We like Trees! I just learned how NOT to kill plants and I am the proud "mom" to a gorgeous jade plant named Morticia. So what do cookies, trees and jade plants have to do with one another? Alot! Treehugger - an affiliate of the Discovery Channel loved Khaya Cookies and our commitment to making this world a better place one Cookie at a Time they wrote a great post about us today.
I'm very proud of this! Below is the postdirectly from Treehugger . For those of you who haven't checked out Treehugger.com - you can get informed on all kinds of cool, eco-friendly stuff, food (of course we like this) and health, travel and nature tips. It's a great site.
Eat Khaya Cookies
to Support Women In South Africa? No Problem...Or Is There?
by Kristin
Underwood, Sacramento, CA 
on 06.15.09
Recently I sampled several of the creations from the Khaya Cookie
Company , a women's cookie co-op located in South Africa, and the
only problem I had with them was...that I couldn't stop eating them.
Khaya, meaning home, Cookies is the creation of Alicia Polak,
a former Wall Street investment banker who decided to invest in cookies and
improving peoples' lives instead.
The cookies come in very exotic and
very mouth-watering flavors, like Orange Rooibos Shortbread, Grapeseed
Shortbread Cookies and Orange & Chocolate Krunchi (orange zest, Belgium
choclate & honey-sweetened grains). The shortbread cookies taste so much
like perfect little shortbread cookies that it's literally hard to stop eating
them. The Orange and Chocolate Krunchi's taste like dough for oatmeal cookies.
They will give your jaw a little bit of a workout, but they are better than
eating boring old granola bars. While a little high in fat and sugar, all of
the ingredients are products that you can pronounce and that you can also
picture in your head and all of the ingredients are sourced locally, which
helps put money back into the community.
The problem that one taste-tester here saw out was, how do you support a women's co-op on the other side of
the world without also destroying the planet when it involves
shipping cookies around the world? This is one question that seems to come up
time and again in the debate over how to eliminate poverty without harming the
environment in the process.
Communities in the developing world looking to make money,
not get a hand-out, are working to make handicrafts, sell natural, fresh
produce and now make cookies. While these endeavors help to earn a steady,
respectable income for hundreds of families, including offering education, and
training in life-skills, as Khaya does for all of its workers, how does one
balance that with not shipping products here there and everywhere? Is there a
good answer to this? The Khaya Cookies website states that for ever 1,500 boxes
of cookies sold, it creates one more job in the cookie shop in South Africa. For every 500 orders placed, it
creates 4 new jobs in the distribution center in Philadelphia, PA.
I asked owner Alicia Polak about the chance of carbon offsets
or something else to counter the travel. Here is her response:
" We do not have
an official carbon offset but we DO NOT fly the cookies. We use the earth
friendly manner to ship the cookies and that is to only ship the cookies via
ocean. I capture economies of scale. I fill a 20ft shipping container to THE
RIM with cookies. 17,000 boxes to be exact. We actually hand pack the container
which is much, more more work. However, this means we do not even use wood
pallets which take up a significant amount of room. We literally “jam pack the
containers”. My container goes on a ship that is FILLED 7 stories high with
containers. Every ounce of space is utilized. I am using far less waste than
the diesel truck filled with Dole Lettuce packets going from California to New
Jersey. Modern ships are a very efficient way of moving cargo. The best of the
huge diesel engines they use convert over 50% of the energy in the fuel to
propulsive energy fed to the propeller. The best of petrol (gasoline) car
engines struggles get 12% to the wheels. The boat will leave South Africa with
or without Khaya Cookies.”
Right now, every time you purchase a box of Khaya cookies,
you can enter
to win a trip to South Africa, an Amazon kindle (full of South
African literature, cooking books and wine magazines), more Khaya cookies, and
other fabulous prizes. Khaya Cookies can be found online at KhayaCookies.com. If you enter CODE QUEST at the checkout code you receive a chance to WIN A FREE TRIP TO CAPE TOWN AND RECEIVE A REDUCED PRICE ON ALL KHAYA COOKIES PLUS FREE SHIPPING! *
*Terms & Conditions Apply
Recent Comments