmental issues.
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  And that sort of, I don't know, it just ignited this passion in me to both
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  defend the environment and human rights.
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  And when I was at Greenpeace and then also this other organization I worked
• 7:23
  in, it's called Mighty Earth, I guess.
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  Maybe describe it as a spinoff of Green Peas.
• 7:27
  Yeah.
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  Um, yeah.
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  One thing that I had wanted to do was to work on all the top seven
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  drivers of global deforestation.
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  Okay.
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  And at green we did an amazing job on the big four palm oil pulp and paper
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  cattle, soy, but we never really were able to tackle cocoa, coffee and rubber.
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  So at Night Earth, I started these cocoa and rubber campaigns that were awesome
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  and we love so many of our campaign really helped to transform a lot of
• 7:53
  things in those industries, which are not great by any means, but Right.
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  There's, um, this really amazing journey towards rapid change in, in rubber and
• 8:03
  cocoa that I sort of figured out all the best things that we had done at
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  Greenpeace for palm oil and brought it into cocoa and rubber, um, along with
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  the best things that I remembered from amnesty and human Rights Watch days.
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  And it just taught me that you can transform.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  Really destructive industries.
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  So after taking two years off with, um, my beautiful baby boy,
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  I thought, ah, I got knighted.
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  What should I do with this knighthood?
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  I'm gonna try to now turn to the last of the big seven drivers of
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  deforestation that gets almost no attention, which is coffee, right?
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  Nobody works on it.
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  Not Greenpeace, not mighty Earth, not amnesty, not human rights Watch.
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  Just decided this orphan subject, and yet it's the number six driver.
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  Of global deforestation and it's powering ocean destruction,
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  slavery, and child labor.
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  And I thought, okay, that's what I'm gonna use my neighborhood for.
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  I'm gonna try right.
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  Change the coffee industry if I can.
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  So that's where we are now.
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  I guess you could best describe Coffee Watch.
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  It's like if Amnesty and Green Peas got together and had a baby and that
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  baby just wanted to work on coffee.
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  Well, I, you know, I think it's really important too, and, and
• 9:11
  we'll, we'll get into this more as, as the interview progresses.
• 9:15
  'cause I wanna really start to get your mindset of when you started off and your
• 9:19
  first, even before you started your career and, and get your schooling, your thought
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  process of what you want to do when, like, growing up and how it related to coffee
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  or even just human rights and everything.
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  But it's, it's interesting how, you know, we look at the top 10 of
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  what the, the top 10 drivers of, of deforestation coffee is one of them,
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  but there isn't much information.
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  On how it's destructive or even movement on that.
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  And you know, even like, you know, you know, organizations like Green Pieces
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  and, and a C International and all the WWF, all these other organizations that
• 9:51
  are so massive, they focus on specific aspects of, you know, deforestation.
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  Uh, but it's funny how coffee is kind of slipped aside and, and you know, not many
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  people are working on if it's more than one, uh, as, as opposed to a coffee shop.
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  A coffee watch.
• 10:08
  It'd be interesting to, to hear that, but let's go.
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  But I, I, I kind of wanna go back a little bit in time and you've,
• 10:14
  you've mentioned that you've covered some pretty emotionally and mentally
• 10:19
  draining and I'm sure physically as well, but, uh, uh, and intense
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  cases and, and exper work experience when you were studying even before
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  when you were, you know, a teenager.
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  Did you always have that drive to like that?
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  I guess it's, it's a bit of a political, but also human rights drive to stick
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  up for the person who, or the people who couldn't defend themselves or
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  who went through a hardship Always.
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  Yeah.
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  And if anything is, you know, Andrew, I think most of us start out
• 10:55
  that way, but somehow life crushes a lot of people along the path.
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  But yeah, ever since I was young, I, I knew the world was not quite right.
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  You know, all this injustice and poverty and human rights abuses.
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  I think many people know that the world is not quite right.
• 11:15
  Yeah, for sure.
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  But, um, somehow my family and friends gave me this weird,
• 11:22
  wild, crazy idea that I could.
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  Change that to make the world a better place.
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  So I think I'm very lucky that I, um, got that memo,
• 11:32
  especially one of my professors.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  I was an undergrad named Greg Grandin.
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  Greg Grandin, he just changed my world.
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  And another Professor Ben Kernan.
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  They're both just the most amazing mentors and yeah, I, I will be internally grateful
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  to them for teaching me that, you know, every time you see something wrong mm-hmm.
• 11:54
  You can always, always do something about it.
• 11:57
  And that's a very difficult thing to, I mean, it's easy to tell a child or to tell
• 12:02
  a, a student, an undergraduate student, to say, Hey, look, you know, we need to
• 12:06
  stand up for what's wrong in this world.
• 12:08
  There, there are a lot of things wrong with this world,
• 12:10
  uh, and we need to stand up.
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  But a lot of people, uh, don't want to, it, it takes a lot of bravery.
• 12:15
  It takes a lot of courage to stand up for something and speak out against something.
• 12:19
  You can speak out about anything these days and get criticism.
• 12:22
  And a lot of people are worried about the criticism that they get.
• 12:25
  They don't wanna, uh, you know, take too much of a, a controversial stance or they
• 12:29
  don't want to go opposite of what the main purpose of, you know, or, or the main sort
• 12:33
  of thought process of a specific issue.
• 12:36
  Uh, you know.
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  Even as an example, obviously we're not gonna discuss it, but like the,
• 12:41
  you know, the what's happening in Gaza, in, in Israel, it's a very difficult
• 12:45
  issue even just to have a conversation with, you know, within your household
• 12:50
  or, uh, within a, within a context of a public setting because everybody's so,
• 12:55
  or a lot of people who are so divided and, but want to see a solution in
• 12:58
  some sort of capacity as a, as a child.
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  It's like, I've got two teenagers at home, two teenage girls at home, and
• 13:04
  it's like, you know, sometimes you want them to stand up for something and
• 13:07
  you want them to stand up for what's right and then there are, but there are
• 13:09
  sometimes there are consequences to that.
• 13:11
  Was there, was there anything in your, uh, whether you were in high school or
• 13:15
  undergraduate level, like a specific moment that you kind of remember standing
• 13:19
  up for something that you may not have had to, but you felt it was really
• 13:24
  important to say, Hey, you know what, like this is wrong and we really need
• 13:28
  to be able to tackle this or be able to discuss this, this particular issue.
• 13:33
  You know, something that really, um, motivated me when I was younger, when
• 13:37
  I was a teenager, I found out that my grandfather Kapa had done small
• 13:43
  things with the franchise sauce.
• 13:45
  Okay.
• 13:45
  And he was not a big hero.
• 13:48
  Yeah, right.
• 13:49
  He just, uh, he was an engineer and he apparently, according to one of
• 13:53
  my uncles, um, who's also a very, very talented math, science brain,
• 13:58
  um, he kapa made microfiche mm-hmm.
• 14:02
  Papers for the ALS and the microfiche.
• 14:05
  You can roll them up very small Yeah.
• 14:07
  Persons and put them in like a cigarette case or a matchbox
• 14:09
  or a cylinder of a bicycle.
• 14:11
  And, um, you know, the fact that my grandfather did something
• 14:17
  that was so small and niche.
• 14:21
  But so important and so courageous and just that he was like
• 14:24
  this tiny little cog mm-hmm.
• 14:27
  In a big machine.
• 14:27
  I mean, not that the French resistance was big enough, it should have been bigger.
• 14:31
  His, well, it, during World War ii, they're under attack.
• 14:34
  It's, it's, yeah.
• 14:35
  It, it was not easy to be in the his, and yet we wished that the,
• 14:39
  his results had been bigger.
• 14:40
  But, you know, just knowing that you don't have to be a super mega hero.
• 14:44
  Right.
• 14:44
  You know, K Peppa was not like Right.
• 14:47
  Right.
• 14:48
  He was always just a father of three kids who was an engineer and made
• 14:53
  his little microfiche what he could for these, his, his cells guys, and,
• 14:57
  you know, it was an act of courage.
• 14:59
  Mm-hmm.
• 15:00
  It was probably really hard for him.
• 15:01
  Mm-hmm.
• 15:01
  And I'm not sure, it'll be scary for my grandmother if she found that For sure.
• 15:05
  But it, you know, every little thing matters.
• 15:08
  And I think knowing that you don't have to be a hero.
• 15:11
  You don't have to mm-hmm.
• 15:12
  You know, save the world.
• 15:13
  All you have to do is just do the best you can in the moment.
• 15:17
  Yeah.
• 15:17
  With the time that you have and the abilities that you have.
• 15:20
  Just this moment, just do the best.
• 15:23
  But I think that's kind of what set me on my path in a way.
• 15:27
  I, I love that story because, I mean, if you think about that age
• 15:31
  of Sistance and, and World War ii, he could have been killed for that.
• 15:35
  For, you know, creating those microfiche for all we know, you know, you never know.
• 15:39
  He may have helped even one or two people to get to safety or, you
• 15:43
  know, get further ahead in, in, in what they were trying to do.
