Over the next week I’ll be covering my eco-friendly design highlights from the Green Festival in New York City. I hope you had a chance to view my slideshow. Please tell me about your favorite eco-designs as well. At the event I was impressed by Ford’s interactive displays that demonstrated the use of sustainable materials in their new plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. They illustrated for example how armrest handles are made of corn or door panels from wheat straw. The same was true for the biodegradable watches by Sprout that showed the use of organic cotton, bamboo, and corn resin. I’ll dig deeper into both eco-chic products soon but want to talk about my favorite subject first: chocolate.
Divine Chocolate had some samples of their fair-trade chocolate bars at the Green Festival. I was completely blown away by the amazing taste of their Coffee Milk Chocolate. To my surprise I bought two bars of it and one bar of the Orange Milk Chocolate. Divine Chocolates are made with 100% fair-trade cocoa beans grown by the Kuapa Kokoo farmers’ cooperative in Ghana whose members own 45% of Divine Chocolate. This ensures that the farmers not only receive a fair price for their cocoa but it also gives them a share of Divine’s profits. The design of the packaging is super-gorgeous with its golden traditional West African Adinkra symbols. Each symbol represents a proverb like “democracy & shared destiny”, “interdependence”, or “reconciliation & peace.” Divine doesn’t use airfreight at any stage of their supply chain to reduce its environmental impact. Needless to say that I’m already on my second Coffee Milk Chocolate bar but it’s truly divine.
If the chocolate is half as good as the packaging it will taste awesome!
Posted by: Spencer | April 26, 2012 at 10:01 PM