Making sustainability mainstream

To The Campus,

You start your day with a cup of hot coffee. You grab a banana in the dining hall for a snack after class. You go to the lab to print out your most recent assignment. We establish a routine that dictates a rhythm in our day, but seldom do we stop to consider where all of these things come from. When we pay for our cup of coffee, how can we know what our money is truly supporting? This week, as part of our MiddCORE  Winter Term class, we worked with the Rainforest Alliance, which prompted us to consider what it means to be a responsible consumer.

Organic. Fair Trade. Free Trade. We recognize these labels at a glance, but do we know what they actually mean?  How is it possible to actually trace these products to their source? We should understand how our seemingly insignificant routines are affecting the global community.

When the president of the Rainforest Alliance Tensie Whelan came to talk to MiddCORE, she explained that her organization prioritizes workers’ rights and sustainable farming practices at the source of production. By transforming land-use practices, business practices and consumer behavior, the organization aims to conserve biodiversity and ensure sustainable livelihood. The RainforestAlliance certifies products by tracing them from the origin to the consumer.

This means that the farm where your coffee was
grown did not sacrifice the natural lushness of the sur-
rounding area. The worker who grew your banana receives a fair wage and returns home to adequate subsidized housing — the needs of the workers are not sacrificed for the product. And the paper on which you print your assignment comes from a forest that is being renewed so that years from now it will not be a barren wasteland.

Surely, all of these things must come at a price. The Rainforest Alliance, however, works to make sustainability mainstream, by ensuring that its certification does not come at a premium. When we hear “organic” and “fair trade,” we think “expensive.” Social and environmental responsibility should not come at a higher cost; it should be accessible to every consumer. Still, companies do not feel the need to become more sustainable and traceable because there is not enough pressure from the consumer — us.

As consumers, we have the power to ask: why not be socially and environmentally responsible? Why not require that our pennies go to supporting conscious capitalism? Why not transform our rhythmic routine into a series of deliberate decisions? Change can be simple, and it doesn’t always have to come at a price.

Sincerely,
Shelley Carlberg ’11, Grace Close ’11, Hilary
Cunningham ’12, Alyssa Limperis ’12, Sam Murray ’13