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What should you look for in your Coffee?

“ One thing we should all be able to unite and get behind is…good coffee.”
~ Waylon Lewis

Walk the Talk Show with Waylon Lewis presents: our 300th Podcast! (We’ve recorded 1000s of videos over the years)

This week on our long-running “Walk the Talk Show” podcast and video series, with many awards and millions of views/listens over the years…

Waylon speaks with the founder of Boulder, Colorado-based Peak State Coffee, Danny Walsh, about what we should look for in our daily cup of joe and why we might want to re-empower our buying power and support a eco, ethical coffee companies.

Danny Walsh: “ When I was going into business, I was like, ‘I’m not gonna start just another business in this modern age unless it’s better than what’s out there from an environmental and sustainability perspective.’ Not all coffee is created equal.”

Their conversation jumps from the misnomer that “coffee is coffee,” to growing practices, to certifications, to flavor, cost, and the basic ethics and labor behind your cup of coffee.

Danny Walsh: “A lot of people are like, ‘It’s coffee—and coffee is coffee.’ I don’t agree with that. In reality, the thing to be the most afraid of is actually pesticides. Coffee’s more likely than any other other crop to have pesticide farming involved in its growing.”

Waylon Lewis: One of the quotes I always say—because I’m a little bit daft and a lot of people are daft because so much is going on, we don’t think about it: ‘Pesticides is a fancy word for poison.’ We all know that. But when you say it that way, you’re like, wait, ‘poison is in my coffee? I don’t want that!'”

Danny Walsh: “People ask me, ‘Is the organic certification legit?’ or ‘does organic coffee matter?’ And yes: that is the way to certify that pesticides or glyphosate was not used in the farming practices. It absolutely matters.”

~

Waylon Lewis: “So people think of ‘coffee as coffee.’ They love coffee. Everyone drinks coffee every day. It’s one of the world’s most popular beverages—if not the most—behind water…

Danny: “At least in America, it’s the number one drink, yeah.”

Waylon: “…And yet we think very little about what we’re drinking. There’s a lot of trust in there, which is funny because…half the country, at least, votes for Republicans who don’t want regulations.”

Watch the video:

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“A lot of people would not even believe this, but if you’re drinking coffee from a big brand or if you aren’t sure where your coffee is coming from, there’s a high probability that slave labor, child labor, or exploited labor was involved in growing it. It’s the same with the chocolate industry. That is one of the most unsettling thoughts—that you might be contributing to a supply chain of slave labor.” ~ Danny Walsh

Links referenced by Waylon in the video/podcast:

>> Waylon Lewis with “Glyphosate Girl” Kelly Ryerson. {Video, Podcast}

“ Jane Goodall just passed, and she was an idol of mine.
She talked a lot about hope—she said that you have to actively go after it, not just think about it. And that without that hope, we’re lost.
That was a good reminder for me. I have to say, overall, I don’t think there really is hope, beyond people deciding to care. And if people decide not to care because it’s easier, or because [causing harm] it’s normalized, I don’t think there is hope.” ~ Waylon Lewis

~

“What I am requesting is participation. Elephant has 13 million fans on social media and millions of readers, but we are only able to bring folks together around caring, fact-based conversation—people who disagree but can do so agreeably or respectfully—if you participate and right now independent media is getting killed by Facebook, et cetera.

They smother and suppress links. So when you go to elephantjournal.com, when you go to elephantjournal.com/best and get our free newsletter, when you go to elephantjournal.com/post and write something and share it—you keep independent media live, but more importantly, you keep respectful conversation, community, and caring facts alive.” ~ Waylon H. Lewis

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