• 15:46
  I think that's a, that's a very important fact to realize.
• 15:49
  We don't all have to have our names in the history books.
• 15:52
  To have, uh, to make a difference.
• 15:54
  And, and sometimes small changes or making those little voices, you know, matter
• 16:00
  can matter to a couple people that could change something else, that could change
• 16:03
  the world, that can change anything.
• 16:04
  You never know what's what's gonna happen.
• 16:06
  Mm-hmm.
• 16:06
  Right.
• 16:06
  You, you, you just never know.
• 16:08
  Now, you know, with that type of mindset, that having that history
• 16:12
  and knowing of that history going into law, a lot of people will go
• 16:16
  into, I, I don't think I've ever had, uh, a friend of mine go into law.
• 16:20
  Friends of mine go into law.
• 16:21
  That wasn't like corporate law.
• 16:22
  It was all business.
• 16:23
  It's usually business focused.
• 16:24
  That's, I feel like that's a, a popular thing to go into.
• 16:27
  'cause it's, it's stable.
• 16:29
  It's, you know, you can make pretty good money out of it.
• 16:31
  And there are some that go into environmental law and human
• 16:34
  rights law, but not often.
• 16:35
  So what was it for you when you were choosing that?
• 16:40
  Like, tell me the process of like choosing it and why you would choose to follow
• 16:45
  human rights law, if that's what it was.
• 16:48
  Or, or if it was a different type of law.
• 16:50
  I think most people don't want to go into human rights and environ law because
• 16:53
  it's sort of a life of pen for sure.
• 16:56
  Yeah.
• 16:57
  You can make so much money working for a law firm, but um, you know,
• 17:02
  even people who do go into law firms will often take on pro bono cases.
• 17:07
  Yeah.
• 17:07
  And amazingly good things for the world that way.
• 17:10
  So I don't feel like it's an either or situation.
• 17:13
  But yeah, for me, I, I, I did once work at a corporate law firm for eight weeks.
• 17:18
  Um, and then that was it.
• 17:20
  It was just enough money so that I could go work in the work
• 17:23
  crimes space that I wanted to.
• 17:25
  Almost nothing.
• 17:27
  Yeah.
• 17:28
  Um, yeah, I, I did that very, very briefly.
• 17:31
  Um, Sullivan Cromwell.
• 17:33
  Um, yeah, it was a weird, weird side moment in my life, but I just
• 17:37
  always knew that I wanted to do human rights and environmental work.
• 17:41
  Um, especially human rights work when I was younger.
• 17:44
  That was just, um.
• 17:47
  Like, not even a, a doubt in my mind because Right.
• 17:50
  I just thought to myself, you know, Andrew, why is it that there are
• 17:56
  these people who are just like me?
• 17:58
  Literally, there's like no difference.
• 18:00
  Mm-hmm.
• 18:01
  They have been born in my shoes.
• 18:03
  They would be the ones going to Yale Law School.
• 18:05
  Why is it that these people are earning under $2 a day?
• 18:11
  Mm-hmm.
• 18:12
  Are being, are being tortured.
• 18:15
  You know, this, it's so unfair.
• 18:18
  I just don't want to live in a world with that level of unfairness without for sure.
• 18:22
  Something about it.
• 18:24
  Yeah.
• 18:25
  And, but it's a heavy toll to take, to take on those cases.
• 18:28
  To work on those cases to Definitely, definitely.
• 18:31
  Yeah.
• 18:31
  It's, I remember when I worked in Iraq, I kind of stopped sleeping.
• 18:35
  Yeah.
• 18:35
  And also when I worked in this, uh, civil war in, in West Africa,
• 18:39
  I, um, my hair started falling out and I lost like five kilos.
• 18:43
  It was not a, I bet healthy time.
• 18:45
  Definitely.
• 18:46
  It's hard sometimes to do this kind of work.
• 18:48
  It's true.
• 18:49
  What allows you to survive those times, like mentally and emotionally?
• 18:56
  That's very easy.
• 18:56
  Love.
• 18:57
  Love to Right.
• 18:59
  I have such wonderful friends and family.
• 19:01
  My husband is the best husband in the whole world.
• 19:06
  He's like, my whole support team rolled into one person.
• 19:10
  If you could have like queer eye for the straight guy, he
• 19:12
  is like Brazilian eye for it.
• 19:16
  And you said he works for the United Nations as well, right?
• 19:19
  He does.
• 19:19
  He does?
• 19:19
  Yeah.
• 19:20
  Okay.
• 19:20
  So he works for the United Nations.
• 19:21
  So he's, you know, obviously into, is it the same line of work, like
• 19:25
  human rights or, you know, just helping out different countries.
• 19:29
  Like I know I have a friend who works in this, in this type of work
• 19:32
  and he's been in, uh, in Syria and in like some pretty heavy places,
• 19:37
  you know, like civil war places.
• 19:39
  That could be pretty, pretty dangerous.
• 19:41
  So it's connected, but my husband works in public health.
• 19:44
  He's a public health hero.
• 19:45
  Okay.
• 19:46
  Okay.
• 19:46
  Yeah.
• 19:46
  And so, um, you know, if you think about how this is all interconnected,
• 19:50
  Andrew, you know, we're deforesting the world at a rapid clip.
• 19:55
  Mm-hmm.
• 19:55
  That's something that I've worked on at Greenpeace and Mighty
• 19:58
  Earth and now coffee watch.
• 19:59
  But when we deforest, not only does it knock all our rainfall off kilter,
• 20:07
  turbocharges, climate change, most people don't know this, but a third
• 20:10
  of climate change is from agriculture.
• 20:12
  Right.
• 20:13
  Um, it does crazy stuff to our oceans.
• 20:17
  Um, it just crazy stuff to our whole planet.
• 20:20
  But it also means that we're going further and further into the heart
• 20:24
  of where wildlife used to have safe habitats without contact with humans.
• 20:29
  And so the closer we go into these wild areas, the more we get
• 20:33
  exposed to new novel pathogens.
• 20:36
  Mm-hmm.
• 20:37
  And the more we have factory farms, which is the other thing that I worked
• 20:41
  on a lot at Greenpeace and Mighty Earth, you know, these terrible factory farms.
• 20:45
  You squeeze lots of animals together and mm-hmm.
• 20:48
  Dirty, filthy, unhygienic, horrible conditions.
• 20:50
  It's basically torture.
• 20:52
  Yeah.
• 20:52
  Before we kill them.
• 20:53
  And which also by the way, is terrible for oceans.
• 20:55
  'cause all their poop goes straight into the ocean and creates these
• 20:59
  enormous dead zones that same.
• 21:02
  Um, Catho system.
• 21:03
  These, these, these concentrated farming operations also is like a Petri dish for
• 21:09
  bird flu and swine flu and crazy diseases.
• 21:12
  And so in a way, the environmental stuff that I work on is also rolling the dice.
• 21:18
  These, these horrible crimes of deforestation, factory farming.
• 21:21
  The way we do it now, it rolls the dice for these spectacular diseases like COVID.
• 21:27
  Like HIV.
• 21:29
  Mm-hmm.
• 21:30
  Like bird flu, like swine flu.
• 21:32
  And then you have these heroes, like my husband, who are trying to pick up the
• 21:35
  pieces and save everyone and vaccinate people and get the medicine and the
• 21:39
  tests out all over to stop us from all dying in large numbers essentially.
• 21:45
  They're doing the mop-up operations to compensate for corporations totally
• 21:50
  irresponsible behavior that activists like myself have not been able to curb or stop.
• 21:56
  So in a way I or hold him accountable for, right?
• 21:59
  Like that's a hold him accountable.
• 22:00
  So I think that is connected to my work.
• 22:03
  He's like the emergency mop up guys that come and try to save humanity when we've
• 22:09
  made ourselves sick by killing our planet.
• 22:11
  Yeah.
• 22:12
  That, uh, I mean it's, it is great to be able to, to work with somebody
• 22:15
  like that or to live with somebody who works in such a, a, an interesting
• 22:18
  field like that as you do as well.
• 22:21
  Um, now, you know, you work in this, you, you mentioned you work in this,
• 22:24
  this, this heavy, heavy, uh, intense sort of field of, of human rights,
• 22:29
  looking at war crimes and people being tortured and, and so forth.
• 22:32
  And then you start moving a little bit more environmental, um.
• 22:36
  You know, it's a, this, it's a switch.
• 22:38
  I can see the switch because a lot of the en environmental and conservation
• 22:42
  needs and issues that we're facing, a lot of them are human rights.
• 22:46
  Uh, they're human rights violations, fishery slaves.
• 22:49
  As you mentioned, when you worked, uh, in Asia, there was, um, there was,
• 22:53
  there's, you know, fishery slaves as we talked about on this podcast before.
• 22:57
  Um, and, and so that's, was that the, sort of the general move as you started
• 23:01
  to look at human rights, these files would start to come up where you work
• 23:05
  at Greenpeace and you're like, okay, let's start looking at these different
• 23:08
  aspects of conservation issues and how they, they relate to human rights.
