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New Forest-Friendly Coffee Raises Money for Defenders of Wildlife
New Forest-Friendly Coffee Raises Money for Defenders of Wildlife
Published 06-12-02
Submitted by Thanksgiving Coffee Company
FT. BRAGG, California - Thanksgiving Coffee Company, the leading roaster of sustainably grown coffees in Northern California, has teamed up with two socially conscious non-profit groups-- Grounds for Sharing and Defenders of Wildlife-- to introduce Java Forest, a new line of coffee that saves animal habitat while raising funds to protect endangered species.
Defenders of Wildlife (www.defenders.org) is Grounds for Sharing's largest participant to date. The 430,000-member non-profit seeks to prevent native plant and animal species and their habitats from becoming endangered through research, education, and legislation. The organization is perhaps best known for having championed the groundbreaking 1973 Endangered Species Act.
In addition to helping Defenders raise money, Java Forest coffee helps the farmers who grow it, their local environment, and the animals who share it with them. The coffee is "fair trade" (purchased at a fixed price that supports small farmers), organic (grown without pesticides or other chemicals), and "shade grown" within the forest, rather than cutting it down.
Shade growing protects animals by preserving their habitat, which is threatened by human activities such as coffee farming. In return, the forest produces natural fertilizer for the coffee, and birds eat insects that feed on the plants. This saves the farmers the expense of chemical fertilizer and pesticides, and protects water and soil from run-off and erosion.
"The coffee you choose may seem like a small thing, but it isn't," said Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife. "After oil, coffee is the largest legally-traded commodity in the world, and the choices you make affect what happens on millions of acres of tropical and sub-tropical forest lands. Purchasing shade-grown coffee is an investment in the global environment, and buying it through Defenders helps us protect wild species and their habitats."
Thanksgiving Coffee was founded in 1972 and has been using it's sustainably produced coffees to raise money for environmental and human rights causes since 1984. In addition, it recently won an environmental award from the State of California for innovative waste reduction at its roasting facilities, and teamed up with another non-profit organization, Trees for the Future, to offset its carbon emissions by planting over 89,000 trees in Ethiopia.
