As you're reading this, you might get a feeling that you've read this article before. Perhaps you'll feel a sense of deja-brew 😉. But we promise this article is hot off the press, and you might be thinking about our edition on tea last week.
Coffee is mandatory to start the morning (or night, whichever you need) for millions of people around the world, gaining significant cultural and social meaning over the decades. For hundreds of years, people gathered together and did business or gossiped over cups of coffee. It's a lifestyle, an experience, and a means of social interaction. Think about the number of times you've asked someone to chat over coffee, even if you didn't end up getting coffee.
At a Glance
A global crop with a common ancestry, coffee is beloved all across the world. It's the world's second largest traded commodity and employs over 125 million people in an industry worth over $10B. On average, Americans spend $1500 a year on coffee, with more than 400 million cups consumed a day. Buying coffee is often one of the first things personal finance books suggest you cut down on spending.
Its commonality comes at a price, both environmentally and ethically. The vast amount of land cut down for coffee production and insane amount of waste produced is hard to imagine. Larger coffee companies have concerns with ethical practices, often not paying farmers and workers enough to sustain their families, leading toward more specialty coffee companies that try to make changes with direct sourcing.
Environmental Cost
Tackling sustainability in coffee comes from many parts of the coffee supply chain — growing, harvesting, transporting, roasting, and consumption. Most of today’s coffee is grown in fairly tropical regions of the globe, taking up to three years before it fruits properly. This often means coffee farmers often stick to growing coffee because of how long it takes to start a new farm. These coffee trees are normally grown in the wild under shade, but are now grown under the sun in coffee plantations to meet consumer demand and maximize sun exposure.
These sun-exposed trees can increase coffee production by over three times, but it harms bird flying patterns, increases chance for disease, and reduces wildlife diversity as farmers mow down land to make way for crops. This also contributes to massive amounts of soil erosion, releasing soil carbon and losing the innate minerals that made the rainforest soil fertile. Some experts also believe these sun-exposed trees affect the flavor to be more earthy, compared to the fruitier and more complex shade-grown ones.
Coffee trees also only have one main harvest a year, requiring up to nine months before the fruits are ready to harvest. The coffee fruit doesn't ripen at the same time, making the farmer have to decide to either harvest all the cherries at the same time, or painstakingly hire pickers to check on them.
Coffee produces an enormous amount of waste, with 57% of the coffee bean being made up of contaminants. In 2003, a study found that a standard cup of coffee can take up to 140 liters of water, most of which are required to grow the plant. Fertilizers and heavy pesticide can contribute to pollution, in addition to the residue discarded after drying the coffee cherry skin into the local rivers and streams. There is an estimated 1.1 million tons of pulp and 110,000 cubic meters of water polluted every day in Central America.
The roasting, packaging, and distribution for coffee attributes to about 15% of its total carbon footprint. The roaster machine often uses large amounts of energy, and needs to be operated efficiently to conserve gas usage. Transportation can cost about 4.82 kg of CO2 for every kg of coffee, depending on where it is being shipped. About 16 billion disposable single-use coffee cups are thrown away each year, representing 6.5 million trees, 4 billion gallons of water and enough energy to power 54,000 homes in one year. These styrofoam, paper and plastic cups are all big issues, with plastic lids and Starbuck sippy-cup lids remaining notoriously bad.
Human Cost
Just like you might have heard of the "Big Four" in tech, there's also a "Big Four" in the coffee industry — Kraft, P&G, Sara Lee, and Nestle — who purchase over 50% of the world's coffee production. With this level of demand, there are millions of people working around the clock to produce the coffee that you drink today.
Coffee is yet another product that is commonly exploited: children as young as 7 work long hours in the heat lugging sacks of coffee. A yearlong investigation by The Weather Channel and Telemundo found failures in the limitations in the system in Chiapas (the poorest state in Mexico) that represent flaws in this global supply chain and practices that assure that sourcing is ethical.
The coffee harvest in Chiapas is from October to March, and people flock to find jobs to harvest the coffee, and bring their kids in tow so they can maximize their income because they have no other option. Toilets and running water are lacking, adults earn as little as $4.50 a day, and the people working in Chiapas survive on as little as some flour tortillas, rice, and beans.
The circumstances in Chiapas, Mexico represent the exploitation of human labor all over the globe where coffee is produced: housing conditions are poor where many people are crammed into small living spaces, there's no proper sanitation, people are overworked and underpaid, and children as young as 7 are found on the fields.
We encourage you to do a background check on your favorite coffee suppliers. Starbucks got caught up in child labor row after an investigation found children under 13 were working on the plantations that were supplying this coffee conglomerate. This article was published March 2020, and it doesn't seem like much has changed in over a year.
Coffee Terminology
Labels
You’ve probably heard of the terms fair trade coffee and direct trade coffee. Fair Trade certification is used to help promote equality with regulations that prohibit child and forced labor, while also better supporting small farmers. But like all certification faults, there are concerns that there is a huge lack of transparency and low standards for quality.
