Join the challenge:

1) Simply visit your local Starbucks and ask: "Could I get a cup of fair trade coffee?"
2) Tell us what happened next. Was it hard or easy to get a cup? Watch out for posts by us and others on this blog.

BLOGGERS: simply blog about what happened and tag it with "starbuckschallenge" (all one word) on del.icio.us (put the Starbucks location in the "extended" description).

To enable us all to easily keep up with contributions to the challenge we have created a feed of all posts about the Starbucks Challenge below.

ALSO help us get feedback by telling people about this challenge on your blogs.

NON-BLOGGERS: tell us what happened by emailing us at cityhippy@gmail.com or greenlagirl@gmail.com, and we'll do the rest.

Survey results: When the survey has gathered enough feedback we'll get in touch with Starbucks and find out what their response is and how they intend to solve the problem, if any. If there's no problem, then Starbucks gets tons of good free publicity.

Win a prize: Oh yeah…we nearly forgot to mention…we have got a prize to give away, two actually. On Halloween, we'll select two people who contributed to win either:

- A 2 lb bag of Monkey & Son's Velvet Hammer fairtrade organic coffee.
- A selection of fairtrade Tea, Coffee & Hot Chocolate from those lovely people at Clipper Teas.

To win, simply contribute an amusing and informative post/email. Our favorite ones win -- regardless of whether you have a good or bad experience.

Have a fairtrade day

City Hippy and green LA girl

People are responding, from all over the world, with interesting results. There's even a videoclip from France (on CityHippy) of one guy's ongoing struggle to get a Paris Starbucks to live up to the promise. Starbucks has also gotten in touch with greenLAgirl, she has ongoing updated posts. Here at the back of beyond, where I live, getting any kind of coffee from Starbucks is not a casual affair. It takes at least a minor Road Trip, which we're not doing for trivial pursuits these days. It will have to get added on to a list of errands in the vicinity one of these days. I know in the Real World they are on every street corner - but not here in Lower Slower Delaware. Therefore, I haven't yet had the opportunity to take up this challenge.

I'd like to add a few links here on the subject of Fair Trade coffee. You may never want to go to Starbucks, even to challenge their policy, but you might like to know a little more about Fair Trade. Global Exchange has a lovely site (great shopping page) with clear information on what Fair Trade is and how it works. They too are challenging Starbucks to walk the walk, read more at this page of their site.

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