• 23:12
  Yeah.
• 23:13
  Andrews, this is such a deep and good question.
• 23:16
  I think that human rights and environmental problems often tend to be
• 23:21
  the two sides of the exact same coin.
• 23:26
  Mm. One of the most fascinating things that we found out when I was at Greenpeace
• 23:29
  when I was um, our Southeast Asia research director, was that all these vessels.
• 23:36
  That were the most implicated in IUU fishing.
• 23:41
  Yep.
• 23:41
  In pirate fishing and overfishing and fishing juveniles and fishing out of
• 23:45
  season fishing in marine protected areas.
• 23:48
  Basically the vessels that are trashing the ocean
• 23:54
  disproportionately, they also had some of the worst human rights violations.
• 23:59
  Mm-hmm.
• 24:00
  They were just floating prisons.
• 24:04
  Hmm.
• 24:05
  And not just with seafood slaves, but in order to keep people in that level
• 24:10
  of servitude, they would deploy immense amounts of violence, torture, killings,
• 24:15
  threats, confiscating people's papers.
• 24:18
  Right.
• 24:19
  And beating them.
• 24:20
  You know, this is.
• 24:22
  But I remember I was working in Bangkok with the Oceans team there, and my
• 24:27
  flatmate was this fantastic reporter for the Guardian who broke open this landmark
• 24:34
  first ever, um, expose of seafood slavery.
• 24:36
  The Guardian is like at the heart of that.
• 24:38
  And then after Guardian Ian Orbin at the New York Times did some work
• 24:42
  and AP did some fantastic work.
• 24:44
  Um, and then it sort of spread.
• 24:46
  But I remember what I would, I would come back to work from home from
• 24:50
  talking with my flat name Kate, this wonderful journalist, Kate.
• 24:53
  I wish she could have gotten like every medal for best journalism in the world.
• 24:57
  Um, I would, I would go to the office after talking to Kate.
• 25:00
  I'd be like, guys.
• 25:01
  We have got to do more about human rights abuses at, in the high seas
• 25:06
  and, and in all these ports because the penalties for the environmental
• 25:11
  stuff are so low, but the penalties for the human rights abuses are higher.
• 25:14
  And these, mm-hmm.
• 25:16
  Let's start working on this in a holistic way.
• 25:19
  And I remember it was very similar, the deforestation problems for palm
• 25:23
  oil and pulp and paper, they often went, I mean, of course they're
• 25:27
  terrible for the environment.
• 25:28
  It's it.
• 25:29
  Carbon catastrophe.
• 25:31
  It's a biodiversity catastrophe.
• 25:33
  I have a beautiful picture of an orangutan mother and baby up on the wall behind me.
• 25:38
  You know, it's like the number one killer of orangutans is palm oil republic.
• 25:42
  Yep.
• 25:43
  It's, you know, they set these huge raging forest fires that
• 25:46
  you can see from outer space.
• 25:48
  The smoke like travels to China to the point where the Chinese complain to
• 25:52
  the Indonesian authorities about air.
• 25:54
  If China's calling you to complain about air, yeah, about air quality,
• 25:57
  you're doing something very wrong.
• 25:58
  Seriously.
• 25:59
  But it's not just a carbon bomb and an air pollution problem
• 26:02
  of like airpocalypse now.
• 26:04
  It's not just killing orangutans and driving immense biodiversity loss.
• 26:09
  Also these fires and this deforestation and pea training, it harmed so
• 26:14
  many indigenous communities and forest dependent communities.
• 26:18
  And then, you know, as they would resist, people would be violently mistreated.
• 26:22
  Threatened.
• 26:24
  You know, we could see that the human rights problems that go hand
• 26:27
  in hand with the deforestation on, on land as they do at sea.
• 26:31
  So I believe that, you know, it's the two sides of the same coin.
• 26:34
  And I see it again now in coffee where you've got kids and slaves
• 26:38
  and forced labor and extreme poverty on the social side.
• 26:41
  And then on the environmental side, deforestation, horrible
• 26:45
  overuse of chemicals.
• 26:46
  Often hhp is highly hazardous chemicals.
• 26:49
  And where do you think they go?
• 26:50
  The ocean.
• 26:51
  And our bodies.
• 26:52
  And our rivers.
• 26:54
  Yeah.
• 26:54
  And not just that, but plastics from cups and pods, and not just deforestation
• 27:00
  and plastics and misuse of water and chemicals, but also we're doing
• 27:04
  things in monocultures that should be beautiful Regenerative agroforestry.
• 27:08
  So with coffee, as with what I saw when I was at Cream piece and
• 27:13
  Mighty Earth, environmental and human right stuff go hand in hand.
• 27:17
  Yeah.
• 27:17
  If you wanna fix the planet.
• 27:20
  You gotta do it in this holistic way.
• 27:23
  Yeah.
• 27:24
  Now you're, you know, you're trying to help out a, an entire industry.
• 27:27
  Not just the farmers, not just the people who are affected by this.
• 27:31
  Not just the environment, even the industry, the people who
• 27:33
  are making profits off of this.
• 27:34
  Like, let's make profit, but let's do it properly.
• 27:37
  You, you identify this happening, you know, looking at deforestation
• 27:42
  through your work and you see coffee.
• 27:45
  Okay.
• 27:45
  The coffee industry, who is doing what about it?
• 27:48
  You're probably looking around and being like, what is being done?
• 27:51
  You find one paper, and that was written in 2007 by WWF, as you mentioned before.
• 27:57
  We, we recorded, uh.
• 28:00
  You know, talking about how deforestation in the, in the coffee
• 28:03
  industry is, is a huge problem.
• 28:05
  Not many people are covering this.
• 28:07
  When did, when did you start to discover this problem?
• 28:10
  And then when did that turn into the idea and, and sort of
• 28:14
  brainchild of, of coffee watch?
• 28:17
  So, this is a great question.
• 28:18
  When I was working at Greenpeace, I already knew that coffee was the
• 28:23
  number six driver of deforestation.
• 28:25
  Okay.
• 28:27
  And a lot of NGOs, Greenpeace, WWF Amnesty, so many NGOs got together and
• 28:33
  pushed with a lot of parliamentarians to pass this law in the European Union called
• 28:37
  the EU Deforestation Regulation to bar all of the top seven drivers of deforestation.
• 28:44
  Gotcha.
• 28:45
  Makes sense.
• 28:45
  You could think of it as like the seven deadly sins for forests.
• 28:48
  Right.
• 28:49
  Um, and Greenpeace works a lot on the big four.
• 28:53
  Mm-hmm.
• 28:53
  But the numbers five, six, and seven got really short rif.
• 28:56
  So when I went to Mighty Earth after Greenpeace, I worked a lot on cocoa
• 29:01
  and rubber, which are numbers five and seven of coco deforestation.
• 29:06
  But it was just niggling me and niggling me and niggling me.
• 29:08
  I wanted to work on coffee.
• 29:10
  All these scientists kept saying is the number six driver, but then
• 29:13
  there's no NGOs working on it really.
• 29:15
  And then I came across one paper.
• 29:17
  Yeah, which blew my mind.
• 29:21
  The WWF had investigated how coffee was threatening tiger habitat in Indonesian
• 29:30
  park, elephant, tiger, and rhino habitat.
• 29:33
  It's one of the worst.
• 29:34
  Wouldn't think about that important.
• 29:35
  National parks and coffee was trying deforestation there.
• 29:40
  I was like, what is going on?
• 29:44
  And then I started digging deeper and.
• 29:48
  I realized, oh my God, this is a problem of your portions.
• 29:52
  I mean, it's not one of the big four, but it's one of the seven
• 29:55
  deadly worst commodities for horse.
• 29:58
  Nobody is working on it.
• 29:59
  Really?
• 30:01
  WWF did that one beautiful thing and then they never did anything
• 30:04
  again on coffee and forest.
• 30:07
  So I decided to start Coffee watch at that time.
• 30:10
  And then I realized, wow, it's driving deforestation in all the
• 30:16
  forest frontiers in Cameroon and the whole Great Lakes region.
• 30:20
  Mm-hmm.
• 30:20
  And Chicken Z Habitat, bonobo, gorilla Habitat, Andro, these
• 30:24
  are our closest cousins.
• 30:27
  Yeah.
• 30:27
  Yeah.
• 30:27
  And then one day I was at the beach, uh, with my wonderful husband,
• 30:32
  um, and I just looked at all these stupid effing coffee cups.
• 30:38
  Mm-hmm.
• 30:39
  And it was a beautiful beach and I just thought.
• 30:43
  I hate my life.
• 30:43
  I started picking up all the coffee cups.
• 30:45
  I, and it felt like such an act of futility, right?
• 30:48
  'cause there's so many of them.
• 30:49
  As I was going through this garbage picking up episode in Thailand, just
• 30:53
  sort of like rage cleaning the beach.
• 30:56
  I thought, wow, it's not just deforestation, it's plastics.