Direct trade on the other hand is an ideology that roasters buy directly from the farmers instead of intermediaries, supposedly allowing for higher quality coffee and higher payments for farmers. Of course, this means that coffee distributors are now the ones held to ethical standards. Some groups try to produce transparency reports to help support their cause.
The main differences are that Fair Trade sets guidelines and regulations whereas direct trade focuses on rewarding farmers directly.
Ingredients
When buying from a packaged coffee product that's from a big brand, it's common for the product to be enhanced by additives and artificial flavors to hide a bad batch. But what can also be misleading is the certification a brand receives.
The weaknesses found in the certification process make it easy for poor labor conditions to slip through the cracks. Farmers generally know when inspectors are coming, giving them plenty of time to cover up any evidence of malfeasance. And because it's impossible to audit every single farm, a small percentage of farms within areas are inspected, and the result of that inspection is applied to all the other farms. Fairtrade USA, Rainforest Alliance, Starbucks, and Fairtrade International only inspect a small percentage of their farms. While we understand that it's impossible to audit all the hundreds of thousands of plantations for many reasons (the sheer number, location, access to the farm, etc), we think it's important to call this out.
Not only is it possible for coffee beans to be mislabelled, but they might be coming up with extra ingredients that compromise the quality and really shouldn't belong in your cup of joe. Here's some ingredients to watch out for:
Chemical toxins: Coffee is one of the most intensely sprayed crops, and to allow for maximum production, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and chemical fertilizers are used. To avoid this ingredient, buy certified organic coffee.
K-cups: While this isn't an ingredient, a third of American households have a k-cup brewer in their homes. Hot water that passes through these plastic cups can leech endocrine disruptors in your coffee.
Quinic Acid: causes the "sour coffee" burn in the pit of your stomach, and is a starter chemical in Tamiflu (a flu fighter)
Artificial coloring and flavors: Used to enhance the taste and look of coffee to hide a bad batch of coffee beans.
The Future of Coffee
At the current pace, the coffee industry is in for a rude awakening. The International Center for Tropical Agriculture released a report warning that at least 50% of land used for coffee growing will be unsuitable. Because coffee plants require specific climate conditions, global warming could cause coffee beans to become more expensive and unsuitable to live.
Groups like World Coffee Research are looking to research more about bolstering coffee diversity and variety in newer coffee regions, but it is apparent that if there was a widespread disease, it could put at least 60% of all coffee species at risk of extinction. And shifting where coffee grows wouldn’t necessarily solve the problem as it would upend an entire supply chain.
Organizations like the IDH Sustainability Trade Initiative are trying to improve policies for better production methods to help farmers, consumers and the overall environment. Transparency, flexibility, more education, increased financial support and shared partnerships are at the heart of improving the sustainable and ethical coffee sector. Catalyst Trade is working to change how coffee is traded so that everyone is paid fairly along this supply chain.
Companies like Bellwether Coffee are creating zero-emission and electric roaster systems, and nonprofit Sustainable Harvest is working to create a fair marketplace, working with Bellwether Coffee to come up with a new framework for coffee price minimums. Recycling programs like TerraCycle and The Green Room are working with bag companies like Grainpro to help reduce single-use waste for storing and packaging coffee beans.
Specialty coffee will continue to grow as well, with a larger focus on small and local breweries and coffee shops, but also lots of delivery coffee and new coffee single-use containers with concerns that it might add more to single-use waste. Alliance for Coffee Excellence, the nonprofit behind Cup of Excellence tries to focus on earning more money for farmers with their specialty coffee awards.
Shops to Consider
While there are many coffee shops around the country, we highly suggest first focus on checking out your local cafes and roasteries before taking a look at these suggestions to reduce the transportation costs. But if you are considering to be more sustainable and ethical, we recommend considering these places:
Equator Coffee & Teas | ~$20 a bag | California’s first B corporation that roasts in “eco-friendly” clean-burning stoves that is LGBT-owned.
Seven Coffee Roasters | ~$17 a bag | Seattle’s first zero-waste cafe that makes donations to environmental non-profits
Boon Boona Coffee | ~$20 a bag | Black-owned East African coffee roaster focused on sustainable and woman-owned growers in a BIPOC, LGBTQ+ space
Portland Coffee Roasters | ~$17 a bag | One of the oldest Portland coffee companies funding different coffee projects every year with the highest stand of sustainability recognized by Portland
Wonderstate Coffee Roasters | ~$18 a bag | Wisconsin based roaster converting its entire roasting facility to 100% solar power
Counter Culture Coffee | ~$18 a bag | North Carolina coffee roaster that produces an annual sustainability report to track emissions related to its coffee
What You Can Do
Bring your own coffee cup to drink coffee and avoid using plastic lids if you need to purchase a disposable cup.
Look out for shade-grown coffee, bird friendly coffee, or labels like fair trade or direct trade coffee, researching in more detail about where the coffee you buy sources their beans.
Consider using reusable coffee pod containers if you use coffee pods in your machine.
Donate and support organizations like World Coffee Research or push for policies in the U.S. with the IDH Sustainability Trade Initiative to demand for better production methods.
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Crap I gotta stop drinking coffee!