For paid subscribers: Blue Bottle used carbon offsets and a focus on “emissions intensity” to go carbon neutral, but its total emissions increased quite significantly. Should this "achievement" be celebrated?
As the climate crisis intensifies, regenerative agriculture could play a key role in sustaining and strengthening the global coffee industry. That is, if it can escape becoming just another corporate sustainability buzzword.
For paid subscribers: Blue Bottle used carbon offsets and a focus on “emissions intensity” to go carbon neutral, but its total emissions increased quite significantly. Should this "achievement" be celebrated?
The need to reduce carbon emissions connected to coffee is obvious. I have explored the subject numerous times, not least in last week’s story, which looked in-depth at the potential (and peril) of the coffee industry’s developing focus on regenerative agriculture.
It is promising, then, to see some of the largest and most high-profile companies commit to reducing their impact, usually through some kind of net zero or carbon neutral initiative. Of course, these targets are voluntary and subject to change.
JDE Peet’s says it aims to be carbon neutral by 2050; Nespresso says the same (although, somewhat confusingly, it has previously aimed for 2022 and 2035). Starbucks, meanwhile, has a goal of making its green coffee carbon neutral by 2030, while cutting its own carbon and water use in half.
Many smaller companies are already certified carbon neutral, which mostly involves a lot of carbon offsets (we’ll get to that). Last month, Blue Bottle Coffee announced that it had “achieved” carbon neutrality, becoming possibly the most high-profile coffee company to do so.
I wrote about the announcement—and the coffeewashing implications—for Fresh Cup at the time. However, I thought it might be worth digging into a little more, because there’s a lot going on, and it’s not great.
Companies are turning to automation as a tool to fight back against industrial action. In coffee, that role could well be played by robot baristas—in fact, it sort of already has.
For paid subscribers: Today, Sweden is famous for its love of coffee. But historically that hasn’t always been the case, and one particular ruler’s attempts to prove coffee’s harmful health impacts may have been the world’s first randomised controlled trial.
For paid subscribers: What happens when the melodramatic language of social media and political discourse begins to impact how we discuss the coffee industry.
For paid subscribers: It turns out that coffee’s impact on the environment continues after we drink it.
A newsletter about coffee—its culture, politics, and how it connects to the wider world.
