Searching for that truly virtuous cup of coffee? If you’ve looked into the impact of your morning cup of joe recently, chances are you know that most coffees are their greenest when they’re still on the plantation, or maybe the tree.
Roasting, shipping, marketing, bagging and processing all take a lot of energy, and most coffee in the world travels a fair distance before it ends up in our french presses. Coffee is an equatorial crop, and we don’t all live on the equator.
A coffee roaster in Seattle has decided that the bitter aftertaste of unsustainable coffee production has got to go. So they did something about it. Grounds for Change, a family-owned company, has become the first coffee roaster to offset 100% of their global warming emissions produced in bringing their coffee to market. That’s right, carbon-neutral coffee.
Grounds for Change has recently worked with Carbonfund.org to tally up their carbon footprint from production and distribution of their coffee. Carbonfund.org, a nonprofit that provides carbon offsets and carbon emissions calculation services, has now certified Grounds for Change as 100% CarbonFree. This certification makes Grounds for Change the first coffee roaster to attain this certification. They’ll be planting trees for all of the non-renewable energy they use, and choosing renewable energy such as wind power for the rest.
Grounds for Change sells their coffee online and to local coffeehouses, and they participate in 1% For the Planet, which allows them to contribute 1% of their sales to environmental groups worldwide. Oh, and by the way, Grounds for Change sells only Certified Organic, Certified Fair Trade, Shade Grown Coffee. Now that would be enough for most roasters, but I’m also told that the coffee is quite delicious to boot.
So go ahead, have that cup of coffee, stare into its virtuous blackness, and think of the potential of a carbon-neutral future. Could you pass the cream and sugar?
Image credit: mikefats at flickr under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License
Bryan Luukinen
I'm an environmental scientist, food lover, gardener, aspiring farmer, and one helluva cook. I'm passionate about food politics, the environment, rational governments, cooking, food, and life. I live in Corvallis, OR, but I've been lots of places. Most don't get nearly the rain we do here. I think food is one of the most important things in life. We all eat, and therefore we all make an impact on the world with our food choices. We have all gotten too far from our food, and once we get closer, the charade of the industrial food system becomes more apparent. Do not dispair; grow something to eat, choose food that your grandmother could identify as such, and think about where your food comes from. If we all did one of those three, real, good food would be much more plentiful - and the world might be a better place.
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