But what exactly is good chocolate? It’s the kind you can enjoy without any trace of guilt. Good chocolate is produced without harming forests, it pays dignified wages to the farmers who grow it, and it ensures no child is exploited in the process. To help you tell the difference between good chocolate and not-so-good chocolate, NWF partners every year with Slavery Free to bring you a list of brands worth your trust — and your taste!

Good Chocolate Keeps Mother Earth’s Forests Standing

Good chocolate is traceable to its origins and it doesn’t drive deforestation. As consumer demand and market regulations, including pending legislation in Europe, raise the bar for ethical and deforestation-free chocolate, a growing number of companies in the cocoa sector have made significant progress in adopting and implementing traceability and monitoring processes across their supply chains. But progress is uneven, and despite the leadership by some companies, major players in the cocoa sector must back their commitments with action.

Traceability is no simple task. A complex network of indirect suppliers, including local traders, middlemen known as coxeurs, and informal cocoa cooperatives, makes tracking cocoa beans extremely difficult. In Côte d’Ivoire, the world’s largest cocoa producer, a 2022 Trase analysis showed that 65% of the country’s cocoa exports were indirectly sourced. The large number of actors involved in the supply chain makes tracing cacao beans to their origins even harder, and nearly impossible to know with certainty whether they were grown without harming forests. It is challenging, but it can be done!

Of the 49 companies that responded to the Chocolate Scorecard survey, only 8 provided verifiable information that their cacao was produced without deforestation. The eight companies are Bennetto, Chocolatemakers, HALBA, Malmö, Original Beans, Ritter Sport, Tony’s Chocolonely, and Whittaker’s. These eight prove it can be done. The others will need to catch up.

The 7th Edition Chocolate Scorecard is here, check it out!

If you’ve been hungry to know which chocolate brands deserve a spot in your shopping cart, we have some exciting news. This year, in addition to the classic Good Egg, Bad Egg, and Gender Award for retailers and companies, Slavery Free has introduced two new categories: the Retail Stayers Award, recognizing consistent participation and transparency by retailers across successive editions, and the Farmer Health Award, highlighting the progress and commitment made by companies to support farmers’ health.

Drumroll, please…here are the 2026 Chocolate Scorecard winners:

Good Egg Large Company

The Swiss company HALBA is the first large company in Scorecard history to score green in every category — paying farmers a living-income premium, mapping every farm in its supply chain, and running agroforestry projects across multiple countries.

Good Egg Small Company
Original Beans, returning to the podium for the second year in a row, and Swiss retailer Coop, two brands proving that doing good and tasting great are not mutually exclusive

(NEW) Farmer Health Award
The Hershey Company becomes the first-ever Farmer Health Award winner, recognized for its health-insurance program for farmers in Ghana.

Gender Award

Tony’s Chocolonely takes home the Gender Award for its work tackling gender inequality in their cocoa supply chain, since women farmers in cocoa often earn less than male farmers.

(NEW) Retail Stayers Award

This new Award honors eight retailers who have submitted to scrutiny and engaged with uncomfortable findings year after year since the Scorecard began. They don’t always score well. But that’s precisely the point.

Ahold Delhaize, Aldi Nord, ALDI SOUTH Group, Carrefour, Coop, MIGROS, Systeme U and Woolworths.

Bad Eggs
Mondelēz International, the second-largest chocolate company in the world that own brands like Dairy Milk, Creme Egg, Toblerone and Milka declined to participate in the Chocolate Scorecard. They refused to answer questions about child labor, deforestation, and whether the farmers growing their cocoa earn enough to live on.

Starbucks earns the Bad Egg this year for its continued refusal to engage with the Scorecard. The company declined to answer any questions about the ethics and sustainability of its cocoa supply chain, a troubling lack of transparency from one of the world’s most recognizable brands.

