Aspretto coffee brews fresh taste, social justice

Sipping a mug of hot coffee at the new Aspretto station in the Zorn Dining Commons at Keene State College comes with more than a sweet aftertaste these days. While the typical college student doesn’t think about the series of events leading up to the consumption of an average beverage, Sodexo, the food and catering service provider for KSC, has made it clear there’s commending to be had for every single drop.

The replacement of Green Mountain Coffee sports one immediate improvement. Information is presented in the form of an educational blurb by the café section of the DC, celebrating Sodexo’s integration of fair trade into their coffee-making system.

Fair trade is an economic approach to promote global sustainability and help producers in developing countries. Along with its positive environmental causes and standards, the heaviest goal fair trade promotes is the payment of higher wages towards workers in countries facing extreme poverty.

On a purely basic level, the company is responsible for nourishment at KSC, but partnering with such a beneficial worldwide cause is applause-worthy. Sodexo plays such an integral part in the daily machinery of the college, that its partnership with fair trade shows making a difference is just as much an objective as feeding the student body and faculty. The Aspretto Web site states Sodexo’s collaboration with fair trade benefits children in Mexico by using the additional funds for more school supplies, work benches and lunch.

Additionally, printed materials use one hundred percent recycled paper along with vegetable and soy-based inks.

The United States consumes one-fifth of the entire world’s coffee supply, making it the largest consumer of any nation, according to globalexchange.org. Jerónimo Bollen, Director of Manos Campesinas, a fair trade coffee cooperative in Guatemala said on the site, “With world market prices as low as they are right now, we see that a lot of farmers cannot maintain their families and their land anymore. We need Fair Trade now more than ever.”

Without fair trade, those farmers would only get two cents worth of a three-dollar latte in the U.S., according to fairtradefederation.org. Agriculturalists saddled with that unfortunate statistic are joined by over 2.7 billion people on the planet living on less than two dollars a day.

Zorn Dining Commons has emerged as a very small component in preventing the unfair treatment of the hardworking. By continually supplying the visitors and residents of KSC with quality coffee, Sodexo is supplying collateral to the hands responsible for cultivating it. What a better way for tired college students to get their caffeine fix than helping others prosper in the process.