The earliest reliable reference to coffee tells us it was used in the 15th century at Sufi shrines in Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula. Strongly associated with the Arabic world, it arrived in Europe during the 17th century. Over time, it has woven itself into the fabric of everyday life and for much of the world’s population has become a vital and often addictive part of our daily morning ritual.

A multi-billion-dollar commodity, coffee is grown in the tropics and to a lesser extent the subtropics, both Home to high levels of biodiversity. The largest four producer countries — Brazil, Vietnam, Colombia and Indonesia — together account for two-thirds of production. Compared to Europe, Australia and New Zealand are both modest coffee consumers but are still home to vibrant coffee cultures.

Issues in the coffee free-market

Coffee has also been linked to a range of serious concerns, including rainforest destruction, monocultures, pesticides, pollution from processing residues, slavery, child labour and producers being forced to sell to middlemen for half of the market price. All these can be tackled via consumer choices.

Slave labour is often linked “debt peonage” whereby exploitative economic conditions are used to keep workers in debt to landholders. A parallel issue is child labour, often the result of workers being given a quota they must fulfil into order to receive a minimum wage. In a bid to reach this target, they will frequently bring their children onto the plantations.

Shade coffee is typically grown by small-scale farmers and its yield is relatively modest, but consumers generally feel it has a better taste.

Regarding pesticide use, coffee is one of the world’s most sprayed crops. From a health perspective, these chemicals are released by roasting and are likely to be absent from the final brew. For workers it’s a different story. Often they are denied protective equipment and at other times they may choose not to wear it to avoid being hot and uncomfortable.

Buying cheap coffee is likely to be contributing to these problems because it forces the need for corners to be cut somewhere. To avoid coffee that literally costs the Earth it’s worth paying more.

The importance of shade-grown

In its natural habitat, coffee is a small tree that grows in the forest understorey. Cultivated in an agroecology system, it can support the same level of biodiversity as natural forest. Shade-grown coffee farms are associated with greater numbers of migratory birds as well as butterflies, insects, bats, frogs and other animals. Shade coffee is typically grown by small-scale farmers and its yield is relatively modest, but consumers generally feel it has a better taste. When looking for shade-grown, third-party certification is important.

Sun-grown coffee, also known as “sun coffee” and “technified coffee”, involves transplanting the crop from its natural habitat into a monoculture plantation setting, frequently resulting in forest loss. Economic viability is enhanced, with coffee trees grown in higher densities. However, it’s less sustainable on every count.

More fertiliser and pesticide use is required, water consumption is higher, there’s more chemical runoff and soil degradation and erosion are greatly increased. Sun-grown represents a growing chunk of the world’s coffee harvest, and the top grower countries are Brazil, Colombia and Costa Rica.

Ethical certification

When applied to coffee, sustainability and the welfare of workers are important aspects of certification programs. Volumes of ethically certified coffee have experienced healthy growth in recent years. However, the term “sustainable” is a value judgement and not everyone looking for sustainable coffee will be happy that it’s rarely certified organic.

Rainforest Alliance certification, with its frog logo, is applied to a range of commodities, including coffee, using a mix of social, environmental and economic criteria. One disappointing element is a rule that the logo can be used if only 30 per cent of the content is certified. A minimum shade canopy of 40 per cent is required.

Bird Friendly coffee is currently unavailable in Australia and New Zealand but can be purchased online from overseas.

UTZ is another standard for coffee, cocoa and tea, based on labour and environmental criteria. There is a ban on deforestation of old-growth forests but, on the downside, a specific shade-grown requirement is absent. The world’s largest ethical coffee certifier, it represents about 9 per cent of the global harvest.

Migratory bird populations have fallen in recent years and the shift towards sun-grown coffee is considered a major factor. As a response, the Smithsonian Bird Friendly standard was created in 1999. The strictest and best-monitored third-party sustainable standard, it requires a minimum of 40 per cent shade coverage and also organic certification. Bird Friendly coffee is currently unavailable in Australia and New Zealand but can be purchased online from overseas.

Domestically grown vs imported

The complexity of making an ethical coffee decision is compounded in Australia by the option to buy locally grown in the coffee-growing regions of northern New South Wales, South-East Queensland, and Tropical North Queensland.

Otherwise, buying Australian-grown is an easy way to bypass most of the ethical pitfalls tied to the imported bean. The main downside is that most Australian production is exported and tracking it down without going online can be a challenge.

If a coffee shipment entering Australia or New Zealand is found to contain pests it’s likely to be fumigated using ozone-depleting methyl bromide or subjected to cold treatment. With the downside of increased food miles, reasons for choosing imported can include the opportunity to make a positive difference by buying Fairtrade.

Fairtrade

In the mainstream economy, the price of coffee is subject to some volatility. For farmers and producers, low prices put a squeeze on their livelihoods. Even more importantly, the unequal power relationship between small farmers and the corporate sector results in farmers lacking bargaining muscle. A typical coffee farmer in the developing world receives about 7–10 per cent of the supermarket retail cost.

The Fairtrade movement is designed to work by setting a minimum price that’s insulated from market fluctuations, with a goal of tackling poverty by giving coffee farmers and workers a living wage. Those involved are usually small farmers with generally less than three hectares who have banded together to form co-operatives. But critics say that, due to a variety of complex factors, mostly economic, the idealism of Fairtrade consumers is not being felt on the ground and other interventions would be more effective. One downside is that coffee quality can be patchy.

