How to Find Organic, Fair Trade, Vegan & Local Chocolate Online

The name "Chocolate.com" sounds like the kind of generic aggregator website that your average person might stumble upon when doing a general search.  You might think that they sell average chocolate to make a quick buck.  This is what I thought when the site first came to my attention.  However,  I was wrong.  Very wrong!

Chocolate.com specializes in handmade, small batch chocolate from small American businesses.  Shopping at chocolate.com is like going to an on-line farmers market for chocolate.  They only sell high quality chocolate crafted by artisans that truly care about what they are making.  

As a customer, you can shop by the types of things you would normally expect on a website that caters to gift-giving: shop by: price, boxes or baskets, occasion, type of chocolate, or type of food.  You can also shop by ingredients.  While their ingredients that you can shop by include things like fruits, pretzels or sugar free,  they also have the follow options that appealed to me, and I believe will appeal to our readers: Kosher Chocolate, Organic Chocolate, Gluten Free Chocolate, Vegan Chocolate and Fair Trade Chocolate.   These options are what caught my eye when chocolate.com contacted me and said "I would like to offer you the opportunity to review a product from one of our vendors at Chocolate.com...We have plenty of organic and/or fair trade options to choose from."   So yes, I'm doing this review because they offered me free chocolate to check out their site,  but when I checked out the site I saw something in which I KNEW our readers would be interested.   See our review policy for details on our review philosophy. 

When I checked out the details, I found that they had 142 options that were completely Fair Trade chocolates.  With one click I was able to narrow this to 100 all organic, all Fair Trade choices.  Other check boxes toggle on and off whether you want all vegan, all kosher and if there is a particular ingredient such as nuts, soy , sugar, gluten, dairy or eggs that you want in or out of your chocolate.  I wish I had know about this when I was off of dairy and soy!  The hoops I went through to find good chocolate that was on my restricted diet last year were crazy! I could have just clicked and ordered!  I selected Fair Trade, all organic, no dairy, no soy and came out with 32 options!  Some of the options are a little pricey, but for quality chocolate and truffles, many of the options are reasonably priced.

I know, some of you are saying, "But Alicia,  you should always shop local whenever possible!"   Well, that's another reason why I compare this to an online farmers market.  They have an option to search by zip code.  This option is hidden under "Free Shipping".   They have a few options for free shipping, but one of them is by finding free ground shipping for items available via local delivery.   For those of you that live in chocolate-plentiful areas,  you may just want to find places and go there in person.  Or perhaps you're busy, and you just prefer to buy as locally as possible.  In that case, this option would work for you.  I found 50 options from places that are within a few hour drive from my home.  One place is only 10 minutes from my house (and I may check out the next time I'm over there...)

For those of you that do not live within an easy drive of a great small chocolate shop to support, this is a great way to find quality chocolates that fit with your values and dietary needs, whether that is Fair Trade (which I strongly encourage) or vegan or kosher or any of the other number of things I have mentioned.

Gnosis Raw Chocolate

Now, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that they sent me some wonderfully interesting and delicious chocolates to try.  The Gnosis Chocolates they sent me were so delicious, and their company was so responsive to my questions, and they are so ecologically conscious in everything they do, right down to their packaging and shipping,  that I'm going to write a whole separate post about them. Suffice it to say,  Gnosis Chocolate from Long Island City, NY is worth checking out for intriguing hand crafted chocolate treats.

Wherever you buy your chocolate, look for fair trade and organic.  Buying organic limits the pesticides in your food and the pesticides to which the workers are exposed.  Fair Trade ensures that the works are treated fairly and paid a living wage.

Happy Greening!
Alicia

Getting Started - Use Reusable Shopping Bags

I often hear from people who want to get started going green, but there are so many things that you can do, that they are quickly overwhelmed.  I always tell people that they should pick one thing, try it, and get used to it.  Once the one thing they are doing becomes routine and natural, that is once it's no longer "a thing" but rather, just something they do, then pick something else and go on from there. 

Here's an easy one to get started going green:  Use reusable shopping bags. 

Paper shopping bags
Paper shopping bags are alright, but there are a lot of chemicals, water, energy and other natural resources that go into making them and they are usually only used once or twice.  In some communities you still need them to recycle paper at the curbside, but chances are you don't need as many as you get if you bring home your shopping in them every week.

Plastic shopping bags
Plastic shopping bags may be cheap for the grocery store to purchase, and I don't object to their occasional use at the store, perhaps to hold raw meat or something frozen.  They have uses at home too, you can use them to line small garbage cans and they're great for clothes and diapers that children have had accidents in.  It's pretty impossible to re-use all the plastic bags that you bring home if you get them for all your grocery shopping.  If you do end up with piles of them, realize that most large grocery stores have recycle bins near the entrance where you can drop them off for recycling.

However, most plastic shopping bags end up in landfills, or worse, polluting our rivers and oceans.  There are parts of the ocean that have major problems with fish and other animals getting tangled in plastic bags, or eating them and dying.  There is a great article about this on Salon from 2007.

