Today, we got up bright and early and took the metro once again to central Amsterdam! We started off with a canal tour on the water. It was so amazing to see the city from this perspective. I learned so much on the tour. We saw many boats along the water that used to be used for industry, but have since been converted to fashionable livable apartments, an awesome example of sustainability and engineering.
After the boat tour, we headed to Cacao and Spice, a small business that sells chocolate with sustainability in mind. This tour was honestly so insightful. The owner shared with us how her shop was opened as part of an initiative led by Amsterdam’s first female mayor to convert buildings in the red light district to sustainable small businesses in order to change the reputation of the city. In terms of sustainable chocolate, Cacao and Spice sells single origin chocolate. We learned that Amsterdam is the biggest cacao harbor in the world, with about a fifth of the world’s beans passing through the city. By beginning to demand better standards for beans, Amsterdam has the ability to make the chocolate industry more sustainable. More sustainable (and better tasting) beans means growing the beans in biodiverse environments instead of monocropping and deforesting for plantations, and growing it in its country of origin. Only about 1% of the world’s chocolate is grown in Africa, but about 70% has its origins there. Cacao and Spice only sells chocolate that comes from single origin companies. My favorite chocolate I tasted was made by a woman-owned business based in Africa, that provides jobs to people and pays 2.4x that of fair trade standards. It was so good I decided to buy some for myself, and it felt good knowing that my money was going to such a responsible company.
My favorite thing we learned was about the floors. Earlier in the tour, we learned that it takes about 3-4 cacao pods to make just one bar of chocolate. Only the beans are used, and often the rest of the pod goes to waste. The floor of the shop was made from the outside hardened shells of cacao, which helps reduce waste! I thought this was so interesting because, as a chemical engineering major, I would love to be able to find solutions like this in my career. I think it is really cool that someone thought of a way to combine cacao pods with other materials to create usable flooring, and discoveries like that will help make the world a better place.
After learning about the chocolate, we also went on another walking tour led by the husband of the woman who owns Cacao and Spice. We learned about the modern day politics of Amsterdam and fun facts about the engineering of the city. We learned that some buildings were built with a slight forward lean on purpose, to create more space. We also learned how people would use pulleys to get furniture up to the top floors of the buildings. I thought it was interesting that they have planted grass to try to help with the fact that many of the canal walls are beginning to cave in due to loss of sand from pulling items out of the canals.
Overall, I was so happy to see this side of Amsterdam and I really admired the people who run this business! They were so friendly and taught me so much. After this day, I really feel an appreciation for all of the small businesses in Amsterdam that make the city so unique on every block. It was also inspiring to see a business forging a path to hold other companies responsible for selling products sold with the sourcing in mind, ie sustainability and fair wages and treatment of workers. I never thought so much about how much goes into each chocolate product from the bean to the bar. I hope in the future, many more businesses will begin to sell all products with this kind of responsibility in mind.
