The joy of free trade coffee
Our department at Ohio State just signed up with a local distributor of free trade coffee. I’m no expert on the whole “free trade thing”, but I understand that it benefits small farmers in third-world countries and that’s good enough for me. I met quite a few guys like that during my time in Malawi and I really believe they deserve a fair shot at selling their crop just like everyone else.
Anyway, aside from indirectly helping some people, we get to use this really high-tech coffee maker for as long as we buy our coffee from this company. The machine is about three feet tall with an LCD display and a bunch of buttons. I can choose regular, decaf, or blended coffee and tell it the strength and size I want and the machine brews it right there on the spot in less than a minute and dispenses it into my cup. It even makes hot chocolate and mochas! The funniest thing is that after I make my selection and press the start button, the LCD display says, “Product being prepared. Watch!” Apparently our coffee maker is quite proud of itself and wants everyone to marvel at its “mad skillz”. Needless to say, there were a lot of really happy coffee drinkers walking around our department this week.
I’ll try to find out which company we’re buying our coffee from and pass that information along. From what I’ve heard, we’re also saving money on the coffee itself. And there’s zero waste since nothing is brewed until somebody requests it. Great coffee, cool gadget, saving money, and helping deserving people. Who could argue with that?
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