• 31:01
  Mm. And it wasn't until much later, Andrew, that I processed how many
• 31:07
  chemicals the coffee industry is using and how much it relies on monoculture.
• 31:12
  Mm-hmm.
• 31:12
  So I think my resolve just kept deepening and deepening with every discovery.
• 31:17
  Yeah.
• 31:17
  Well, and it seems like it's, it was hitting all the bad parts
• 31:22
  of affecting the environment at every point in the supply chain.
• 31:26
  So you, you, from the production, like growing to the production
• 31:30
  aspect, uh, to the retail aspect.
• 31:34
  And then to the consumer aspect, it was hitting everything, not only
• 31:37
  from deforestation, but looking at lack of biodiversity with the
• 31:40
  monocultures, the use of pesticides and, and chemicals to grow the coffee,
• 31:45
  the packaging to sell the coffee.
• 31:48
  Then you got, you know, the packaging to sell and consume the coffee, and then
• 31:52
  it goes into the, to the environment, whether it be on land or at sea or in a
• 31:57
  river, or all of the, all of the above.
• 32:00
  Yes.
• 32:00
  It's, it's, it must've been devastating for you to, as you start to realize
• 32:04
  where this is at and, and you know, you're, you're one person or a few people
• 32:08
  who are, who are starting to recognize this and, and, and be aware of this.
• 32:11
  Even though this has been happening for a while, not many people are, were
• 32:15
  working on these types of problems.
• 32:16
  Maybe as a, a larger aspect.
• 32:18
  'cause we've known coffee cups.
• 32:20
  I know here in Canada we've known coffee cups have been a problem, you know, out.
• 32:24
  When people, you see them over, like people throw them out, but they
• 32:27
  don't always make it to the trash.
• 32:28
  They'll, they'll, you'll see them on the streets sometimes.
• 32:30
  You'll see them in the, in the lakes here.
• 32:33
  And sometimes, and, and obviously not good, uh, in, in
• 32:36
  a long, in a lot of that way.
• 32:38
  Um, but when it's, it's kind of interesting when
• 32:41
  you think of coffee itself.
• 32:42
  Like I, I, I'm not a coffee drinker, but I don't know anybody who's like, oh,
• 32:47
  it's so bad that I'm drinking coffee.
• 32:49
  It's so bad for the environment though.
• 32:51
  Like, you know, like, you'll see that with like pop or soda, right?
• 32:55
  Yeah.
• 32:55
  And you'll see that with alcohol.
• 32:57
  'cause you know, alcohol has its known effects.
• 32:59
  Uh, but with coffee, it's like every time someone's drinking, it's like a relief.
• 33:04
  You know?
• 33:04
  It's like you're getting that caffeine hit.
• 33:06
  Uh, if you drink coffee, like there are, there are, uh, studies
• 33:11
  that show that it's healthy for you if you drink it in moderation.
• 33:14
  And when you think about the production and the sale, I guess from, from my,
• 33:19
  I'm, I'm, this is very anecdotal.
• 33:21
  I always think of people buying it fair trade.
• 33:23
  I always think about people buying it where, you know, the, the, the,
• 33:27
  the agriculture aspect, the farmers benefiting because it's part of this
• 33:31
  fair trade, fair use type of system.
• 33:34
  And most people want that because that tends to be the better coffee anyway.
• 33:37
  It's, a lot of people are using their coffee, like they drink their wine.
• 33:40
  It's gotta be unique.
• 33:41
  They want to taste everything about it, you know, all the way from grinding it
• 33:45
  all down and, and, and then drinking it.
• 33:48
  Why is there such this disparity of information of the, what, everything
• 33:54
  I talked about in terms of the, the creation and the production of this
• 33:58
  to the selling to the consumer.
• 34:00
  Not really realizing the, the amount of problems that are occurring.
• 34:06
  Not just because of one individual doing it, but because of it.
• 34:09
  Whole industry supplying these individuals with.
• 34:12
  You know, great coffee Andrew.
• 34:15
  I think that there has been a giant consumer fraud.
• 34:20
  Mm. Perpetrated on coffee drinkers, both by the industry
• 34:25
  and by certification schemes.
• 34:27
  Actually.
• 34:28
  Interesting.
• 34:29
  I was shocked.
• 34:31
  Yeah.
• 34:31
  When I started Coffee Watch and I started digging into the certification
• 34:34
  schemes to discover that there is not a single certification scheme,
• 34:40
  not one that guarantees a living income price for coffee farmers or a
• 34:47
  living income wage for farm workers.
• 34:50
  There are 25 million coffee farmers in the world and a hundred
• 34:54
  million farm workers, give or take.
• 34:57
  So if you add in their dependence, there's like several kids, right?
• 35:01
  Per farmer and farm worker, we're talking about, well north of 200 million people.
• 35:08
  Almost all of whom live in poverty, most of whom live in extreme poverty.
• 35:12
  Right.
• 35:13
  With coffee.
• 35:14
  Right.
• 35:14
  And actually the certification schemes are not fixing it.
• 35:18
  Most of the certification schemes do not require that you
• 35:23
  be chemical free, like organic.
• 35:26
  And to my knowledge, the certification schemes do not force the companies
• 35:31
  whose coffee they certify to deal with packaging in an appropriate fashion.
• 35:38
  Even though we know that there are an estimated 500 billion disposable cups used
• 35:46
  annually, many of which are for coffee.
• 35:49
  Yeah.
• 35:49
  That's million.
• 35:50
  With a bee.
• 35:51
  With a bee.
• 35:52
  And even though we also know that
• 35:58
  we think there are hundreds of millions of pods.
• 36:06
  Yeah.
• 36:07
  Oh yeah, none of which are compostable and recyclable
• 36:12
  being appropriately disposed of.
• 36:15
  I mean, unless you think disposing of it in our ocean is appropriate,
• 36:21
  and most certifications don't really require the coffee to be grown
• 36:28
  in a serious agroforestry system.
• 36:31
  There's a difference between monoculture and agroforestry, okay.
• 36:35
  Right.
• 36:35
  And if you're gonna have a chemical free agroforestry system that's like
• 36:39
  a regenerative system with lots of trees mixed in with the coffee, you
• 36:43
  want multiple different canopy heights.
• 36:45
  You wanna have native species and not invasives.
• 36:48
  You want it to be bird friendly and bat friendly and butterfly friendly.
• 36:51
  And you know, if you do agroforestry coffee, it's got 19 times more
• 36:55
  biodiversity and double the carbon.
• 36:58
  It anchors rainfall.
• 36:59
  It's not a poison machine.
• 37:01
  It means you're just taking pressure off the oceans.
• 37:05
  Why is it that the certification schemes don't require coffee to treat?
• 37:09
  Its effluence.
• 37:10
  The coffee industry just dumps effluence straight into rivers.
• 37:15
  That's it.
• 37:15
  There's like.
• 37:16
  A handful of companies that treat their effluence, not even a hundred percent.
• 37:20
  The ones that do are like, I treat 80% of your effluence.
• 37:23
  And I'm like, yeah, that's like a, that's a flex B.
• 37:28
  So when you think about how like half of global coffee is certified,
• 37:33
  yeah, but the certification schemes do not play a living income price.
• 37:37
  Do not deal with packaging to stop everything from winding up in our
• 37:41
  oceans or horrible landfills do not deal with chemical overuse
• 37:47
  and misuse and effluent treatment.
• 37:50
  Do not require really good, robust agroforestry systems that work
• 37:54
  for carbon, for biodiversity, for farmer food security, for
• 37:57
  farmer income diversification.
• 37:59
  You realize it's like this giant consumer fraud.
• 38:03
  That's why huge, most perfectly nice people think they're
• 38:07
  drinking something good.
• 38:09
  And they're doing their best, and then they'd be shocked to
• 38:13
  learn what it really is doing.
• 38:16
  It's, it's unreal how they can get away with putting
• 38:21
  these certifications together.
• 38:23
  Now, I get, you know, when you initially put a certification together,
• 38:27
  it may not be the best, it may not be the best version of itself.
• 38:30
  Like when I first started my podcast, my first episode sucked.
• 38:34
  Like, compared to how I feel about it now, you know, 1700 or almost 1800 episodes
• 38:38
  later, when you put a certification in place of an industry that's probably
• 38:42
  not very well regulated because it's working in so many different countries,
• 38:45
  especially in countries where regulation is probably not the focus, um, in, in
• 38:50
  developing countries and and so forth.
• 38:52
  And you can get away with paying people at a very, very, very low wage if
• 38:57
  you know, a, a livable wage at all.
• 38:59
  As you mentioned, many of them are underneath.
• 39:01
  And so I, I can understand when you first put a certification in and it doesn't
• 39:04
  really meet the, the best standards for.
• 39:07
  The industry for the people growing it, you would expect that it would be
• 39:11
  improved over time and that, that people would, you know, the people who call it
• 39:16
  out and say, Hey, you know what, I, I, it's not that I want this to go away.