More companies are answering the hard questions

Slavery Free and a coalition of more than 30 NGOs, academic institutions, and civil-society partners have spent seven years holding companies and brands in the chocolate market accountable — pushing them to be transparent about the chocolate they put on our shelves. When the Chocolate Scorecard launched, only a small group of companies and retailers were willing to publicly answer hard questions about child labor, farmer income, deforestation, and pesticide use. This year, 80 companies and retailers were invited to participate and 49 accepted, a 61% overall rate. Large and medium companies showed strong engagement at 79%. 

But the bigger story is this: the answers are getting better. Eight of the 49 participating companies scored well across every category, and they’re no longer just small craft chocolate makers. Medium and large companies are proving that scale and good practice can go hand in hand.

US Retailers: No Show, No Accountability

No US retailers participated in this year’s Scorecard, and that’s a problem for American consumers who want to know whether their supermarkets are committed to ethical and sustainable chocolate. It’s time for US consumers to demand transparency that protects our climate, our forests, and the farmers who grow the cacao we all love. 

So keep informed, love your Mother Earth, and eat good chocolate. 

National Wildlife Federation proudly partners every year with the Chocolate Scorecard, led by Be Slavery Free, alongside dozens of other NGOs and academics to rank over 80% of the global top chocolate brands based on their environmental and social practices. That way, we help you to find the chocolate brands that not only taste good, but do good!

This Easter, don’t hop off with just any chocolate—hop to the 2025 Chocolate Scorecard!

Let’s protect a planet where chocolate exists.

As a true chocoholic, I once saw a mug with a quote that felt like my motto: “Save the Earth—it’s the only planet with chocolate.”

I found it quirky and funny at the time, but in hindsight, now I see it as a powerful call to action. Climate change, driven by fossil fuel emissions, deforestation, and unsustainable farming practices among other causes, is threatening ecosystems where cocoa grows and the very future of chocolate. What started as a jokey quote on a mug is quickly becoming a scary reality if consumers and companies don’t act now.

You, as a consumer, have the power to ensure the future of chocolate, its farmers, and the forests where it grows by choosing chocolate that supports deforestation-free farming, fair labor, and sustainable practices.

Chocolate in Crisis

This year, you might be wondering, judging by the price tags, if your chocolate eggs are made of gold. And you’re not too far off. Chocolate prices have skyrocketed over the past year. Between 2002 and 2022, cocoa prices (the main ingredient in chocolate) typically ranged between $1,500 and $3,000 per metric ton. But by April 2024, prices had soared past $12,000, and by December, they hit a record high of nearly $13,000.

This unprecedented price spike is caused by a perfect storm of factors: climate change, crop diseases, and growing demand from emerging markets like Asia, all of which are putting intense pressure on supply and availability.

Cocoa comes from cocoa trees that grow only in very specific rainforest conditions—high humidity, steady rainfall, and rich soils. But climate change is disrupting these conditions. Rising temperatures and shifting rain patterns are threatening cocoa trees, weakening tree growth, and reducing the quality and quantity of cocoa beans. At the same time, unpredictable rainfall and more frequent droughts have devastated harvests in the top cocoa-producing countries, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Cameroon, which together supply over 60% of the world’s cocoa.

But this soar in prices has also exposed chocolate’s dark side: a system that chronically underpays the farmers who grow cocoa—prevailing poverty, and enabling child labor. Despite being a popular, beloved treat and part of a multi-billion-dollar global industry, chocolate relies on a supply chain where smallholder farmers earn far too little, with families who work on the cacao crops earning less than $1 a day, an income below extreme poverty. This crisis is a wake-up call, revealing how chocolate has long been undervalued and its true cost hidden at the expense of fair wages for producers.

It’s time to demand change in how the chocolate industry operates, by supporting companies that ensure fair livelihoods for farmers and are committed to investing in sustainable practices that help mitigate and adapt to climate change, creating a system that protects nature and people.

