Cadbury Bicycle Factory

As Westernized Canadians, almost everything we do in some way or another is hurting someone else. From the food we eat to the clothing we wear, someone around the world is being taken advantage of for our everyday necessities. It’s not even just humans that are being harmed, animals are being harmed, the environment is being harmed; basically anyone or anything vulnerable can easily be taken advantage of by people with power.

Now I can’t just say all this stuff without giving some kind of proof, but if I wear to go into all the details about the child labour that goes into our clothing, our chocolate, our coffee, a long with the environmental impacts of our water bottles, our clothing and basically all our products, I would be writing a never ending essay so I’ll try to narrow it down with one example.

So we have all heard of the chocolate company Cadbury of course, and recently they have started a new project trying to help out people in Africa. This project is called The Bicycle Factory, and basically it’s a campaign to send 5000 bikes to Africa. I really think this is such an awesome idea, and I’m sure they are actually helping a lot of people in Africa; although, at the same time I can’t help but question Cadbury’s intentions. I really find this project ironic in a way considering a lot of Cadbury’s cocoabeans come from child slave labour in Africa. For years Cadbury and other chocolate companies like Hershey’s and Nestle has been criticized for buying cocoa beans from places in Africa that use child slaves. These children do not get paid, use dangerous tools, work long hours and do not get to go to school. In many cases these children are taken away from their parents and sold to farmers.

Source: Wael Attil through google collective commons search

I really think that if Cadbury was genuinely considered about the well being of people in Africa, they would make a stronger effort to make sure that their products aren’t exploiting others in the first place. Is this really a campaign to help out people in Africa, or is it Cadbury’s way of making more money by pretending to care about poor people? I really can’t be the one to decide what you think, but I really just want to remind people the importance of being critical. These days people are just jumping on every band wagon that has a fancy advertisement on TV or youtube. The media tells us what to think and how to think, with all the amount of media bombarding us with information every day  we don’t really need to think- because the media shapes our thinking for us.

Now you can just forget about everything I’ve just said about Cadbury, big companies and the media, that’s your decision, it’s all good. I mainly just wanted to send out a message of critical thinking in the media and advertising. Question everything and don’t just accept an argument because they advertised it in a funky way with big words. The first step you can take could be by questioning this blog post- I could have made this all up. Go do your research, gain some knowledge for yourself and do your own thinking.

Source: C. Frank Starmer

If you guys are interested in learning more about where I got my information on cocoa bean slave labor in Africa, heres a really good documentary! Chocolate: The Bitter Truth