• 39:20
  It is, I want this to get better and I wanna work with you to get better.
• 39:23
  So from a, from a coffee wash standpoint, your organization, when you look at
• 39:28
  certifications like this, do you approach the cer the certification companies
• 39:34
  or the, the, the third party bodies who manage these certification, uh,
• 39:38
  organizations and then say, let's, you know, this is, this is under serving.
• 39:42
  You're not serving the community well, how can we make this better?
• 39:47
  Do you end up, you know, putting a little bit of pressure on them from
• 39:50
  a, an activism standpoint, but also we wanna work with you to increase these
• 39:55
  certifications and make them better?
• 39:59
  I absolutely believe that the certifications could do better
• 40:04
  and should do better, and.
• 40:07
  My dream world is one where I wake up tomorrow or the day after your podcast
• 40:12
  comes out and all the main certifications and coffee have said, oh wow, we're
• 40:16
  going to pay living income price and stop dumping hazardous chemicals and
• 40:21
  coffee and treat all our affluent and make sure that all the coffee is
• 40:23
  packaged and compostable and recyclable materials and like, where's the no
• 40:28
  deforestation pledge for me to sign?
• 40:31
  Yeah.
• 40:31
  Yeah.
• 40:31
  Exactly.
• 40:31
  That's my dream.
• 40:32
  That's my dream.
• 40:33
  Um, sadly, we're not there yet.
• 40:35
  Um, right.
• 40:35
  I certainly have tried, um, communicating with a number of the
• 40:40
  coffee certifications, schemes us have other organizations, and just recently,
• 40:47
  um, coffee Watch worked with mm-hmm.
• 40:51
  Which is a Brazilian organization that's won many, many awards and their director
• 40:55
  just won the Goldman award recently.
• 40:56
  Right.
• 40:56
  Just like the.
• 40:58
  Green Nobel Prize, I guess you could say.
• 41:02
  Um, and we worked with this other NGO in Colombia as well to do an
• 41:06
  investigation of, um, coffee in Colombia.
• 41:11
  Literally we found abuses in the certification schemes of fair trade,
• 41:18
  of reinforced alliance of four C, which is like one of the biggest in coffee.
• 41:24
  Yeah.
• 41:24
  Mostly for Nestle and cafe practices, which is like a
• 41:28
  hundred percent for Starbucks.
• 41:30
  Um,
• 41:33
  we just did that report, but already Coffee watch's first
• 41:36
  report on, on abuses that we found in Chinese coffee supply chains.
• 41:43
  A lot of that was certified.
• 41:46
  Did another report on abuses in Mexican coffee supply chains.
• 41:50
  A lot of that was certified.
• 41:53
  Um, cafe practices like is almost all of Starbucks coffees.
• 41:57
  Certified by this thing called Cafe Practices, which was set up mm-hmm.
• 42:02
  By Conservation International.
• 42:03
  I'm sure you know of them.
• 42:04
  They do a lot of ocean work, so you've probably across them.
• 42:07
  Yeah.
• 42:07
  Well they certify, um, Starbucks coffee, and not only do they certify
• 42:13
  all the environmental abuses we were talking about, um, we also filed some,
• 42:19
  a, a strategic litigation against, uh, coffee companies in the United States.
• 42:25
  Um, we filed against Starbucks, Nestle, Dunkin Donuts, McDonald's, and a couple
• 42:31
  others for slavery in their coffee.
• 42:34
  Wow.
• 42:35
  And some of that was certified coffee.
• 42:39
  So just to give you a sense of like how bad it is, um, the Brazilian
• 42:47
  Labor Inspection Department found 3,700 slaves in coffee plantations.
• 42:54
  Between 1996 and 2003, and that's each of them, they only
• 42:57
  inspected 0.1% of coffee farm.
• 43:02
  Yeah.
• 43:02
  So they're just scratch, literally scratching the surface.
• 43:04
  They're just scratching the surface.
• 43:06
  So we are talking about certified slavery.
• 43:11
  Yeah.
• 43:12
  As well as certified deforestation and forced labor
• 43:15
  and child labor and hazardous.
• 43:19
  Well, it's, it's really interesting because you're talking about these
• 43:22
  major companies, like these major corporations, you know, Starbucks,
• 43:26
  McDonald's, and so forth, and.
• 43:28
  I know with the seafood industry, to use this as an analogy, the,
• 43:33
  one of the biggest problems with the seafood industry is not knowing
• 43:35
  the supply chain from catching all the way up to the final retail.
• 43:39
  And there was, Oceania made some interesting discoveries,
• 43:43
  uh, scary discoveries really.
• 43:44
  Whereas, like a lot of the, the seafood that was sold in seafood
• 43:48
  markets a number of years ago, I think it was just around 2018.
• 43:51
  2019, 50% of them were not the seafood that they were selling at.
• 43:56
  And then it wasn't necessarily the, uh, the markets that knew about it.
• 44:01
  It was the fact that they, throughout the, the, the supply chain things
• 44:06
  changed and they didn't know how it changed, so it wasn't being certified.
• 44:10
  So you have, um, you know, MSC, the Marine Stewardship Council who have come out
• 44:15
  and they said that we've actually been able to inspect and we follow, I think
• 44:19
  it was over 400 different supply chains.
• 44:22
  I know they, they sometimes identify problems even still within that, but at
• 44:26
  least they know where this fish is coming from and where the seafood's coming from.
• 44:30
  Was that the problem when you, when you started bringing lawsuits against these
• 44:34
  corporations is they just didn't know or didn't have control over the entire supply
• 44:39
  chain going from the grow, the grow up to the, um, uh, the final sale at, at a
• 44:46
  McDonald's or at a Starbucks or wherever.
• 44:49
  Was that the, that the actual problem?
• 44:51
  Do you know those little three monkeys that everyone has on their
• 44:54
  desk that says like, see no evil?
• 44:56
  Yes.
• 44:57
  Speak no evil.
• 44:57
  Yes.
• 44:58
  Yeah.
• 44:59
  If you don't know Yeah.
• 45:02
  What your supply chain is, is that because you can't know or
• 45:08
  because you don't want to know?
• 45:10
  This is really important question.
• 45:11
  That's the question, right?
• 45:12
  Yeah.
• 45:13
  The answer matters hugely for sure.
• 45:16
  And I personally believe that if you are buying coffee.
• 45:21
  You must know Yeah.
• 45:24
  Where your coffee's coming from.
• 45:26
  And if you cannot figure that out, you should not be in the
• 45:30
  business of selling coffee.
• 45:32
  Right.
• 45:32
  You know, it's like if I was gonna sell you a can of tuna fish, I should be able
• 45:37
  to guarantee A, that it's tuna fish B, that it doesn't have a resty nail in it.
• 45:41
  See, it doesn't have salmonella.
• 45:43
  Yeah.
• 45:44
  It wasn't made by slaves.
• 45:45
  Right.
• 45:45
  And it's the same with coffee.
• 45:47
  Yeah.
• 45:48
  You know, I think that we have created a system, which completely
• 45:52
  broken, Andrew, completely broken.
• 45:55
  Why is it that all these small holder farmers who are so impoverished are not
• 46:02
  counted as employees of coffee companies?
• 46:05
  They dance to the tune of those coffee companies.
• 46:08
  Coffee companies say jump.
• 46:09
  They say how high?
• 46:10
  Yeah.
• 46:10
  Why?
• 46:10
  Because they have no bargaining power.
• 46:12
  You know, they often live in countries where literally you cannot be in a union.
• 46:17
  The number two coffee producing country in the world is Vietnam.
• 46:19
  Like literally.
• 46:22
  Unions are not legal there.
• 46:24
  We did our investigation in in China into abuses in Chinese coffee supply chains,
• 46:28
  but literally unions are not allowed.
• 46:30
  They're not legal, so can't protect the workers.
• 46:33
  And that's not even counting the countries where there's so much
• 46:36
  violent union busting, like Guatemala.
• 46:39
  Yeah.
• 46:40
  And Mexico and Brazil where bus and Ed slashed the coffee
• 46:46
  unions and so many other unions.
• 46:48
  So you know, if the farmers are basically the slaves or in
• 46:56
  some cases actually the slaves.
• 46:58
  Yeah, yeah.
• 47:00
  The coffee industry, I should say farmers and farm workers.
• 47:05
  Mm-hmm.
• 47:05
  Why is it that they aren't counted as employees?
• 47:08
  Why is it that they aren't tabulated?
• 47:10
  Why aren't you responsible for their healthcare, their pension, their
• 47:12
  social security, their protective gear?
• 47:16
  Why don't you have to take responsibility for the eff flu?
• 47:20
  Why don't you have to take responsibility for the HH ps, the highly hazardous
• 47:23
  pesticides, which all wind up in the soil and in the water, and in our oceans.
• 47:28
  Mm-hmm.
• 47:28
  I just think there's this plausible deniability where the industry has
• 47:32
  decided we don't want those people to be our employees because then we
• 47:35
  would be completely responsible for their poverty and their slavery.
