Doug Krizner: A group of U.S. lawmakers are in West Africa this week. They're looking at child labor abuses at cocoa plantations.

Ivory Coast is the world's largest cocoa producing country and the lifeblood of the global chocolate industry, but as Gretchen Wilson reports, that industry depends on child slave labor.

 ...Some American lawmakers say the world needs to look closer at chocolate. They say child labor is giving the industry a bitter taste.

Iowa Senator Tom Harkin and New York Congressman Elliot Engel have proposed a plan to help consumers know when their sweet treats were produced without the worst forms of child labor.... 

Over the past decade, there has been increased attention to the cocoa industry, as reports emerged of children forced to work long hours doing hazardous jobs on cocoa plantations. There have been threats of consumer boycotts... 

Long the symbol of love, irresistible desire, and ephemeral beauty, the prickliest of flowers has never been so popular, so lucrative–or so toxic for the environment. But enterprising growers and marketers are working to turn the red rose green.

Between rows of tall, pale pink roses, he came at me like Darth Vader in a billowing cloud of vapors, his identity cloaked beneath a black face mask, hood, and plastic clothes. But the material coming out of the worker’s hose was a fog of agricultural chemicals.

Well, that worked out well, didn't it?

I'm talking about those precious yellow recycling bins, which are probably selling on eBay for triple or quadruple their price even as we speak. Those now worth-their-weight-in-gold containers that thousands lined up to buy at this weekend's "Bin Kick-Off" events at several city schools, only to be turned away empty-handed when the city ran out of them.