Like any basic white girl, I am ~in love with~ Starbucks. I have been Gold Card for three years, and it is usually renewed within a month of my Gold anni. Starbucks has been more to me than just a blissful Venti Caramel Iced Coffee with light cream. It has been a place to go do work and study off campus, a place to catch up with my childhood best friend and a reason to get out of my house and take a nice drive. I have been emotionally invested in this relationship since my first ceramic tumblr (that I cried over in the middle of my college’s quad when it slipped from my grasp and shattered-- a football player had to help me pick up the pieces).

Here I am though, hundreds of dollars, thousands of stars (with the new system), and two ceramic travel mugs, a classic mug and one cold tumbler later. I think this is the end of our relationship.

Life is too precious to drink unsustainable coffee. Maybe it’s not your life, and maybe it isn’t even for the lives of your future legacies who will have to live in the potentially royally screwed world that you should do this for. It is the lives of hundreds of thousands of people that for generations have cultivated coffee and lived in extreme poverty for doing so.

Drinking organic, sustainable coffee ensures that your coffee is not the reason behind toxic chemicals in already hard-to-attain water. The finka I was on in the mountains of the Dominican Republic used PVC pipes all around the mountain as their water source. If there was a leak, too bad. We would have to travel miles for water. After testing the water, we were able to infer that there is a lot of fertilizer seeping into their water supply. This pollution is from farming. We watched in slight horror as a five year old dunked his head into this polluted water and washed his face.

Since the messy split, I have actually saved a considerable amount of money. Organic, sustainable, fair trade coffee comes with a price, but even with the higher price, making coffee at home has saved me at least ten dollars a week, and that doesn't even count the fact that I am able to get much more coffee for my buck than rationing my coffee to last longer.

If you’re anything like a lot of my family, your question is, “so what does this do to help Americans?” Well, most fair trade coffee is produced by local and small-scale roasters and sold by local stores or vendors. This helps small entrepreneurs buy things for their families and pay their bills.

Like any break up, I even deleted my twitter avatar that featured a small, content smile that usually comes after indulging in a good late and one famous siren.

So next time you drink a five dollar latte, you can feel good about it. It is quality coffee that was fairly acquired from farmers that work hard to make a living wage, and not just buying a name. Also, I bet you’ll get just as many insta likes on it. Maybe even more likes if you can manage to look hip enough-- the possibilities are endless. Those likes might even mean something.