• 47:39
  So we're outsourcing it and we're just calling it the free
• 47:41
  market, you know, so Fair enough.
• 47:45
  That's the system that we have.
• 47:47
  Yeah.
• 47:47
  Now we just have to fix it.
• 47:48
  We have to ensure that those farmers have rights, that the farm workers have
• 47:51
  rights, that they're paid a living income.
• 47:53
  Mm-hmm.
• 47:53
  That the companies treat their affluence.
• 47:55
  I think the key is let's make sure that the industry can't say, I don't know.
• 48:02
  Yeah.
• 48:02
  I don't care.
• 48:03
  Yeah.
• 48:04
  That's not an okay answer.
• 48:05
  That's like not a viable answer.
• 48:07
  And, and so that's why, hence the lawsuits being brought to some of the corporations
• 48:10
  and be like, look, you may not have known.
• 48:13
  But we don't know if you actually did know and just ignored it, or you just
• 48:15
  didn't want to know and let it go.
• 48:17
  But we want you to know, we want you to make it your, uh, your,
• 48:21
  your first priority to know what is happening at the production site
• 48:25
  and all the way through, just like McDonald's does with their fish now.
• 48:28
  Like they, they are very proud of it and they, they advertise it a lot that
• 48:34
  I, I think that's, that's, so, it's an interesting way of doing things.
• 48:37
  It's like, okay, we're gonna bring these lawsuits.
• 48:38
  'cause you need to know that this is wrong and you need to, you
• 48:41
  need to find out if you're gonna buy and make money off of this.
• 48:43
  Like a lot of money, especially some of these, these companies who have really
• 48:48
  focused on creating coffees and cafes and and stuff at other fast food restaurants.
• 48:53
  And then you're going back to, to be like, okay, now let's start from the
• 48:57
  beginning and if we were gonna do it prob properly, this is how we would do it.
• 49:02
  Now if Coffee Watch is coming into this and you want them to do it properly.
• 49:07
  You know, what's, what's the first step you start at the,
• 49:09
  the, the site of production?
• 49:11
  Like you start at the farm and, and how do you change an industry that has
• 49:16
  already taken down a lot of forests that has already made monoculture,
• 49:20
  um, that has already has, you know, the, the, these, these slaves that
• 49:24
  are, that are working on these farms.
• 49:25
  How do you go in and change that culture?
• 49:28
  'cause I can't imagine that these are corporations in charge of this.
• 49:32
  This is probably a lot of.
• 49:35
  Let's just say nasty individuals and companies that are, that are
• 49:38
  in charge of this, that are not willing to play by the rules.
• 49:41
  Well, so Andrew, you know, it's really interesting to think about
• 49:44
  what has worked in the past.
• 49:45
  Mm-hmm.
• 49:45
  In other industries.
• 49:47
  So you talked about slavery in seafood, which I used to work on more back
• 49:52
  in the day when I, a green piece.
• 49:54
  You know, you look at how major supermarkets like
• 49:56
  Walmart got so super involved.
• 49:59
  Yeah.
• 49:59
  You talked about how McDonald's got so super involved.
• 50:02
  Well, guess what?
• 50:04
  Around 60% of global coffee is bought in supermarkets.
• 50:07
  Yeah, true Supermarkets figured it out for seafood.
• 50:10
  I'm sure they can figure it out for coffee.
• 50:12
  Yeah.
• 50:12
  McDonald's is one of the top coffee servers in the world.
• 50:18
  Yeah.
• 50:18
  You know, I bet.
• 50:18
  I think that just as.
• 50:20
  The industry that uses palm oil, which includes like, you know, people who do
• 50:24
  shampoo and cosmetics and cup of noodles and cookies and, um, detergent and
• 50:30
  lipstick and all these companies that, that, that use palm oil change everything.
• 50:34
  Yeah.
• 50:34
  50% of what you leave the supermarket with is palm oil in it.
• 50:37
  A lot of companies like Unilever, et cetera, they figured out how are we
• 50:41
  gonna get completely traceable palm oil?
• 50:43
  How are we gonna get deforestation free palm oil?
• 50:46
  You know, we saw deforestation for palm oil has gone down in a lot of places.
• 50:52
  We know that forced labor in palm oil with really curbed.
• 50:57
  Right.
• 50:57
  We know that seafood, slavery, a lot of companies have stepped up and done
• 51:02
  immense amounts of stuff to fix it.
• 51:05
  We know companies have done this kind of work before and they can do it again.
• 51:08
  These are adjacent industries.
• 51:10
  Maybe one of the closest adjacent industries is cocoa.
• 51:13
  Yeah.
• 51:13
  But you know, there are good models for going deforestation free.
• 51:17
  There are great models for going traceable.
• 51:20
  We know exactly how to do deforestation free and traceable coffee today.
• 51:24
  Just like actually there are compostable pods.
• 51:28
  Yeah, there are compostable pods, you know.
• 51:31
  Um.
• 51:33
  There are billions of single use aluminum and plastic capsules that have gone to
• 51:37
  landfills and oceans, um, over time.
• 51:40
  But now there's compostable pods.
• 51:43
  Let's you know, we and, and not from some MoMA wearing hippie dippy
• 51:47
  corner shop run by a mom and pop.
• 51:48
  No, Nespresso ne especially.
• 51:50
  That's a major company.
• 51:52
  Yeah.
• 51:52
  It's like owned by Nestle.
• 51:53
  Right?
• 51:53
  Nespresso.
• 51:54
  Nestle owned Nesto.
• 51:55
  It's the world's biggest coffee company.
• 51:56
  20% of Global Coffee Nest Nestle.
• 51:59
  So, okay.
• 52:01
  We know that we can do compostable pos, we know we can do cups for coffee
• 52:06
  that are not lined with plastic.
• 52:08
  They're made out of recycled paper and not virgin paper, and
• 52:11
  that don't go into the oceans.
• 52:14
  We know how to fix the cups.
• 52:16
  We know how to fix the pots.
• 52:17
  We know how to do deforestation free.
• 52:19
  We know how to do traceable.
• 52:21
  We even know how to think about rolling out a living income in coffee
• 52:27
  because the cocoa industry has made so many strides in thinking through how
• 52:32
  to deliver a living income to cocoa farmers who've been right to also very
• 52:36
  impoverished, um, in horrible conditions.
• 52:39
  Much like much like coffee.
• 52:40
  So the good news, the bad news is things are bad.
• 52:44
  The good news is there's so many solutions mm-hmm.
• 52:48
  Where they're at the tip of our fingers, and sometimes they're even
• 52:51
  deployed by the same exact companies.
• 52:54
  That are very present in coffee, that are also super present in seafood or coffee
• 52:59
  and cocoa or coffee and soy or coffee.
• 53:02
  So there, there are multiple different models of making things more sustainable
• 53:07
  and making things more equitable.
• 53:09
  Correct.
• 53:09
  Uh, and and yeah.
• 53:10
  And, and more environmentally friendly.
• 53:12
  Correct.
• 53:12
  That's really, that's really interesting.
• 53:14
  Now for, for, uh, for people who drink coffee, you know, they're probably
• 53:18
  listening to this being like, oh my gosh.
• 53:20
  Like, how do I know if my coffee falls within one of these bad category areas?
• 53:26
  Or if my coffee is, is good.
• 53:29
  You know, how, how does one figure that out?
• 53:32
  Like if, you know, even if it has a certification on there, you're
• 53:35
  like, is this certification real?
• 53:37
  It's a lot of work for someone who just wants to have a cup of coffee.
• 53:39
  So how do, how do coffee consumers figure this out?
• 53:46
  Well, I have good news and bad news for coffee.
• 53:48
  Okay.
• 53:48
  So let's get the bad news out of the way first and then focus on the good.
• 53:53
  If you drink coffee regularly, you almost certainly are
• 53:56
  drinking slavery, child labor, deforestation, and ocean destruction.
• 54:00
  I'm sorry, but I think it's mm-hmm.
• 54:03
  That's a hard pill to swallow.
• 54:03
  That's just the truth.
• 54:05
  Yeah.
• 54:06
  Your coffee is killing jaguars and whales, however, instead of sitting there
• 54:14
  and like sobbing your eyes out mm-hmm.
• 54:16
  Or going into some doom scrolling, downward spiral of despair, you
• 54:21
  should think about yourself as a powerful, beautiful, change agent.
• 54:28
  Mm.
• 54:31
  Don't sit there and self flatly because you've been unwittingly complicit in
• 54:38
  horrible abuses of people in planet.
• 54:40
  No focus on all the great things that you can do now.
• 54:44
  Mm-hmm.
• 54:45
  That's what matters.
• 54:48
  Because I think also just as I, sorry to interrupt, but just also too,
• 54:51
  I think I, I think there's people who feel bad that this happens.
• 54:55
  Like, oh, what do I do?
• 54:56
  And people who wanna do it, and then there's other people
• 54:58
  who are gonna argue against it.
• 54:59
  No, this certification's, you know, like how you, you always hear that
• 55:02
  with an argument when somebody says, reveal something to you.
