Category

Quality & Processing

A worker in rubber boots looks up at banana plants.

What’s a Farmer to Do? TR4 and Small-Scale Producers

In Part One of this series on Latin American banana production in the shadow of TR4, we shared an introduction to Fusarium Wilt Tropical Race…

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A woman surprises another woman with a stack of fair trade chocolate bars

Avoid the Three Chocolate S’s: Slave labor. Soy. Sugar-overload.

Give chocolate that skips all the bad stuff! Here’s what to watch out for in your Valentine’s, Halloween, or Easter chocolate…

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A plastic free tea bag with a teapot, mug and pastry on a table.

Plastic, Chemical Bleach and Pesticides in Your Tea Cup?

Is there plastic in your tea bag? What about trace amounts of bleach or pesticides? If you’re like most people, making yourself a nice…

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Coffee beans spill out of a bulk coffee bag, pictured with scoop and cups

Bulk Coffee: Make the Bag Bigger!

Want to enjoy a better cup? Consider switching to bulk coffee! Buying beans in bulk and brewing at home can be the smart way to…

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coffee bags being packaged

Vacuum Sealed vs. Nitrogen Flushed Coffee

When you’re shopping for coffee, you will find that it comes in all kinds of different packages, including cans, vacuum packs and bags with…

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two cupped hands hold dried cocoa beans

Organic Cacao: Bean to Bar

Do you know where chocolate comes from? Have you ever seen a cacao bean or a cacao pod? Most people have only experienced the end…

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unloading sugarcane at the collection center in paraguay

Organic Sugar: Cane to Table

The sugar we use in our chocolate and cocoa comes from fair trade and organic sugarcane! Our co-operative partners work hard to provide a…

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A red bag of organic fair trade coffee

The Search for Sustainable Packaging

We’ve been selling organic, fairly traded coffee since 1986 and our coffee bags are without a doubt one of our most recognizable products. When…

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A cup of decaf coffee with a napkin and spoon

Decaf Coffee: We Remove Caffeine, Not Flavor

Experimenting with ways to eliminate those too-much-coffee jitters or sleep better at night? You don’t necessarily need to give up coffee. Decaf…

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Two women and a bou pick through harvested olives that will be made into Virgin Olive Oil

Why Two Kinds of Olive Oil?

Since 2011, Equal Exchange has carried organic olive oil from Palestinian farmers. West Bank families produce this special oil from olive trees that have been…

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Hundreds of green bananas in water

Unconventional Bananas in Peru: an Interview with Julio Oscar Gallegos Herrera-Rambla

The U.S. market tends to treat bananas as commodities, as in unspecialized products that are virtually interchangeable, regardless of origin. Following a century of…

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Men in Ethiopia hold small paper cups of fair trade organic coffee

Natural Process Coffee

Have you ever tried natural process coffee? If you have, you probably noticed a difference! Known as “naturals” in the specialty coffee industry, these coffees…

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Soy-Free Chocolate

Equal Exchange crafts chocolate with only the purest ingredients. Whether you have a soy allergy, a chemical sensitivity, or you’re simply looking to avoid…

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High Quality Tea, from Leaf to Cup

Tea provides a taste of place – the growing region’s soil and elevation, its rainfall, the season. Cultivating it requires hard work and skill. And…

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Quality Coffee Cupping

Our Quality is Top-Notch

At Equal Exchange, our concern for the quality of small-scale producers’ lives is matched only by our attention to the quality of our finished…

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