Many food brands claim to be environmentally friendly. But it’s hard to take them seriously when you find out that their packaging is made of plastic, their products are made using palm oil and the production involved some sort of environmentally unfriendly practice. Chocolate is a particularly notorious offender as not only do many chocolate brands use palm oil, but cocoa bean plantations are often connected to deforestation in West Africa.
So if, like many people, you love chocolate but also feel guilty about the environmental costs of it, you might be asking yourself this question. Is there a way for me to go on buying chocolate without contributing to the plastic and biodiversity crises of today?
The answer is that not only is there a way for you to do that, but by buying certain chocolates you can even reverse some of the damage being done to the environment.
Recently, Masarang has partnered with up-and-coming artisanal chocolate company, Cacao, a family run business committed to bringing high quality, environmentally friendly chocolates to Hong Kong. Masarang’s Arenga Palm sugar is a key ingredient in these chocolates. As well as making them taste better than regular sugar does, the use of Masarang sugar allows anyone who buys them to contribute to the protection and regeneration of Indonesia’s rainforests. Unlike oil palm trees, Arenga palms need healthy plant communities in order to grow successfully. Therefore in producing their sugar, Masarang is replanting areas of deforested land, restoring them to thriving rainforest ecosystems within just 5 years. The income from this sugar also provides an incentive for local people to protect the rainforests on their land and not sell them off to palm oil companies. In addition, to reduce carbon emissions in their production line, Masarang uses waste heat from a nearby geothermal energy plant to heat the palm sap for sugar, meaning that no trees have to be cut down for firewood.
Cacao’s commitment to environmental friendliness doesn’t stop there. Unlike many chocolate companies, their cocoa is not sourced from West Africa. Instead it is sourced from Columbia, where earlier this year the government along with the country’s biggest chocolate producer, Casa Luker, committed to ending deforestation in its cocoa supply chain by 2020. Furthermore, their packaging is made of fold-together cardboard and uses absolutely no plastic.
Cacao’s chocolates come in a wide range of flavours including salted caramel, young ginger, orange, passionfruit and many more. If this sounds good to you, please don’t hesitate to contact them at carolyn@cacao.hk. Or better yet, come to their special sale at the Conrad Hotel on Tuesday the 11th of December, all profits of which will go to Masarang.
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