Free Reusable Bags
You do not have to spend a lot of money on reusable bags.  Many stores sell them for a dollar a piece or even less.  I have found that vendors at local fairs and festivals often give them away for free.  I was at a local fair this past weekend with only 30 tables at it and one of them was handing out reusable shopping bags and water bottles.  Start with a few, 3 or 4 is plenty to get a feel for using them, and you may quickly accumulate a huge number.   I often find that conferences give them out as well. 

Keep Reusable Bags In Your Car
The key to using reusable shopping bags though is to have them with you when you are shopping.  The most reliable way I've found to manage this is to keep them with you in the car.  After I empty them I stuff them all into one bag, then put them by the front door so that the next time I go to the car, I take them back outside.  

What Else To Do With Reusable Bags

Read more »

Bringing Clean Water to the People of Haiti - Ste Jeanne D'Arc Haiti Foundation

Recently I had the opportunity to hear Hermina Hyacinthe speak about her journey and the foundation that she created to assist the people in her hometown of Petit-Goave, Haiti.

Hermina Hyacinthe
Photo courtesy of Ste Jeanne D'Arc Haiti Foundation

Hermina grew up in Haiti and moved to the United States where she received a bachelor's degree in business administration from Boston University and a master's degree from the University of Massachusetts in Boston.   Since then she has been working as an auditor in the financial industry. Upon visiting her hometown Petit-Goave she felt called to help the disadvantaged people there.

Hermina founded the Ste Jeanne D'Arc Haiti Foundation and set up a soup kitchen in Petit-Goave.  While traveling in a rural area of Petit-Goave, Haiti in 2006, she saw people gathering water from a muddy pool.   Upon asking questions she discovered it was the only source of water for hundreds of families.  She knew that she had to help bring clean water to the community.

She donated the money and found a contractor to build a well.  However there were no roads to get the materials to the site.  The people volunteered to carry the materials in on their heads.  Then they said that they would dig the well themselves.   With Hermina's help by providing the materials and paying the contractor to supervise the work, the residents of the rural area built a well that served over 900 families.

Then the 2010 earthquake struck Haiti.  It has devastated not only Port-au-Prince but also many surrounding small towns including Petit-Goave.   One-third of the residents of Petit-Goave perished in the earthquake.    Hermina's own mother who had been living in the United States for over 30 years was visiting Haiti at the time, and was badly injured in the quake.  The well that was the only source of clean water for over 900 families was badly damaged and went dry leaving the people without access to clean water.   Disease and malnutrition became rampant in Haiti.  When the earthquake struck, Haiti was already the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

Hermina found support from the members of Saint Bartholomew Parish in Needham, MA where they created the Haiti Project to assist Hermina and her Foundation.  They raised the money to have another well built to replace the failed one.  Through Hermina's amazing skill of persuasion and by the grace of God, she conviced a driller to travel to their small town and then to not only build one well for the money that was raised, but in fact he felt compelled to build the community three wells on land donated by the community.

Girls from the Petit-Goave orphanage with Hermina
and God Parents after their baptism
Photo Courtesy of Ste Jeanne D'Arc Haiti Foundation

Hermina and her Foundation began to work in other areas.  They used the building that had been supporting the soup kitchen, which was miraculously still standing, to set up an orphanage  as a permanent home and school for girls in the community.  They would love to house boys as well, but their building is too small to properly accommodate living quarters for both boys and girls.

Their soup kitchen is operating as a food distribution service where they help feed over 250 people in the community and they are branching out.  Their new goal is to help the people feed themselves.  They are researching and developing an agriculture program to help disadvantaged people who own land, but do not have the money to purchase seeds or animals to set up farms in their area.

This is an amazing program and an amazing woman who has devoted her life to helping the people in her native town.  In addition to their website, where you can donate directly to them via paypal, they have a Facebook page that you can "like" to receive periodic updates on the progress of Hermina and the Foundation's projects in Haiti.

Please help spread the word about her work, because this is a very small, 501(c)(3) organization, and they depend on grassroots support to continue their work in Haiti.

Happy Greening,
Alicia

GLC Product Review Policy

We like to review & recommend products.  In general, we think that being green means you don't need a lot of new things.  However, everyone needs foods, and not all food products are as green and healthy as others.  There are also some things that make being green easier.  For example, taking your lunch in reusable containers is very green, but then you need some quality containers that you can reuse for a long time and trust not to spill.  That led us to find and review the Contigo coffee mugs and children's cups.

Some reviews we do simply because we love the product.  As our blog grows, some companies have asked us to review products for them.  When asked, we will only review products that we believe are good for the environment or good for your health.  We will always state when we were given free samples to review for the blog.  We believe that this is a reasonable, and affordable, way for us to be exposed to more products that may be of interest to our readers.   We will try to only accept products for review that we anticipate will be good for the environment but everything has its good and bad sides.  We will always be honest in our reviews.

If you have any questions about our reviews, or the products, please leave a comment on the relevant post.  If you disagree with our review, please feel free to say so.   If you agree and want to chime in, we want to hear that too, and I bet our readers would like to hear that as well!

If you have any questions about this policy you may leave a comment below or send us email at info -at- greenlifestyleconsulting -dot- com.

Happy Greening!
Alicia & Jon