• 55:05
  I see this in, in, in oceans all the time when we say something, oh, this
• 55:09
  is actually bad, or Climate change is doing this, they'll argue against
• 55:12
  it almost as a defense mechanism to say, no, I'm not doing anything bad.
• 55:17
  It's not like, I think the, the big thing to say, and I always tell my
• 55:20
  eyes, it's not necessarily your fault that you're drinking coffee and you're
• 55:24
  contributing to this by drinking coffee.
• 55:27
  I don't want people to say, and, and I'm sure you're the same
• 55:29
  way, is that this is your fault.
• 55:32
  The, the, the, the reality of it is just the way the industry is built.
• 55:37
  We are bringing you information to say, Hey, there's a lot of flaws in this
• 55:40
  industry, and it can, it can get better.
• 55:43
  So here's how we work it to do better.
• 55:46
  Right.
• 55:46
  Is that That's correct.
• 55:47
  I think that's absolutely correct.
• 55:49
  So I would say, you know, if your first stage and hearing all this is denial,
• 55:53
  like, oh, this woman is crazy, right?
• 55:55
  Please go visit coffee Watch.
• 55:56
  You can read all her reports.
• 55:58
  I am telling you the absolute honest to God truth.
• 56:02
  Mm-hmm.
• 56:02
  This data-driven, this is not a joke.
• 56:05
  I do not come from like rando weirdo groups.
• 56:08
  I've worked at some of the world's top environmental human rights organizations.
• 56:13
  Yeah, for sure.
• 56:13
  I graduated from Yale Law School.
• 56:14
  Everything we do gets a liable and a defamation check.
• 56:17
  I promise.
• 56:18
  I'm telling you the truth.
• 56:19
  Yeah.
• 56:19
  It comes from denial to anger.
• 56:20
  You feel angry about this.
• 56:22
  Okay, that's fine.
• 56:24
  Don't feel angry at yourself.
• 56:26
  Right.
• 56:26
  Don't feel angry at the past.
• 56:29
  Right.
• 56:29
  Let's move through that.
• 56:30
  Maybe the next stage is bargaining.
• 56:32
  Oh, well I drink certified coffee.
• 56:33
  How bad can it be?
• 56:34
  Mm. Actually bad.
• 56:36
  Right?
• 56:36
  Let's be ready.
• 56:37
  Bad.
• 56:39
  Let's move through.
• 56:40
  Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance to action.
• 56:44
  You know.
• 56:47
  You drink coffee every day, that means you can change the world every day
• 56:50
  and make it a better place every day.
• 56:52
  Ah, I like that.
• 56:53
  Okay.
• 56:54
  Coffee can absolutely be a vehicle for saving the planet
• 56:59
  and making people's lives better.
• 57:01
  Mm-hmm.
• 57:02
  And just think about it this way.
• 57:04
  You can break it down into little steps, and you can start working
• 57:07
  your way through these habits first.
• 57:12
  Don't ever get a disposable cup.
• 57:14
  Just don't do it right either.
• 57:16
  Don't drink that coffee or plunk your little butt down on a chair
• 57:20
  and sit down and drink it right there for two or three minutes.
• 57:22
  It'll be nice.
• 57:23
  You can talk to someone.
• 57:24
  You can like make a friend or bring your uncle, bring a reusable mug,
• 57:28
  or, or whatever other ones do.
• 57:29
  Yeah.
• 57:30
  Yeah.
• 57:31
  PO pods.
• 57:32
  Never get a pod that is just gonna wind up in our oceans.
• 57:36
  Don't do that.
• 57:36
  Mm-hmm.
• 57:37
  Please don't do that.
• 57:38
  If you love whales, don't do it.
• 57:40
  Yeah.
• 57:40
  Don't.
• 57:40
  Don't get a compost of a one or, again, skip it.
• 57:43
  How important can it be to you?
• 57:45
  Just know that if you do the wrong thing, you're voting to put it in a
• 57:49
  seal's tummy, and if you do the right thing, you're saving the planet.
• 57:52
  Hmm.
• 57:53
  That's a powerful thing.
• 57:54
  You just made the planet a better place.
• 57:56
  You paid for something really good.
• 57:58
  Right, right.
• 58:00
  Another organic chemicals, they're all connected, are what goes into our bodies.
• 58:06
  What goes into the soil, what goes into rivers, what goes into oceans.
• 58:09
  Coffee is a very HHP thirsty crop, uses a lot of highly hazardous pesticides.
• 58:15
  Don't do that.
• 58:16
  Please don't do that either.
• 58:18
  You can buy organic coffee, which is really chemical free.
• 58:21
  Rainforest Alliance is like maybe a B minus, and Fairtrade
• 58:25
  is like a b plus on chemicals.
• 58:26
  Okay, so those are not perfect, but they're better than nothing.
• 58:29
  They're better.
• 58:29
  Yep.
• 58:30
  Or you can just take a picture of yourself with your coffee cup and tweet
• 58:34
  or Facebook or Insta or whatever the company and say, I am your loyal customer.
• 58:40
  I wish you made organic.
• 58:42
  Or just ask at the counter.
• 58:44
  Ask at the restaurant.
• 58:46
  Ask at the cafe.
• 58:47
  Almost every chain has one organic option.
• 58:51
  Just try that.
• 58:52
  Yep.
• 58:53
  That's something you can do.
• 58:54
  If you can buy coffee that pays a living income, please do that.
• 59:00
  You don't have to do it every time.
• 59:02
  You don't have to do it when you're late or rushing or on
• 59:05
  the go, but stock up on that.
• 59:07
  Make a habit of it.
• 59:09
  There is coffee that pays a living income.
• 59:11
  How do you know?
• 59:12
  How do you know which one?
• 59:13
  Like which brands?
• 59:15
  Check, check, check every time.
• 59:17
  Okay.
• 59:17
  When you're buying, check if, if they do it, they will say they do it.
• 59:20
  Google Living Income, call me.
• 59:21
  So it's not just like on a certification.
• 59:22
  It says we provide livable wages for no certification.
• 59:26
  No certification.
• 59:26
  It just says on the package we provide livable wages for our farmers.
• 59:30
  That's correct.
• 59:30
  And farm workers.
• 59:31
  Okay.
• 59:31
  And, and most of the companies that do that tend to be smaller, mid-size,
• 59:34
  so they don't serve every geography.
• 59:36
  So depending on whether, whether you Canada or the US or Europe or
• 59:38
  Japan or Korea, it'll be different.
• 59:40
  Yeah.
• 59:40
  Might.
• 59:40
  And it might be a little harder to get than your regular grocery store.
• 59:43
  You might have to order it online or something like that.
• 59:45
  So order it online and just make a plan Every month I'm
• 59:47
  gonna order one bag, two bags.
• 59:49
  Yeah.
• 59:49
  Every week, depending on how much coffee you drink.
• 59:51
  Gotcha.
• 59:52
  That's a huge thing.
• 59:53
  Or if you can't do that, you can donate money to a charity
• 59:59
  that works with coffee farmers.
• 1:00:01
  So if you're gonna impoverish them by buying low cost coffee, you can
• 1:00:06
  give back to their communities.
• 1:00:08
  Right.
• 1:00:09
  For Christmas.
• 1:00:10
  Yeah.
• 1:00:10
  Or you can give this a Christmas present to all the coffee lovers in your life.
• 1:00:14
  Yeah.
• 1:00:15
  And I would say if you are someone who cares enough to just ask the
• 1:00:20
  barista, the manager, the waiter, the Metre D Ask, please ask.
• 1:00:27
  Because every time you ask the, that filters up all the
• 1:00:31
  way eventually to the C-suite.
• 1:00:33
  And the same goes with social media.
• 1:00:35
  Go on their social media.
• 1:00:37
  And just tag them and say, please do better if you want.
• 1:00:41
  You can go on our Coffee Watch website.
• 1:00:43
  We have a place where you can take lots of actions.
• 1:00:45
  You can sign every good petition that's out there for sustainable coffee.
• 1:00:49
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:00:49
  Petitions.
• 1:00:50
  It takes you one minute to click all those petitions, but
• 1:00:53
  that's a really big difference.
• 1:00:56
  We have a list of the films that you can watch.
• 1:00:59
  You can screen them with your friends who are coffee drinkers.
• 1:01:02
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:01:03
  Just spreading the word with five or 10 other humans on
• 1:01:06
  planet Earth is a powerful thing.
• 1:01:08
  Hosting a screening, that's like a more fun way of doing it than
• 1:01:13
  sitting down and watching someone like me telling you sad, bad news.
• 1:01:17
  Maybe your friends are more into films.
• 1:01:20
  Yeah.
• 1:01:21
  That's a great way to go.
• 1:01:23
  The petitions.
• 1:01:24
  Buying from the heart, sending messages on social media.
• 1:01:28
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:01:28
  Posting screenings, asking in your coffee shop.
