VANCOUVER, Wash. – The Source Coffee Company is exactly what its name implies: the coffee you get comes directly from the source. There is a growing trend in which consumers are becoming more aware of harmful profit driven companies and their negative impact on the world’s communities and environment.
The Source Coffee Company is a perfect example of ethical consumerism.
No longer will coffee drinkers have to buy their coffee from multinational corporations; instead they can purchase directly from The Source.
The Source is a lot like a CSA, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). In a typical CSA format, people purchase shares of a farmers crop before the crop is grown, then receive a share of the crop throughout the growing season.
This allows farmers to ensure their crop is sold and receive income to purchase seeds and other necessary supplies to grow the crop. The Source ensures that the money for the coffees they buy and roast goes directly to the small farms that grow it.
The company is also channeling a percentage of their profits into a micro-grant fund that farmers can apply to and receive grants to purchase supplies for their farms, their workers, and their families.
The Source will also buy the coffee that farm produces using the grant, further allowing the farms to continue their coffee-growing traditions. The coffees that the company stocks are of the highest quality and produced using traditional growing methods, including a recent winner of the Presidential Award in the Cup of Excellence.
Buying coffee at the local corporate grocery store is, in reality, pretty grim. Rainforests and ecological systems for many species of plants, animals, and insects are wiped out in order to make room for coffee plantations on which large amounts of herbicides and pesticides are used. Indigenous people are paid next to nothing to work these plantations for corporate multinationals.
The beans are sold for thirty cents to one dollar per pound in the commodities market then collected and roasted generically in giant roasters, packaged, and stocked in super stores for weeks.
Instead of leaving pre-ground coffee on big-box shelves for weeks at a time, The Source ships its coffees twice a month within hours of being roasted directly to those who subscribe to the company’s service.
The company offers memberships for as little as $12.50 per shipment. It also offers contracts that are priced similarly to the yearly income of a small coffee farmer, between $300-$400.
The large commodity coffee industry is not fresh, its not organic, and most of all it is not ethical. When consumers buy commodity coffee at a big-box grocery store, they are not buying their coffee directly from The Source.
