How to Become a Sustainable Coffee Consumer — Help the Planet and Small Scale Farmers by Buying Responsibly
It doesn’t take much effort to buy sustainably. Natural ecosystems are suffering and drastic changes in climate are happening as you read this. Adopting sustainable consumption habits is becoming more vital than ever.
With a few minutes of casual research, you can find a coffee brand that suits your tastes, uses sustainable farming techniques, and pays their workers fair wages. Sure, the word ‘sustainable’ can be hard to define. So let’s define it!
What does it mean to be sustainable?
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, sustainability is a concept based on the fact that humanity depends on the earth’s resources, and those resources are vulnerable to overconsumption, over-extraction, and pollution. In order to keep the earth healthy for future generations, we must create compatible conditions for humans and nature to thrive.¹
This means switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, learning how to compost our food waste, switching to compostable materials to replace plastic, learning how to recycle properly, and buying from ethically sourced brands. This is definitely not a complete list, but incorporating small changes to your consumption habits can add up to a big difference in your environmental impact.
Tips for becoming a sustainable coffee consumer
Tip #1 — Make coffee at home
Sounds simple enough, but all of us have fallen into the convenience trap of buying a Starbucks coffee before work…every day last week. A research collaboration between Time Magazine and NexTrip, calculated that you could be spending around $2,007.50 a year buying your daily Starbucks coffee.² That’s a lot of money to be spending on something you could be making at home most of the time.
And see, that’s the thing: you don’t have to completely give up that quick caffeine boost of “self care”. But switching to home-brewed coffee 4 out of 5 days a week would save you $1,600 a year, and save 200 plastic Starbucks cups from being used each year.
Tip #2 — Research the coffee company you buy from
Ask yourself questions related to your social impact
Do you know where the coffee you drink was sourced from?
Does your coffee company exploit land in poorer countries?
How well are the workers paid?
Fair trade certification is a good start, but it doesn’t actually guarantee all workers within an organization are receiving livable wages. Some brands of coffee will present a sourcing summary on the physical container. For example, Trader Joe’s Organic Fair Trade Wake Up Blend beans comes from small-scale farms in Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, and Peru.³
However, analyzing labels is not enough to be a sustainable buyer. You must look further than what the brand is telling you about their own product. You can do a quick Google search to see if any articles pop up about your coffee brand of choice, either contrasting or validating their claims. As of 2020, Trader Joe’s had contracts with eight small production farms in a program they call the “Small Lot Program” , and shared plans to expand the program.⁴
A large company like Trader Joe’s working with small farms is a good sign in terms of sustainable development. Most corporations buy communal land in poorer countries for cheap and use it for environmentally destructive commercial farming — ultimately outcompeting the smaller farms and displacing the people living on that land. Buying coffee from companies that empower small farmers instead of putting them out of business is a simple sustainable practice you can incorporate today.
Now ask yourself about the environmental impact of your coffee:
Was the coffee shade grown?
Is the packaging recyclable?
It isn’t good enough to see the word “organic” on a bag and decide that it’s environmentally sustainable. Organic and sustainable are not synonyms. Organic agriculture focuses on what the farmer puts in (non-gmo, no synthetic pesticides, etc), whereas sustainable agriculture focuses on the bigger picture: the health of the land the crops are grown on.⁵ Both are seen as environmentally friendly models, but the push for organics falls in line with a purity culture model of consumption, whereas the goal of sustainability is about keeping ecosystems healthy for future generations.
Shade grown coffee beans are environmentally friendly because
They are usually grown with other crops/plants to provide each other mutual benefits
Less water is required for the growth cycle due to increased water retention in the soil from tree roots and decreased exposure to direct sunlight
Natural predators are controlled by surrounding plants; no need for pesticides
Cover crops minimize soil erosion
There are even multiple categories of shade grown coffee! You can read more about them here.
In terms of your desired coffee’s packaging: the less packaging, the better. It’s not a hard concept to grasp, but it can be hard to actually make happen. My key tip for this: buy in bulk. Not only will you save money, but you’ll use less plastic.
For example, the Trader Joe’s Wake Up Blend has a 14 oz bag and a 28 oz cylindrical container of ground coffee. You could save yourself a second trip to the grocery store and reuse the 28 oz tin cylinder container for storage or a future gift box. (It’s much harder to reuse a 14 oz plastic coffee bag that has been opened haphazardly!)
Tip #3 — Buy compostable and/or recycled coffee filters
There are tons of companies out there making recycled coffee filters — for cheap. Green Line Paper has a pack of 100 unbleached filters for $3.49 made from pulp. Most coffee filters are made from paper and bleached with chlorine or oxygen, contributing to physical waste and chemical waste.⁶ So with a simple switch from bleached paper filters to unbleached recycled filters, you can eliminate chemical waste without impacting your wallet.
*Bonus points for saving your coffee grounds! You can compost them with your coffee filter, or use them in a potting soil mix!*
Tip #4 — Avoid buying K cups
Keurig cups have created an environmental nightmare of single capsule coffee. Sure, it’s convenient to make yourself exactly one cup, but is it worth the price and excess plastic? Remember that money-saving coffee statistic from Tip #1? Here’s another: the average person who buys a Keurig Machine with standard delivery K cups will spend about $533.50 per year, drinking two cups a day. ²
Remember that the average yearly price for coffee from a standard coffee pot is $45.90…drinking two cups a day. Sustainability does not just have to be an environmental concept, it often coincides with habits that save you money.
Share your sustainability knowledge with your community
The last step in becoming a sustainable consumer is to share what you’ve learned with your coworkers, friends, and family. You can multiply the effect you have by inspiring others to make small changes to their buying habits. Whether you’re buying coffee, fruit, rice, or beans, your dollar is your voice. Next time you make your grocery list, set aside time to research products that are ethically sourced and sustainably produced. A few minutes of simple Googling can tell you a lot about the companies you support.
What are you waiting for?
Resources:
1: https://www.epa.gov/sustainability/learn-about-sustainability
2. https://time.com/nextadvisor/banking/savings/save-money-by-making-coffee-at-home/
3:https://www.traderjoes.com/home/products/pdp/organic-fair-trade-wake-up-blend-ground-coffee-063980
4: https://www.mashed.com/206180/the-untold-truth-of-trader-joes-coffee/?utm_campaign=clip