The Not-So-Secret Ingredients for “Good” Chocolate

The recipe for “good” chocolate isn’t just about its ingredients—it’s about values. Each year, we evaluate how chocolate companies perform across six key sustainability areas: traceability and transparency, deforestation and climate, living income for farmers, child and forced labor, agroforestry, and pesticide use. Then, we grade and rank them so you can shop with purpose.

Companies Hopping On the Good Chocolate Train

The 2025 Good Egg Award goes to Beyond Good and Tony’s Chocolonely for earning the highest scores in the small and medium-to-large companies categories, respectively. These companies stood out for strong performance across all six sustainability criteria. In total, 8 chocolate companies and only 1 of the 13 retailers assessed earned the coveted green “Good Egg” for exemplary practices. That’s a pretty exclusive podium!

Companies Hopping Off the Good Chocolate Train

At the other end of the spectrum, the Rotten Egg Award goes to Mondelēz for lack of transparency in their cocoa sourcing. Additionally, six chocolate producers and a surprising 18 retailers declined to participate in the survey, compared to just 15 who did. This highlights the urgent need for greater transparency in supply chains, especially among retailers. It’s time for more companies to step up and for consumers to raise their voices and put pressure on a different way, a “good” way to produce chocolate.

So keep informed, buy with purpose, and eat “good” chocolate.

If you love chocolate like me, you may be buying it this month since April takes the crown for chocolate consumption in the US. This time of the year, the US candy industry makes $4 billion in sales, 70% being chocolate, and experts predict that between 2021 and 2030, the market for cocoa and chocolate will grow at an average rate of 4.6% each year.

Most of us love chocolate for its unique taste and ability to boost our mood but it can also be part of celebrations and give us an excuse to treat ourselves. However, the not-so-good side is that chocolate production is linked to social and environmental harm such as poverty, child labor, and deforestation. Have you ever wondered what goes into your chocolate and how it’s sourced? Do you know how your favorite chocolate brand ranks for labor and environmental practices and policies? If you don’t know, don’t worry – we got you!

The new 2023 Chocolate Scorecard provides consumers with valuable information about the socio-environmental impacts of chocolate makers and cocoa traders. The scorecard, created in collaboration between Be Slavery Free, Macquarie University, The University of Wollongong, and the Open University, and with the support of civil society groups, including NWF, surveyed 38 leading global chocolate companies and 18 of the largest retailers, and ranked and graded them according to 6 key sustainability issues: traceability and transparency, deforestation, living income, child labor, agroforestry, and use of agrichemicals.

And the award goes to…

The 2023 Good Egg Award is for Original Beans and Tony’s Chocolonely for their bold approach to regenerative agriculture and multi-stakeholder collaborations, respectively. In addition, 5 of the companies and 3 of the retailers assessed were awarded the green “good egg” prize for exemplary practices.

At the other end of the scale, the Rotten Egg Award goes to General Mills and Walmart for their lack of public policies and commitment for their cocoa procurement. Also, 6 chocolate producers and 2 retailers received the “rotten egg” award, and several well-known brands, such as Unilever (umbrella brand of Magnum ice cream), fell into the broken egg category as they declined to respond to the survey.

Breaking the Mold: How chocolate companies can transform their industry

This scorecard sets the record straight on greenwashing versus real action by revealing companies’ under-performance in the cocoa industry. Despite decades of voluntary industry commitments, child labor, poverty, and deforestation are still widespread in this sector. The good news is that recently, more companies are turning the tide to bring chocolate that is good for people and the planet to your table. Here is what chocolate companies leading the change are doing well:

Monitoring Deforestation

Technology is our ally in measuring deforestation. Thanks to advances in satellite monitoring, companies have greater visibility of cocoa farming locations, making it easier to identify where deforestation is occurring and source from verified deforestation-free zones. Geographical information can also be used to monitor the impact and progress of reforested cocoa farms and those that have adopted agroforestry systems (integrating trees and shrubs into a crop).

