Eat Amsterdam

Great social and environmental things seem to be happening in the world of chocolate. First there was Tony’s Chocolonely, a bar created almost as a joke to prove to mainstream chocolate companies that there was a market for slave-free chocolate; four years later it is still going strong. Then there was Ananda Chocolate, the first bar in the world with a fully compostable inner wrapper. Last week, I posted an article about Lovechock, Holland’s first raw chocolate bar, and now there’s Organic Meltdown. 

As if I needed any inducement to consume more cocoa, Organic Meltdown has come up with the tag line ‘eating this chocolate saves trees’. Open up the wrapper - there's something very Charlie and the Chocolate Factory about doing this - and inside is a unique code. Type this into the box on Organic Meltdown’s site and Google Earth will apparently show you the tree you have saved and its location.

You have to create a user account in order to see your tree, which feels slightly invasive, but at least the terms and conditions offer an, ahem, sweetener, by making chocolate-related puns all the way through. The section on ‘cookies’ also takes on a whole new meaning.

The chocolate is Swiss made rather than Dutch but hey, let’s not get territorial about saving the planet, and the company's aim is to save 5 million trees in Ecuador by 2012. According to the Treeometer on the homepage, 111,763 trees have so far been saved.

I can personally vouch for the 71% dark chocolate, and it’s an added bonus that my cocoa habit may have a positive effect on someone other than myself.

Organic Meltdown is available in the Natuurwinkel chain of healthfood supermarkets.