Chocolate is not exactly a hard sell but persuading consumers to desire the product because it’s good for the economy and the environment is not the first thing that comes to mind. That’s the challenge the George Washington University Institute for Corporate Responsibility (ICR), housed in GW Business, set for the chocolatiers of Trinidad and Tobago in the three years it has partnered with the Cocoa Research Centre (CRC) of the University of West Indies in developing sustainable chocolate.
Cocoa beans from the island of Trinidad bring a very high price, but very little of that is for the actual beans that are grown there. There’s much more value along the supply side chain—from transporting to manufacturing to marketing—that the institute wants to capture. In opening the third annual Sustainable Chocolate Workshop, John Forrer, ICR director and research professor, said after working on upgrading the supply side selling Trinidad’s brand, sustainable chocolate is the next challenge.
“What practices, what can you do and then how do you message it and let people know about this product you’re making which is not only sustainable but really yummy,” he said.
The honorable Anthony Phillips-Spencer, Trinidad and Tobago’s ambassador to the United States, met with Michael Glatzer, vice provost for academics budget, and welcomed GW students, faculty and chocolatiers, makers and producers of chocolate from the island country and from Washington, D.C., to the workshop in Duquès Hall, which was supported by GW's Alliance for a Sustainable Future. The event was scheduled to coincide with the D.C. Chocolate Festival hosted by the French Embassy, which invited chocolate lovers to learn about and sample chocolate from around the world.
Since 2023, when the Cocoa, Carbon and Chocolate project with GW was initiated, Spencer said, the embassy has “advocated for research and development, investment and market development to be coproduction and chocolate manufacturing industries through value and supply chain development in the United States.” He said such partnerships are key to diversifying his country’s economy and strengthening bilateral trade relations with the United States.
He praised the chocolate industry in both countries for making “significant strides toward sustainable packaging and the use of ethically broad cocoa in their product by embracing eco-friendly materials, ethical practices, reducing waste” and conveying the story behind “the unique flavors of our distinctive Trinitario brand of cocoa.”
The project is in its final stages, so the workshop was an opportunity to reflect on what’s is needed to attract investors to the cocoa industry in Trinidad and Tobago.
The islands make a prime spot for the chocolate industry, Pathmanathan Umaharan, CRC director and University of West Indies professor of genetics said, because of the undisputed reputation for the quality of the cocoa Trinidad currently produces. He said the product fetches the highest price on the world market, and his country has nearly a century-long history of studying the product at the oldest cocoa research center in the world.
A century ago, Trinidad was the third largest cocoa producer in the world, he said, but production drastically declined from 40,000 metric tons of cocoa to just 500 metric tons: thousands of coca farms were abandoned and much of the labor drained away by the oil and gas industry. The country’s national goal is to rebuild the cocoa industry in the next 15 years and attract investors with an economically sustainable model by mitigating risks, including environmental issues such as climate change and cadmium in the soil in some regions that has been linked to health problems.
Global cocoa production has fallen in the past four years, Pathmanathan said, which is reflected in a price increase of $2,000 per ton to $12,000 per ton. Currently, most of the cocoa is coming from West Africa, and it carries a big carbon footprint because of the long supply chain costs of transporting the product from Africa to Europe and the United States. The project has proposed that a factory using innovative technology, and a supply chain restricted to Trinidad and Tobago, would minimize those emissions.
If the cocoa carbon community project can build a sustainable model, Forrer said, and attract “impact investors” there are “lessons not only for Trinidad but for other countries that have cocoa sectors.”