Traceability and Transparency

Approximately half the cocoa we consume in our chocolate probably can’t be traced back to the farmer that grew it. Cocoa’s journey from the farm to your store shelf involves numerous intermediaries, forming a complex and intricate supply chain that resembles a spider web more than a linear path. For that reason, achieving traceability, the ability to pinpoint the origin of a product and follow its movements through the whole supply chain, from farm to table, remains a huge challenge. But it is not impossible. By putting resources into new software systems, some companies like Tony’s Chocolonely are able to know which farmers supplied what percentages of each shipping container of cocoa beans arriving at their factory.

Collaboration

Several international commitments have been established to achieve sustainable cocoa production and to protect and restore forests, such as The Cocoa and Forests Initiative (CFI), which has been warmly received by the governments of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana (the top two cocoa producers in the world) as well as leading chocolate and cocoa companies.

And not only companies and consumers are shifting to deforestation-free chocolate, some countries are taking responsibility for their role in importing products linked to forest loss. The European Union has taken a bold stance by introducing a regulation that will require due diligence by companies to ensure the products EU citizens consume (beginning in 2024) do not contribute to deforestation worldwide.

Small Steps you can take to Make a Big Difference

Make your chocolate purchase count! Choose consciously and enjoy a delicious treat that supports sustainable forestry and the farmers who produce it. 

Check and share the 2023 Chocolate Scorecard – chocolate won’t be your guilty pleasure anymore.

It is that time of the year again. Shops fill with flowers and pink and red tones flood store windows. Cupid shoots his arrow to announce the return of the most romantic day of the year: Valentine’s Day. With it, the star of the show is back: chocolate, lavish amounts of it, wrapped in beautiful heart-shaped boxes.

Love can’t be measured, but the U.S.’s voracious appetite for chocolate can. In 2022, Americans spent $2.5 billion on chocolate for Valentine’s Day and a total of $18 billion over the entire year. 

We won’t sugarcoat the truth.

While the passion for chocolate may seem harmless, in reality, these colossal numbers shed light on the magnitude of the problem behind the chocolate industry – human rights abuse and deforestation. But how can such a sweet treat have such a dark side? Let’s quickly dive into the history of chocolate and how it got here:

We attribute this delicacy to the ingenuity of ancient Indigenous communities in Central and South America, such as the Maya and the Aztecs, the first to convert the pods of the tropical cacao fruit into cocoa, the precursor to chocolate. After Europeans colonized North America and introduced chocolate to Europe, the taste for the delicacy spread throughout the continent. To keep up with the new high demand, cacao plantations were established in other tropical areas across the globe.

A heartless industry

Our insatiable love for chocolate has destructive consequences for nature and people in regions where cacao is cultivated. Most of the chocolate comes from the West African countries of Ivory Coast and Ghana, which together produce about two-thirds of the world’s cocoa. The Ivory Coast, the top cocoa producer in the world, lost more than 80% of its forest in the last 50 years due mainly to this commodity.  

To grow cacao farms, forests are usually cleared, destroying native biodiversity, reducing associated ecosystem services and climate resilience, and releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. It is urgent to note that cacao is farmed primarily in biodiversity hotspots in West Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America, so habitat loss caused by land conversion for cacao farming has a devastating impact on wildlife and plant species, most of them endemic. And it is not only elephants, birds, and chimpanzees that are threatened by the expansive agriculture and cacao production: local communities, especially their children, also suffer from the greedy practices involved in chocolate production.

The dark side of chocolate

If you have a chocolate bar at home, chances are it is not made with love but is the product of human rights abuses, low pay, and child labor. In Ivory Coast and Ghana, most families who work on the cacao crops earn less than $1 a day, with many women cacao farmers making as little as $0.30 daily, an income below extreme poverty. This is crucial, as the low price of cocoa on the global market perpetuates structural poverty in the countries where it is produced. The desperate poverty of cocoa farmers also explains why children as young as five are exploited in the farms and exposed to agrochemical products and hazardous conditions, including using sharp tools, undertaking land clearing activities, and working long hours or at night, unable to attend school. 

