The Dark Side of Valentine's Day

St. Valentine's Day is a holiday that has been celebrated all over the world for centuries, with roots in Ancient Rome and christian folklore. It is a day to commemorate love, romance, and folk traditions. It is one of the most common days for people to give and receive gifts, and unfortunately, there are ethical issues directly associated with the traditional Valentine. The good news is that there are plenty of companies that produce sustainable and ethical products for you to give to that special someone. 

Chocolate

Chocolate is made from the cacao bean (aka cocoa), which grows primarily in the tropical climates of West Africa and Latin America. Cocoa is one of the largest agricultural exports, and the West African countries of Ghana and the Ivory Coast produce about 75% of the world’s cocoa supply. With a huge worldwide demand for chocolate, companies have resorted to using child labor and slavery to produce cocoa at competitive prices for the export market. The children of West Africa live in abject poverty and many are forced to begin working at a young age to help support their family. Some end up on the cocoa farms because they need work and are told the pay is good, while other children are sold by their own relatives to traffickers or directly to the plantation owners. It has also been documented that traffickers often abduct young boys from small villages in neighboring African countries and bring them to cocoa plantations as slaves. Most of the children are 12-16 years old, but children as young as 7 have been filmed working on the plantations. The sad truth is that most of these children have never even tasted chocolate.

In recent years, organizations and journalists have exposed the widespread use of child labor and slavery in West African cocoa production. In the aftermath of these reports, the cocoa industry has become increasingly secretive, restricting access to farms and workers to ensure that their violations against social justice aren't made public. It's like some sort of chocolate mafia. There are journalists who have attempted to document these conditions on cocoa plantations in West Africa, and have never being seen or heard from again, presumed captive or dead. There have even been incidents where journalists have been detained by the governments in these countries and then jailed and deported. 

Industry leaders such as Nestle and Mars use these unethical methods to secure their cocoa supply, and their massive amounts of money and political power means that child labor and slavery will continue to be "business as usual" for cocoa production. The best thing you can do to help these children is to only buy chocolate and cocoa products from Fair Trade certified companies. The Food Empowerment Project has compiled a huge list of chocolate companies to help you make informed and equitable purchases: http://www.foodispower.org/chocolate-list/ 

Flowers

More than one-third of American adults will buy flowers on Valentine's Day, which equates to about $1.7 billion. The majority of those flowers come from Colombia and Ecuador, countries with alarming rates of substandard working conditions and child labor, especially in their flower industries.

At least 8.3% of flowers in the U.S. were cut by child laborers in Ecuador, according to the most recent data. During the school year, 80% of the workers in Ecuador's enormous flower industry are children, according to a report by the International Labour Organization. 

Two-thirds of flower workers in both countries suffer from work-related health problems like nausea, impaired vision and asthma, and sometimes even more serious issues like birth defects and miscarriages. Labor rights organizations cite the industry's use of dangerous pesticides as the reason for this. The U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project says that 20% of the pesticides are so toxic that they're either restricted or outright banned in the U.S. and Europe.

Women make up half of the flower work force, and they are often subjected to abusive conditions at plantations. Of the women interviewed by the International Labor Rights Forum, 55% said they had been subject to sexual harassment at work and 19% that they had been forced to have sex with a supervisor or coworker. This means that 5.7% of flowers you see for sale today were cut by women who have been sexually harassed, and 2.0% cut by women who were raped by a supervisor or coworker. 

When you want to get flowers for someone, the safest bet is to buy local! Most small, independent florists will know exactly where their product comes from, you just have to ask. When shopping at larger businesses, read the labels to find out where the flowers were grown and harvested. 

Have a happy, sustainable and ethical Valentine's Day and join Sustainable Initiatives for our Valentine's Day event at the Richard Oaks Multicultural Center on February 12th: https://www.facebook.com/events/370511756424895/