Something new has appeared in the canteen at work. I thought it might be worth a mention here. Miya Coffee claims to be the first coffee in the world that is 100% Fairtrade, 100% organic and the estimated 7000 miles it has taken to get to the UK from Columbia is all offset.

There is a lot of contention over the success of carbon offsetting programs but I like to take the simple view that they have to be better than doing nothing. Miya Coffee contributes to reforestation projects in Kibale National Park, wind turbines in India and the supply of biomass ovens to people in India and smokeless stoves in Honduras.

Just to make sure though, Miya triple the total estimated delivery distance and offset 21,000 miles rather than 7,000.

It tastes pretty good too. Next time you buy a coffee why not mention it.

Useful links:

http://www.miya-coffee.co.uk/index.html

A few days a go I had found a article in Good Housekeeping which talked about what are these fancy names we put on products in the store like “natural” and “no CFC’s” and what they really mean to the consumer. I had read this article and knew about most of the labels and learned some about these labels but there was one that I was curious what it really means when it is labeled so I thought I would do some some research on this label. The label I was curious and done some research on was “organic” the information I had found online was kinda interesting. So heres what I had found out about organic labels.

Organic is a agriculture product made without pesticide, harmful chemicals, hormones. You can find “organic” on most anything but most of the time it is not completely organic unless you see one of many logo’s like these.

These logo’s on products found in groceries stores are quite hard to get placed and certified on a product because they test just about everything from fertilizers to what the wood was treated with on fences and if one thing that is tested as “modified” the produce won’t be certified to sell as organic. Only 100% organic products may use the organic seal. if a product is 95% is organic they can’t put the organic seal but they can say it is a organic substance. If the product is at least 70% they only can label up to three items that are organic. finally if a item has less than 70% organic they can’t say its organic anywhere on the item. for more information visit this site http://www.ams.usda.gov/nop/FactSheets/Backgrounder.htm Heres the actual chart that was in the magazine Good Housekeeping. In other words your best bet will be finding a product that has a certified seal that states that it is certified “organic” on the product you want to buy.

Before you buy something try to remember what the correct labels for a item should be and what labels you should not buy into on a certain product.

I’m not sure any of this information applies to people in the U.K. but it certain it does apply to the people in U.S.A.