According to a 2020 report by the U.S. Department of Labor, more than 1.56 million children were engaged in dangerous labor in cocoa-growing regions, and a percentage of those children have been trafficked in and held as slaves. 

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Cacao can be grown without exploitation or deforestation. And more than that, it can be grown sustainably, preserving biodiversity and improving farmer livelihoods. Over a thousand years ago, the Maya and Aztecs planted cocoa trees under the canopy of the forest, and today, the best cocoa comes from shade-grown agroforestry, a similar farming method, where shrubs and trees grow among the main crop. Agroforestry has numerous environmental benefits, like carbon sequestration, soil health, nitrogen fixation, water regulation, erosion control, and, most importantly, it’s a major boost for biodiversity. 

Your actions can change the system!

Consumers’ choices are a vital part of the solution. Here are two things that you can do to make a difference:

Buy ethical and environmentally friendly chocolate.

Your chocolate purchase can have a positive or negative impact. To help consumers find chocolate makers that support wildlife and people, the National Wildlife Federation worked with other NGOs to create a chocolate shopping guide, ranking more than 80 percent of global chocolate brands based on their social and environmental performance.

Take Action.

Demand the billion-dollar chocolate industry to stop exploiting nature, farmers, and children. Consumer demands can enormously impact companies and governments, who are pushed to act when consumers advocate for sustainable change. Urge Congress to support the FOREST Act to stop deforestation and the imports of products produced on illegally-cleared forestland around the world.

Life is like a box of chocolates, but you can decide what type you get. Buy consciously. Spread the love this Valentine’s Day.

But, recent reports have me worried that the future of chocolate is fraught with uncertainty. This month’s Scientific American features an article by two scientists at Mars, Inc, who are raising alarms about cocoa agriculture around the world.  Pests, fungal infections, limited genetic diversity, and (you guessed it!) climate change top their lists of concerns.

Cocoa and Climate

It turns out that the cocoa tree is rather fussy about its growing conditions. The large cocoa plantations around the world are located in places where mean temperatures range between 72 and 77 degrees F, typically within a narrow band around the equator out to about 18 degrees north and south latitude.

A study of cocoa growing regions in the Ivory Coast and Ghana found that if temperature increase by just 3.6 degrees F, areas where cocoa is currently grown will become significantly less suitable. The most suitable areas move from a range of 100 to 250 meters above sea level to a range of 450 to 500 meters about sea level by 2050.

In addition to shifting average temperature and precipitation conditions, climate change is affecting weather and climate extremes. A trend toward more droughts and floods will affect the water supply in cocoa growing regions. And, heavier monsoon rains in Indonesia have already been blamed for knocking cocoa flowers off the trees before pods can be formed.

What’s more, changes in weather and climate extremes could make the cocoa plant even more susceptible to pests and fungal infections. These sorts of infections are nothing to sneeze at! In 1988, cocoa production in Bahia, Brazil dropped by 80 percent when the fungal disease witches’ broom swept through the area. And, today, frosty pod rot is infecting cocoa trees in Latin America.

Safeguarding Chocolate and Wildlife

Before you start stockpiling chocolate in advance of this Cocoapocalypse (yes, I went there!), there are actions that can safeguard chocolate.  First and foremost, we need to curb the carbon pollution that is causing climate change. Limiting the magnitude of climate change will have benefits for both cocoa farming and wildlife.

Another option that has good co-benefits for wildlife was the subject of a recent scientific study of small farmers in Indonesia. They found that wildlife-friendly farming approaches that maintain high levels of biodiversity can be implemented and still retain high yield of cocoa crops.

Let’s make sure that we have chocolate (and my other favorite foods!) around for many Valentine’s Days to come!

Take Action

From polar bears to pika, cocoa trees are just one of a long list species threatened by climate change. The Environmental Protection Agency is moving to limit carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants and it needs to know that you stand behind this critical effort. Tell the EPA that Americans support limits on carbon pollution to protect the future of polar bears.