The Cost of Coffee
In the midst of a global pandemic, our project still pulled together in the end. Our main idea going into our project was coffee - that's it. We had no idea where we wanted to go from there until we started to research. As we got into it, more unexpected things started to pop up such as abuse, slavery, climate change, and more. After just a glimpse, our passion had struck the match and we began to build the flame. Instead of trying to pull one area of coffee over our three subjects, we took the initiative to focus on different areas of the coffee industry that react to the others. We decided to contextualize the media attention (or lack of), cultural impact, and climate change with coffee. These might seem a bit far fetched, but it makes more sense. Together we had not only grown more conscience about our decisions for coffee - buying only fair trade organization coffee - but more in touch about people that seem to be worlds away, but aren't that far from us - we see them everyday. These victims are sitting on our shelves in our cabinets right now - through the coffee beans we see in any form: it's just up to us to acknowledge them.
History |
English |
For our history portion, we went with the climate change contextualization with coffee. As we all know, climate change is a real thing and it's growing vastly with less efforts being made towards it. Now, in the United States, we are making efforts to prevent more damage and growing more conscience. In Brazil on the other hand, less efforts are being made as they have always had a very rocky political state and to bring up environmental issues, there are doubts they will not be heard. As coffee is one of the top exports of Brazil and the largest grower of coffee, we created a infographic that shares specifics on economical and environmental impact of climate change on the coffee industry of Brazil.
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For our English portion of our project, we contextualized media and coffee. Many of us can see the news headlines on our phones, but don't catch the headlines with words such as, "slavery", "coffee", and "Starbucks." Now those seem a bit out of touch, but those are headlines that have been popping up in the last five years, but how come we haven't heard of them? Many big corporations do have some significant measures to prevent these words associated with their brand, but it seems to be easier to cover it up with the next big drink their consumers will gossip over. We had saw through the facade, even if it meant betraying our taste buds, but we uncovered horrifying conditions Brazillian men, women and children have had endure in the last 100 or so years. The coffee industry is so large, that the media attention can't keep up, so they have to stick with the next big thing, and most of the time, it has something to do with the next sugary drink. To put our knowledge in easier to read format, we had written a short story.
"The Bitter Truth" shares the story of a young worker in a coffee distributing warehouse who stumbles onto something tiny, but has potential. With potential, there's opportunity for something great, but little does she know, what she may find holds more weight than she can bear.
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Art
This was the most complicated portion of our project as this was the most changed. Eventually, we came to a consensus and since coffee is a universal treat for many, we thought to indulge ourselves in how we can involve the highlight of our mornings into different aspects of our lives. To not only help us, but improve other's knowledge on the use of coffee because it's not only great for your spirits in the early mornings, but can be in good parts of your life. Dessert is always a great ending to your day because it's a treat and since coffee is a start of the morning, we thought it is a great ending to the day. For our art portion, we made coffee/chocolate cupcakes with coffee buttercream frosting. Individually made our own unique batches that had created variety and specifications for our diets. On the other side of our project, to conclude (or begin) your day, a good skin care routine can change a mood. As users and lovers of skin care, we both had created products for our uses. Adrianna had made the face masks and lip scrubs that had helped with hydration and exfoliation for the skin. Emily had made an exfoliating body scrub and soothing bath salts. To our surprise, we really love these products, and took little to no time to make. These products and desserts have used coffee that has been not wasted, but utilized as it should be.
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As we narrowed our research, we had stumbled across this song, it seemed like this was meant to be in our project.