Remember school biology class? Photosynthesis? It’s simple: Trees soak up CO2 from the atmosphere; add water, and this is how they grow. As trees grow, more and more carbon is absorbed. However, when forests are cut down or burned, the carbon is released back into the atmosphere. This is how you get most of your energy: by burning fossilised trees in the form of coal. Burning coal and burning standing forests accounts for the largest part of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. Trees, in short, have the power to make or break our climate.

Forests are the best and most cost-efficient method for removing and storing consequential amounts of climate-warming carbon dioxide (CO2). Growing more forest and restoring damaged ones could remove as much as two-thirds (!) of the CO2 that humans have been putting in the air for decades.

Did you know that cacao trees love to grow in the shade of diverse neighbouring trees? Long ago, they originated from the dense rainforests of the Amazon. Together with their tree neighbours, cacao trees have a fantastically virtuous effect on climate, insetting many times their own size in CO2. So it is all the more outrageous that the cheap chocolate industry is forcing their cocoa trees to grow under full sun in industrial mono-forests. What makes chocolate cheap in the supermarket comes at a huge cost to trees, forests and the climate. Rare, valuable old rainforests are being cut down to make space for cheap, industrial chocolate forests. And when we lose those old rainforests, we lose our most important climate friends.

So let’s all plant trees now? Wait! Before we grow new forests, we must preserve the old ones still remaining. Preserving what’s there and rare is much more effective and also much cheaper than starting anew. 

Original Beans rare cacao trees grow in the world’s most CO2-rich rainforests. Because we provide secure incomes and training to our cacao growers, they feel empowered to better protect their surrounding forests. Together with our growers and customers we have already preserved and grown millions of trees through our One Bar : One Tree programme. Each tree can be tracked to its origin. 

There are many ways in which our consumption directly improves or deteriorates the fortune of forests and the people and animals who live in and around them. And thus of our world’s climate and weather. If you like chocolate, you might like to know that buying cheap chocolate comes at a huge cost, as described above. Kick that habit! Better chocolate is better for you anyway - and the world.

Don’t think too much, take action now! It’s that simple: buy a bar of Original Beans chocolate and enjoy it! And if you think that’s cool and cools the climate, give it as a gift. Or give trees as a gift. You can purchase additional trees grown in our webshop on check-out! Together, we preserve the rare!