The morning coffee ritual is serious business; Australians drink roughly 16.3 million coffees a day. Plenty of news coverage has been devoted to its health benefits, but how much do you know about the environmental cost of your daily latte? Shopping can be confusing at the best of times, and trying to find sustainable options makes it even more difficult.
Coffee is grown in some of the most biologically diverse regions of the world, sometimes causing significant damage. But there are choices you can make to reduce the ecological impact of your caffeine fix.
The issue
Coffee mostly affects tropical forests, as they are cleared to make way for coffee farms. But with certain cultivation practices, these coffee farms can support an impressive range of forest biodiversity.
The world’s most popular coffee type, Coffea arabica, grows under the rainforest canopies of Ethiopia. A natural requirement for shade means coffee is often cultivated under shading plants, from a single tree species to a diverse range of plant life.
However, to improve productivity, traditional coffee farms have been increasingly replaced with sun-tolerant coffee varieties that produce higher yields. Compared with shaded coffee, these simplified plantations support fewer native species, store less carbon, experience higher levels of erosion, and leach more nutrients. They also require more resources such as water and fertilisers.
Comments
One response to “How To Buy Environmentally Friendly Coffee”
Rainforest alliance is just the bullshit marketing of McDonalds and other multinationals. It was really brought in to undermine the Fair Trade market.
I have no confidence that it offers any better protection to the environment.