• 1:01:32
  All those things are powerful, and if you live in a democracy like Canada
• 1:01:36
  or the US or Europe, then please contact your lawmaker just once a
• 1:01:41
  year and ask them to do something.
• 1:01:44
  There are laws on the books that have been proposed that would
• 1:01:47
  totally clean up global coffee.
• 1:01:50
  Yeah.
• 1:01:50
  Sometimes it's a matter of like making up a big stink about it to Yeah.
• 1:01:54
  Yeah.
• 1:01:55
  Make sure our government representatives are like, oh, this is an important
• 1:01:57
  aspect to, to our people.
• 1:01:59
  Here's a great example.
• 1:01:59
  Germany has this sustainable supply chain law called the Lefa Cat and Gazettes.
• 1:02:04
  There wasn't enough popular support for it, and although many people in
• 1:02:08
  Poles said that they loved it, a lot of really vocal negative industry
• 1:02:13
  captured the ear of the new chancellor.
• 1:02:15
  He said he wants to cancel the law.
• 1:02:18
  You know, people power matters.
• 1:02:19
  If you're in a democracy, you can pass laws and you can protect laws.
• 1:02:23
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:24
  And laws are a game changer.
• 1:02:25
  We have a law in the books in Europe called the EUDR one in the UK called
• 1:02:30
  the UK DR in German, in Germany, they have that supply chain law.
• 1:02:34
  And Canada, there's some good laws in the US We have the Forest
• 1:02:38
  Act that got bipartisan support in the house and the Senate.
• 1:02:42
  There are laws, you can, you are not in North Korea.
• 1:02:45
  Right.
• 1:02:45
  If you're listening to this podcast, you're definitely not living in Exactly.
• 1:02:49
  And probably you're not living in Russia or China and that you are free.
• 1:02:55
  That's amazing.
• 1:02:56
  You're effing free.
• 1:02:57
  Yeah.
• 1:02:57
  Yeah.
• 1:02:57
  It's a democracy.
• 1:02:58
  If you drink coffee every day, I just ask you that once in your life
• 1:03:01
  or once a year, you do something for good lives to change global coffee.
• 1:03:05
  And if that's all you ever do, yeah.
• 1:03:06
  That would still be amazing.
• 1:03:08
  Yeah.
• 1:03:09
  That would make you a hero for sustainable coffee.
• 1:03:12
  Perfect.
• 1:03:13
  I love the, I love the call to action because I think this is important.
• 1:03:16
  I think, I think coffee lovers, every time I, I, you know, my wife's a coffee
• 1:03:19
  lover, she always wants to do better.
• 1:03:21
  You know, my kids love their coffee, they wanna do better.
• 1:03:25
  Everybody that I know, they love their coffee, they love their specific coffee,
• 1:03:28
  and they wanna do better for the people who are growing the coffee for them.
• 1:03:31
  And I think this is, this is important, um, to, to be able to get out and, and,
• 1:03:35
  you know, it's, it's really interesting how, you know, at first if I told
• 1:03:38
  people, yeah, I have someone from coffee watch on, you know, I have a
• 1:03:41
  telephone coffee watch, and they're like.
• 1:03:43
  What, how does that have to affect the oceans?
• 1:03:45
  Well, it does affect the oceans 'cause the entire supply chain, when you think
• 1:03:47
  about it, plastic ends up in the oceans.
• 1:03:49
  You have the cups, you have, you know, the, the, um, the little containers,
• 1:03:54
  the pods, they end up in the ocean.
• 1:03:56
  The chemicals end up in the ocean from that.
• 1:03:58
  And it hurts.
• 1:03:59
  It harms wildlife and our wild systems, whether it be on land, in fresh
• 1:04:03
  water or in the marine realm, uh, it always, it always makes a difference.
• 1:04:07
  So, tell, I wanna thank you for, for bringing this to our attention.
• 1:04:10
  Really do appreciate it.
• 1:04:11
  I'd love to have you back on to get updates on, on
• 1:04:13
  where we are in the industry.
• 1:04:15
  Um, but also, you know, if people want to get a hold of your, go to
• 1:04:20
  your website, can you just let people know what the, that website is?
• 1:04:23
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:04:24
  Please come to our website.
• 1:04:26
  That's where you can find all those wonderful petitions and things like that.
• 1:04:29
  It's just coffee watch.org.
• 1:04:32
  Awesome.
• 1:04:32
  And there is a a, and I'll put the other link to it as well.
• 1:04:36
  There is a, a link on there.
• 1:04:38
  Right at the top it says actions, and that's where you can sign the
• 1:04:41
  petitions, you can volunteer, you can host screenings, and then you
• 1:04:45
  can understand how to buy more, uh, why more responsible coffee?
• 1:04:48
  So again, thank you so much, Atel.
• 1:04:50
  We really appreciate it.
• 1:04:51
  I'm, I'm so happy to have shared this time with you.
• 1:04:54
  I'm so thrilled to appear with you here, and I just think that, you know,
• 1:04:59
  I wanna leave people with a feeling of immense hope and beauty and that
• 1:05:05
  there's so much possibility for change.
• 1:05:08
  Yes.
• 1:05:08
  And I think we've seen it before and we can do it again.
• 1:05:12
  Absolutely.
• 1:05:12
  Wonderful.
• 1:05:13
  Stay on the line and we'll, uh, we'll chat soon.
• 1:05:15
  And thank you so much.
• 1:05:16
  We really appreciate.
• 1:05:17
  Thank you Itel for joining me on today's episode of the How
• 1:05:19
  to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
• 1:05:20
  It was great to have you on.
• 1:05:21
  It was great to be able to find out all about this industry, a lot of stuff.
• 1:05:24
  I had no idea what was going on from modern slavery to monocultures and loss
• 1:05:30
  of biodiversity to deforestation being one of the top seven triggers of deforestation
• 1:05:34
  or reasons for deforestation.
• 1:05:36
  It's unreal.
• 1:05:37
  I can't believe that's even a thing, but if you think about how many people,
• 1:05:39
  you know, drink coffee and how popular it is and what the best way to go and
• 1:05:44
  how to find out which is the best coffee company or coffee brand or type of
• 1:05:48
  coffee to go with is a really difficult thing to do just like it is for seafood.
• 1:05:52
  And it just kind of goes to show that it can happen in any industry and then having
• 1:05:55
  that site from grow to consumption for companies to be able to see that whole
• 1:06:00
  supply chain is really, really important.
• 1:06:02
  So it's nice to see somebody like Atel and her staff of Coffee watch be able
• 1:06:07
  to work within this industry, even though it's not an industry that has
• 1:06:10
  a lot of attention to it, which is.
• 1:06:12
  Boggles boggles my mind when she first started.
• 1:06:14
  People weren't really paying attention to it.
• 1:06:16
  So I'm glad somebody is, and I'm glad there are more and more
• 1:06:19
  people who are doing so now.
• 1:06:20
  And so if you want to go to find out more about how to, you know, drink coffee
• 1:06:25
  better, Astel mentioned, go to coffee watch.org, all one word, coffee watch.org.
• 1:06:31
  And if you want to take action, I'll put the link in the show notes.
• 1:06:34
  You just have to go on the top menu bar.
• 1:06:36
  Over to the far right by the donate button, so you can donate as well.
• 1:06:39
  But right by the donate button, there's a list of actions that you can do.
• 1:06:42
  You can volunteer, you can assign petitions, and you can find out
• 1:06:44
  how to buy more responsible coffee, and of course, host screenings
• 1:06:48
  for coffee type documentaries.
• 1:06:50
  So thank you so much for joining us, Atel.
• 1:06:53
  Thank you for joining us on this episode of the podcast, because this is
• 1:06:57
  something that we always wanna learn.
• 1:06:58
  We'll learn new things, learn how things affect the ocean, learn
• 1:07:01
  how things affect the planet.
• 1:07:02
  The deforestation is a huge trigger for planetary disaster.
• 1:07:06
  As well as plastic pollution in the ocean.
• 1:07:09
  So it's always great to be able to find out more ways that we
• 1:07:12
  can find solutions in a industry that would make a big difference.
• 1:07:15
  'cause there's so many people that drink coffee and making better
• 1:07:18
  choices can make huge differences.
• 1:07:20
  So I want to thank Itel for joining us.
• 1:07:22
  If you have any questions or comments, please lay them in the comments below.
• 1:07:25
  You're watching this on YouTube, and of course, if you're watching this on
• 1:07:27
  your favorite podcast app, which is the audio version, you can get ahold of me.
• 1:07:31
  Going to speak up for blue.com/contact.
• 1:07:34
  Fill out the form, send me an email.
• 1:07:36
  You can also go to at How to Protect the Ocean on Instagram
• 1:07:39
  that's at How to Protect the Ocean.
• 1:07:41
  Send me a dm. Love to hear from you.
• 1:07:43
  Other than that, thank you for joining me on today's episode of the
• 1:07:46
  How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
• 1:07:48
  I'm your host, Andrew Lewin from the True nor Strong and free.
• 1:07:51
  Have a great day.
• 1:07:51
  We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.