How Green is Your Fair Trade Coffee?

I drink Fair Trade coffee because…well…mostly because our partners sell coffee that is out-of-this-world good! I also drink it because it promotes economic justice and sustainable farming in coffee-growing communities overseas. Recently, however, I have come to discover that the Fair Trade principles that motivate our partners here in the United States have led them to some pretty cool innovations in the area of ecological sustainability on our end of the coffee supply chain. “Environmentally friendly” now goes WAY beyond selling organic and shade-grown coffee.

ORGANIC & SHADE-GROWN FARMING.
This is just the point of entry into the sustainability discussion. When people farm their coffee organically and under the shade of a diverse forest canopy, they grow better coffee that protects local water sources from contamination, enhances soil quality and fertility, prevents soil erosion, creates all kinds of possibilities for growing non-coffee foods for family consumption and local markets…Shall I go on?

Well, ALL of our partners sell coffee that is shade-grown and organic. In some cases, their coffees may not be certified organic, but the farms on which they were grown are either being cultivated in traditional (read: non-chemical) ways or are in transition to formal organic certification. Buy coffee from our partners and put your mind at ease — you are NOT promoting monocropping, clear-cutting or the use of nasty chemicals with your purchase.

SUSTAINABLE DELIVERY.
This is where things start to get really cool. Our partners are doing all sorts of cool things to ensure that they get their coffee to you in ways that minimize the ecological footprint of their delivery.

Bikes. Peace Coffee in Minneapolis and Just Coffee in Madison both have active bike delivery operations. (Check out the “Brad the Bike Messenger Gallery” to see the “neither rain nor snow nor sleet nor hail” ethos that prevails at Peace Coffee, or dig this shot of Mike Moon from Just Coffee — he’s moving so fast the camera just can’t keep up!)

Biodiesel and Vegetable Buses. OK, so not all of our partners have bike teams. Some of them do use vehicles to get their coffee around town to the coffeehouses and restaurants and retailers that carry them. But not all of them are filling the tanks with non-renewable carbon-based fuel that is going for $3.50 a gallon!

Just Coffee, Larry’s Beans (Raleigh, NC) and Peace Coffee all have delivery vehicles that operate on biodiesel and/or vegetable oil! Checkout the Peace Coffee van and the Larry’s Beans “Veggie Bus”. (Better yet, watch the Veggie Bus movie to see the short bus in action.)

Larry’s Beans has taken the alternative fuel bit one step further, partnering with Piedmont Bio-Fuels to install a veggie oil pump at its roastery — Raleigh’s first!

PACKAGING.
Dean’s Beans in Orange, MA, packages its coffee in recyclable paper bags. Just tear off the metal strip that you use to reseal the bag and pitch it in the recycling bin — plastic valve bags may be clogging landfills for the next several thousand years, but none of them will bear the Dean’s Beans logo.

OFFSETS.
Kelsey and Stacy Marshall have made Grounds for Change in Poulsbo, WA, the first CRS Coffee Program partner to go carbon-neutral! In partnership with the Puget Sound Energy Green Power Program, Grounds for Change uses some renewable energy sources to power its roastery to reduce carbon emissions, then offsets the rest of its emissions through investment in carbon secuestration projects — the first business in Washington to do so!

GREEN BUILDING.
Finally, two of our partners have made their homes in green buildings: Peace Coffee is housed in the Philips Eco-Enterprise Center and Larry’s Beans just completed a major eco-renovation of its roastery with a green building loan from the state of North Carolina, which awarded Larry’s Beans with its 2006 sustainability award.

Once again, CRS Coffee Program partners are blazing a trail for justice and sustainability! So please buy your Fair Trade coffee from our partners, and vote with your dollars to support sustainable approaches to business.

And the next time someone asks you, “How do you take your coffee?” tell them: “I like it green!”

This entry was posted on Friday, May 25th, 2007 and is filed under Coffee, Fair Trade Federation, Sustainability . You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

How Green is Your Fair Trade Coffee?

Leave a Reply