Starting the new year with coffee

Happy new year! The year’s beginning makes me think of coffee, a beverage many of us cannot start a new day (or decade!) without. It’s a great Stardust topic in many ways - it facilitates learning, is the subject of many health debates, and in the sustainability world, offers much for discussion...

“(un)Fair Trade” and direct trade coffee

Growing coffee beans often has negative impacts for farmers. The organization Fairtrade Certified Coffee tries to ensure that workers are paid living wages and work in safe conditions. Due to limited regulations, they often fail to do so. However, they have created a mainstream awareness of coffee’s labor issues.

Another method is direct trade, where coffee roasters buy beans directly from farmersIdeally, this means that profits go to the farmers, rather than middlemen buyers and sellers. The drawback to direct trade is that there is no outside regulation keeping this process honest. 

While neither method is perfect, it seems that direct trade’s principles are a step in the right direction. In the US, coffee can only be grown commercially in Hawaii and Puerto Rico, but other states are also coffee growing projects, so more locally sourced coffee may soon become an option. It’s important to think about the implications of your consumption. However, coffee’s ethical issues are not just the responsibility of the consumer, but that of the corporations and organizations who have the power to make changes.

Coffee & Sustainability

Unfortunately, the coffee industry has a lot of environmental problems, including deforestation, crop homogeneity, and excess water consumption. Coffee consumption also creates a huge amount of waste, thanks to plastic lined paper cups and coffee pods, billions of which are thrown away each year. Climate change is also hurting coffee production, since 50% of the land used to grow coffee will be  unsuitable by 2050. 

But the environmental implications do not seem as hard to address as the labor issues. Shade grown coffee (which is how coffee was originally grown) results in less deforestation. Planting diverse coffee crops would also help. And of course, avoiding paper cups (using a mug at home and at work, and bringing a thermos to work/school would certainly mitigate waste.

As for Keurig cups, they are incredibly wasteful and don’t even make very good coffee. Even the creator of K-cups regrets having created them. We should stop using them. There are reusable k-cups if you already have a Keurig machine.

Coffee in the Age of Enlightenment

While its labor and environmental impacts may leave a bad taste in your mouth, it’s undeniable that coffee has had a remarkable influence on culture and history. Europe’s Age of Enlightenment pretty much began when Western intellectuals gave up constant beer drinking for coffee. Furthermore, long before it reached Viennese coffee houses, coffee was a huge part of life in Turkey, Greece, Armenia, and other parts of the world where it no doubt fueled cultural and intellectual achievements.