Organic farmers generally earn about 15–20 per cent more than conventional growers.

When buying Fairtrade it’s vital to look for certification. The international Fairtrade logo is green and blue on a black background. While Fairtrade does not directly address the shade-grown issue, most Fairtrade coffee is cultivated under shade. Australian and New Zealand consumers have many choices, ranging from the supermarkets to the small players.

A better solution may be to partner with carefully selected Fairtrade initiatives overseas that have particularly good outcomes for the growers. Such brands available online include Equal Exchange, Café Justo, AgroEco Coffee, Thanksgiving Coffee, Zapatista Coffee and the Pachamama Coffee Cooperative. As many of these are roasted in North America there’s a market opportunity for similar trade partnerships to be established in Australia and New Zealand.

Buy organic

To be certified organic, at least 95 per cent of beans must have been grown organically, without synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, and chemical processing methods are prohibited.

For most foods, buying certified organic is sufficient to achieve a good environmental outcome, but in the case of ethical coffee, organic standards don’t necessarily tackle shade-grown and habitat preservation issues. While not matching Fairtrade levels of remuneration, organic farmers generally earn about 15–20 per cent more than conventional growers.

Carbon neutral

As with other businesses, carbon neutral coffee is achieved through offsetting emissions using carbon credits, hopefully after other steps have been taken to minimise energy and resource use. The range of certification providers includes NoCO2 (Australia) CarboNZeroCert (New Zealand), National Carbon Offset Standard (Australia) and Carbon Neutral (Australia.)

Disposable coffee cups & the alternative

For convenience, takeaway coffee cups are handy but also an environmental disaster, with about a billion of them consumed annually in Australia alone. Alternatives include bringing your own mug. Otherwise, drink in the store rather than buy a takeaway, or make your own coffee at home.

If it has to be a takeaway cup, paper coffee cups — including those provided by coffee shops — are usually plastic-lined in order to keep the coffee hot. While recycling these composite cups is technically feasible, very few facilities are set up to do it, so be wary of the recycling symbol. Where a plastic-lined cup is locally unrecyclable, it goes into landfill, generating the greenhouse gas methane. Ask for a genuinely recyclable paper-only cup.

When comparing the relative shortcomings of paper and Styrofoam, paper has several unexpected downsides. Its manufacture generates more waste and requires 2.5 times the energy of Styrofoam. One tip is to avoid accepting a lid unless you want one.

Manufacture of Styrofoam, on the other hand, releases toxic VOC chemicals. For hot liquids such as coffee, an issue is low-level migration of the harmful chemicals styrene, ethylbenzene, toluene and benzene. Unlike most paper cups, Styrofoam is recyclable if free from coffee stains. Some Styrofoam is still blown using highly greenhouse-polluting hydrofluorocarbons despite environmentally safe alternatives being available.

Genuinely compostable coffee cups such as the Biopak will release methane in landfill unless they are recycled or collected as green waste to be composted in a commercial facility. Products described as biodegradable, on the other hand, are liable to break down into small plastic pieces, and are best avoided.

Capsules

Over-packaging is an issue for the coffee industry and one of the main culprits is the notorious capsule, or pod. The German city of Hamburg has recently banned coffee pods in government-run buildings.

A major user of capsule packaging is Nespresso, which makes them from pure aluminium. While enhancing their recyclability, this also incurs a big ecological footprint unless they are recycled, which is difficult domestically due to their small size.

To this end, the company has set up the Ecolaboration recycling program. Operating in Australia and New Zealand, among other countries, it involves a network of collection points, including florists, Garden centres and Nespresso shops. In Australia, capsules can be wrapped in a plastic bag and posted off in a prepaid satchel.

Getting creative with waste

Coffee shops generate a large quantity of waste coffee grounds and in Australia and New Zealand, unfortunately, most of these go to landfill where they generate methane. It would be far better to compost them.

For business and domestic coffee makers, there are many creative uses to which grounds can be put: garden fertiliser, skin exfoliator or a feedstock for highly caffeinated chips. Jackets partly made from coffee grounds are sold by the Australian company Mountain Designs. Another area is bioenergy, and London-based bio-bean is busy turning coffee waste into biodiesel.

Agricultural wastes such as coffee can be used to create biochar, a carbon-negative fertiliser. For decades, Nestlé has been burning coffee waste as an energy source and it’s also used as a heat source for food production at 22 of 28 of its coffee factories.

What to buy?

For eco-conscious coffee aficionados, an appalling discovery has been made by researchers. Comparing filter coffee with its instant cousin found that filter has a higher carbon footprint, roughly 125g of CO₂ per cup, compared with 80g for instant. This is because instant coffee requires less roasting and brewing, and being less bulky it needs less energy to transport. Worst of the bunch for emissions was capsule coffee. However, with a far greater likelihood of instant coffee being sun-grown, this comparison skirted the pivotal issue of deforestation.

When comparing organic, shade-grown, sustainable, local, Fairtrade and carbon neutral, it’s impossible to achieve everything in one product. Instead, consumers are obliged to narrow down an ethical decision. “Triple-certified” coffee can indicate a product that is 100 per cent organic, Fairtrade and shade-grown, but it’s worth checking first.

With world coffee consumption nearly doubling over the past 20 years, it’s increasingly important to apply sustainable certifications to coffee purchases as a way to support shade coffee.