Environment Poster

Design your poster

Background Chocolate is a super-food! Eating chocolate, and specifically dark chocolate with a high cocoa content, has been associated with health benefits such as good cardiovascular health, improvements in insulin sensitivity which could delay the onset of diabetes, and it just simply makes you feel good (due to its phenylethylamine content). However chocolate production has an unsavory side that involves child labour and even slavery, and future production is threatened on several fronts. Threats to future chocolate production include the influence of climate change, diseases and pests that reduce the yield of the cocoa plant, and reduced yields as land fertility decreases. As described by your text written by Draper and Zimmerman (2017), Canadians pay amongst the lowest prices globally for food and the vast majority of the population lacks knowledge about how our food is produced. We have come to expect many foods from a global hinterland, without interruption and with abundance. What if future chocolate supplies are threatened by global change and other factors affecting crop yields? How can we continue to consume chocolate that has been produced with child and slave labour? Several organization have been formed to press chocolate manufacturers to reform farming and labour practices along the supply chain. Some efforts could be judged to be partially successful based on the growth of certified cocoa in the market. But much more needs to be done from a variety of angles. One angle is consumer pressure to producers. Consumer pressure, coming from consumer countries, has been shown to be an effective way to improve labour and environmental practices of some producers and manufacturers located elsewhere. However, the pressure and actions need to come from a thorough understanding of the complete situation rather than identifying one or a few simple solutions that could have unintended consequences. Goal Your goal is to encourage students to take effective action to promote the sustainability of chocolate production along its supply chain. Here, sustainability includes environmental, human and political dimensions. Your task for this assignment is to create an eye-catching poster to encourage students to take concrete action. The poster needs to be honest, compelling and effective at engaging students at University of Toronto.

1. The poster needs to fit on an 8.5 X 11 inch sheet of paper and needs to be designed to catch the attention of students. Be creative! You can draw it by hand or use software. The poster needs to be easy to read.

2. The content of the poster aimed at University of Toronto students needs to communicate:

– What is the issue? This description needs to be very concise! You can stay with the big issue – sustainability of chocolate.

– Why is this an important issue? Your poster needs to state 3 points explaining why this is an important issue. Reference each point with a footnote as illustrated below.

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– What actions are you asking each student to do? You need to identify 3 concrete actions that, through your research, you believe will have maximum effectiveness at improving the sustainability of chocolate production across the supply chain. The action is what you and your peers are most likely to do. You do not need references for each action. But the action needs come from your research, as likely to be effective in addressing the sustainability of chocolate.

3. References: You must have 3 different references from a credible source to support your explanation of why this is an important issue. Be careful in identifying independent versus industry-sponsored information which could be biased. You should avoid using sources that could be biased. Reference each point with a superscript number or letter.1 See below for the entry of the footnote. The reference in the footnote must be big enough to read. Please use APA style. You must include a credit for each image or photo that you use.