Thursday, October 11, 2012

Coffee Bag Conversation

I had a nice conversation with my bag of coffee the other morning. Actually, the bag did most of the talking. It was so upbeat, told me that my coffee was grown in the shade (better habitat for migratory birds wintering south of the border), and that the farmers who grew it are prospering because they are members of co-ops that send coffee to Equal Exchange, which too is a worker-owned co-op that roasts the coffee and sends it to the store where I bought it. I could tell by the smiling faces on the bag that life really is better. I'm now part of this chain of happy, productive lives serving humanity's and nature's needs. Thanks, package. You give me grounds for coffee and hope, all in one.

In the interest of furthering bag-human relations, I wanted to tell it how delicious its coffee is, and how I really like that the bag is compostible.

Other coffees wake me up and then bring me down with those shiny mylar plastic bags that seduce the consumer and turn the trick at the supermarket but are tough to recycle.

Same with the organic eggs at the supermarket, which are put in eye-catching plastic containers that surely are less ecological than the regular paperboard egg cartons. It's all an attempt to give the specially grown food a special look, and make us feel okay about paying more. Better that they plaster ordinary, recyclable packaging with lots of info and smiling faces of farmers, or maybe in the case of eggs an image of a smiling, or at least chuckling, chicken living the free range, organic life.

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