Sitting sipping my kosher for Passover, fair trade, Kenyan coffee from Starbucks seemed like a good time on this first day of the omer to think about my Kenyan project. First, I like the coffee. Dark but not too bitter. Just right.

I’ve been thinking about the use of Keurig pods. Thanks to Rosa Kramer Franck who posted this article http://qz.com/193138/the-worlds-growing-love-affair-with-the-most-wasteful-form-of-coffee-there-is/ I have learned how much the use of K-cups have grown and how wasteful and bad for the environment they have become.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my Keurigs. Yes, I have two. Both gifts. One at home and one in the office. It is nice to be able to offer a warm drink to someone who stops in to see me. My machines are easy to use. The coffee keeps better than opening a full bag. It is convenient. Not messy. I can provide lots of choices so everyone gets what they want. I can buy fair trade coffee from Green Mountain which is important to me.

We’ve tried recyclable keurig cups. They are messier and more time consuming. But for Passover that is exactly what we are using. And with practice we are getting better at it.

We have a commitment to use fair trade coffee. Why is this important? Truah, Rabbis for Human Rights has a good position paper on this: http://www.truah.org/images/stories/PDFs/hrs_teaching_fair_trade_principles.pdf

But for me, it is simple. Because as Jews, we are compelled to treat the widow, the orphan, the stranger with respect and dignity. Precisely because we were strangers in the land of Egypt. We were slaves in the land of Egypt. The big businesses that buy most of the United States supply of coffee and chocolate do not pay the farmers in the “Global South” a living wage. They treat them like slaves. So for years we have only been buying fair trade coffee. Either from Dean’s Beans, where you can check out their recent Fair Trade Audit: http://www.deansbeans.com/coffee/fair_trade_roadmap/audit.html  (Simon likes to roast their green beans. Come have a cup with him!). And by the way, Dean has now developed a ReCup! Or from Thanksgiving Coffee because they buy from a collective in Uganda of Jews, Christians and Muslims that is fair trade, kosher and organic called, “Delicious Peace” http://www.mirembekawomera.com/coffee.  Or frankly from Green Mountain or my beloved Starbucks.

In a similar vain because of the commandment repeated 36 times in Torah to support the widow, the orphan the stranger, we contribute to American Jewish World Service and Heifer International because they support micro financing for women. This is long before I applied to be an AJWS Global Fellow.

So what to do about the K-Cups? I think that at least for me, after Passover, I will continue to use our recyclable pods at home. I tend to only buy one kind of coffee for me anyway. All of the benefits of single pods, none of the waste and they are cheaper. It is the right thing to do. We are even saving the grinds now for our garden. It is the beginning of composting at the Kleins.

Back to my cup of Kenyan coffee.