OKOGreen (生態綠) is a haven for environmental activists who need a buzz.
The company was founded in late 2008 and bills itself as the first fair trade-certified coffee brand in the Chinese-speaking world. The OKOGreen cafe near the corner of Shaoxing South Street (紹興南路) and Renai Road (仁愛路) features a classroom where seminars on environmental issues are held regularly. A shower encourages customers and employees to bike over even in hot weather. One wall of the cafe is lined with shelves selling books, fair trade cocoa, handmade bags and dolls from Nepal, organic cotton T-shirts and, of course, coffee beans. Wide tables and comfy chairs invite customers to linger. On a recent afternoon, one woman worked on a laptop that had a sticker stating, “I only date boys who live green.”
OKOGreen also sells coffee beans to cafes throughout Taiwan, but when the company opened two years ago, its mission was seen as a long shot.
“Other Taiwanese coffee importers thought we were crazy, that the market was too small to support the idea of selling nothing but fair trade coffee beans. We founded our company without any previous experience in the coffee trade,” says Karen Yu (余宛如).
European and American customers have had four decades to become familiar with fair trade goods, but Yu says the concept has only made a made here over the last few years. Part of OKOGreen’s mission is to serve up awareness with their lattes and espressos.
“We want to educate consumers about how to identify goods that are truly fair trade and what goes into the process of certification,” says Yu. The term “OKO,” which means “eco” in German, was chosen as a nod to the Germany-based inspection agency FLO-CERT, which certifies OKOGreen’s coffee beans.
Making sure farmers receive adequate compensation for their crops is one of the basic tenets of fair trade. To qualify as fair trade, coffee beans must be sold for at least US$1.26 per pound (1kg = 2.2 pounds). The average price for ordinary coffee beans is about US$0.60 to US$0.70 per pound. Four companies that fair trade advocates refer to as the “Big Four” roasters — Sara Lee, Nestle, Kraft and Procter and Gamble — control most of the worldwide coffee market.
“When the prices of coffee beans are driven down by competition, it’s the farmers who start to suffer,” says Yu.
“Customers need to understand that if you want products that are produced ethically it will cost a bit more,” Yu adds.
But that doesn’t mean prices are unaffordable. Most of OKOGreen’s coffee beans cost NT$280 to NT$400 for a 250g pack. The coffee beans are handpicked for quality and roasted in small batches by OKOGreen employees. The company does not store coffee beans for long, serving or selling them to customers and other cafes as quickly as possible after they are roasted so the flavor does not fade.
“We think the idea that fair trade coffee has to be very expensive is just a myth,” says Yu. “Coffee is cheap to produce. It’s not a big deal to pay farmers a bit more.”
OKOGreen’s events include workshops on how to brew a tasty cup of joe and screenings of films like Black Gold, a documentary about the coffee trade. The cafe’s staff also gives customers a deeper look into how a fair trade product is produced.
“Fair trade standards aren’t just about making sure people receive fair pay for their products,” says Yu. “Working conditions have to be safe, men and women have to receive equal pay and the rights of child workers have to be guaranteed. The environment is also protected. And the work must be long term.”
OKOGreen imports coffee beans from countries including Honduras, Brazil and Ethiopia, but the founders were originally inspired by the plight of Taiwanese farmers. The company supports Good Green (好樣綠), an organization that works with farmers in southern Taiwan to reduce the amount of pesticides they use and help them get fair prices for their crops. Customers who order produce from Good Green can pick up their vegetables and fruit at OKOGreen. The company also donates 10 percent of its profits to environmental groups, including Green Party Taiwan (台灣綠黨) and Taiwan Environmental Information Center (台灣環境資訊協會).
“We hope consumers understand that fair trade is not just about getting fair prices for workers, it’s also about consumer well-being,” says Yu.
Mongolian influencer Anudari Daarya looks effortlessly glamorous and carefree in her social media posts — but the classically trained pianist’s road to acceptance as a transgender artist has been anything but easy. She is one of a growing number of Mongolian LGBTQ youth challenging stereotypes and fighting for acceptance through media representation in the socially conservative country. LGBTQ Mongolians often hide their identities from their employers and colleagues for fear of discrimination, with a survey by the non-profit LGBT Centre Mongolia showing that only 20 percent of people felt comfortable coming out at work. Daarya, 25, said she has faced discrimination since she
April 21 to April 27 Hsieh Er’s (謝娥) political fortunes were rising fast after she got out of jail and joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in December 1945. Not only did she hold key positions in various committees, she was elected the only woman on the Taipei City Council and headed to Nanjing in 1946 as the sole Taiwanese female representative to the National Constituent Assembly. With the support of first lady Soong May-ling (宋美齡), she started the Taipei Women’s Association and Taiwan Provincial Women’s Association, where she
More than 75 years after the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Orwellian phrase “Big Brother is watching you” has become so familiar to most of the Taiwanese public that even those who haven’t read the novel recognize it. That phrase has now been given a new look by amateur translator Tsiu Ing-sing (周盈成), who recently completed the first full Taiwanese translation of George Orwell’s dystopian classic. Tsiu — who completed the nearly 160,000-word project in his spare time over four years — said his goal was to “prove it possible” that foreign literature could be rendered in Taiwanese. The translation is part of
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,
RSS