Original Beans

The people behind Original Beans are coming together across countries drawn by a shared passion for sustainable farming, delicious food, and the conservation of our world’s threatened rain forest. Original Beans is called a company that is ‘making the world better through chocolate. What more do you want..... The finest chocolate is made from the world's most original, most flavourful cacao beans. These beans grow in equatorial rain forests (and not, as some people have been led to believe, in Belgium). But the forests that give our planet its greatest biodiversity, its biggest freshwater reservoirs, and it's critical climate cooling are disappearing at an alarming rate. Original Beans was founded on the simple idea that what we consume we must replenish. For every Original Beans bar you buy, a local farmer plants a tree that will support the forest and his family. Given the unique ecology of the cacao tree surrounded by forest, chocolate links us all back to the rain forest. If by 2050 we restored worldwide 15% of all rain forests we have destroyed to date, we would re balance an enormous ecological deficit. Active replanting is the best buffer to protect primary rain forests. Original Beans establish nurseries, create conservation training programs, and help plant buffer zones around rain forests reserves. New cacao trees generate income for farmers after three years, and diverse tree plantings provide future security. Each Original Beans bar contains a lot number (per 100 trees) which designates the location of new trees. Original Beans tracks the provision of tree seedlings to each remote nursery where the attendant signs off the lots. 

Discovered by Original Beans in 2007 in the foothills of the Andes, this "forgotten" white cacao or "Porcelana" in its original state is ultra-rare and appreciated for its exceptionally vibrant, fruity flavours. Porcelana criollo was previously thought only to be found in Venezuela and Mexico. Nearly extinct, Original Beans' collaboration with the regional farmer cooperative has brought this variety back into production. The replanting programme allows local farmers to make the transition from rice to cacao which is much better for their income and for nature. 

Original Beans