When savoring the warm aroma from a steaming mug of coffee, many consumers do not know the beans’ impact on nature and climate. Few realize that coffee drives major environmental problems.
Coffee drives massive deforestation
Coffee is one of the top 6 drivers of deforestation worldwide.
“The top ten global producers of coffee emitted 21 million tCO2 in 2017 as a result of deforestation linked to coffee production. Eliminating these emissions would be equivalent to removing 4.5 million cars from the road, or the carbon sequestration from growing 350 million new tree seedlings for a decade. These countries are also among the most biodiverse in the world, meaning that protecting their forest areas can potentially deliver significant co-benefits for ecosystem services, water protection, nutrient storage, and biological resources such as food and medicinal products.”
One example of research done on deforestation for coffee in a national park is a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report describing how illegal coffee cultivation was driving deforestation and habitat destruction in Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park (BBSNP) in Indonesia. In an attempt to establish coffee plantations, an estimated 28% of the BBSNP has been degraded, with 60% of this degraded area used solely for agriculture. Furthermore, coffee accounted for 73% of crops grown illegally inside the park. This illegal coffee was entering global supply chains, with major international coffee companies purchasing it. Asian Rhino & Elephant Action Strategy (AREAS), Gone in an Instant – How the Trade in Illegally Grown Coffee is Driving the Destruction of Rhino, Tiger, and Elephant Habitats, January 2007. https://wwf.panda.org/wwf_news/?92080/Gone-in-an-instant-How-the-trade-in-illegally-grown-coffee-is-driving-the-destruction-of-rhino-tiger-and-elepant-habitat A New York Times investigative article on BBSNP detailed how despite an apparent success in tiger conservation efforts, the park faced a severe deforestation problem. Approximately one fifth of the park’s protected lands – nearly 150,000 acres – had been cleared by 2015. Following this, satellite imagery revealed a rapidly shrinking forest area year after year. Wyatt Williams, How Your Cup of Coffee is Clearing the Jungle, The New York Times, August 11th, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/11/magazine/indonesia-rainforest-coffee.html
We have got to ensure that the global coffee industry shifts immediately to no-deforestation. The EU has passed a law that all coffee entering Europe will have to be deforestation-free. Plenty of companies know how to comply or are getting ready for compliance. This is a sign that the whole industry can and should shift to guarantee zero-deforestation coffee, everywhere.
Coffee monoculture destroys biodiversity
A large part of the world’s coffee is grown not in agroecological agroforestry systems but rather in monocultures. The eco-disaster of monoculture presents bugs, birds, bats and other species with what amounts to a food desert, rather than the biodiverse banquet that they may find in robust agroforestry systems.
Coffee industry titans can and must change this paradigm. Civil society can press the coffee industry to shift from monoculture to beautiful agroforestry, which can store double the carbon and has 19 times more biodiversity!
Coffee pesticides poison planet and people
Coffee is also a major destination of agrichemicals – the use of which poisons people and planet, contributing to mass extinction and in particular the insect apocalypse we are in. We are facing the sixth mass extinction. Much of this – and in particular the insect apocalypse – is driven by chemicals in agriculture. Thus, we need to see coffee companies reforming their current approaches and implementing practices that do not rely on agrichemical usage. Coffee farming has become increasingly dependent on pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and other chemicals over the past 70 years.
“Conventionally grown coffee is one of the most chemically-treated beverages on the market.” Consumer and especially farmer exposure to pesticides can be hazardous to human health and side effects might vary from short- to long-term ones.
“In developing countries like Colombia, Indonesia, and Brazil, where the majority of coffee is grown, there are few to no regulations on the chemicals and pesticides used, which means farmers can spray their crops with just about anything. In fact, some of the chemicals these farmers use are chemicals that have already been banned in America, Europe, and Japan due to their harmful effects on health… While it’s long been argued that the pesticide residues on coffee beans are removed during the roasting process, new studies suggest that up to 10% of these chemicals can soak inside the coffee bean.”
The wide use of pesticides in coffee production leads to significant water and soil contamination throughout areas of the coffee industry. For example, a 2013 study by Danish reporters in Brazil found traces of 24 different pesticides in waterways near plantations. Not only are these very likely to be carcinogenic to humans, but they are extremely toxic to aquatic life. Danwatch, Brazilian Coffee is Sprayed with Deadly Pesticides https://old.danwatch.dk/en/undersogelseskapitel/brazilian-coffee-is-sprayed/.
Unfortunately, farmers may not be the only people poisoned by chemicals in coffee: these self-same chemicals might make it all the way into consumers’ morning brew.
Chemicals in coffee can even hurt pollinators needed for coffee to thrive. Pollinator visits and pollinator diversity are crucial for coffee. Chemicals in coffee can also hurt the creatures that fight coffee pests: ants or spiders which reduce damages by the coffee leaf miner and coffee berry borer, or birds and bats that eat arthropods.
Coffee doesn't have to be a key driver of chemicals like highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs) - indeed, there are plenty of successful examples of organic coffee or coffee produced with very limited chemicals. And that's what all of global industry should be aiming for.
Coffee’s water footprint & Waste dumped in rivers
It takes a gigantic amount of water to make coffee, from irrigating plants to processing and washing coffee / coffee wet milling. The Water Footprint Network estimates the global average water footprint of a single 125ml cup of coffee to be 140 liters, namely more than a 16-minute shower – corroborated by a 2003 UNESCO study found that a cup of coffee requires 140 liters of water, mostly to grow the coffee.
Processing coffee also regularly generates a great deal of waste, much of which (in conventional production) gets thrown into rivers and thus pollutes water for all downstream communities. Rare are the coffee companies that minimize such harms with techniques to ferment coffee dry rather than by steeping; or to treat all their effluents.
It doesn't have to be this way! The coffee industry can roll out techniques and technologies with massive potential to save water. Those exist already in pilot schemes, and can be scaled up, with investment by industry. All coffee companies should step up, clean up their act, treat their effluents, and protect not only rivers but also the people who depend on them.
Packaging & Single-use cups
Packaging can account for nearly 1/3 of average coffee companies’ CO2 emissions, from coffee bags to primary, secondary or tertiary packaging – or even the environmental cost of capsules, few of which are recyclable and recycled. Billions of coffee cups are thrown away annually, worldwide, only a tiny fraction of which are recycled, with plastic coated cups polluting landfills, oceans and waterways. Most coffee pods are not made out of recycled materials and are neither genuinely recyclable nor compostable. It's vital for the coffee industry to get a handle on their packaging problems, especially cups and pods.
Animal cruelty: elephants and civets
In some cases, coffee can drive heartbreaking animal cruelty including abuses of civets and elephants.
Coffee's milk problem (and cow farts and burps)
Coffee can be thought of as a milk delivery mechanism. Roughly 3/4 of Americans put milk or creamer in their coffee. One fun fact: Starbucks is thought to be the biggest purveyor of milk in the USA after the US government itself. With cow milk having a large methane footprint, coffee shops should be finding ways to either ensure the cow milk embedded emissions drop, or helping customers switch to plant-based milk.
Lack of traceability in coffee
The failure of individual coffee companies to truly become deforestation-free and become "nature positive" breaks down into several issues. One is the lack of traceability. Typical coffee can pass through multiple hands on its path from farmer to consumer, with as many as 20 intermediaries along the journey. With much of the world’s coffee being untraceable, companies cannot know if there is deforestation at origin.
It is impossible to end deforestation in coffee without full traceability of coffee (aka to know if the deforestation discovered by satellites is happening in and around coffee, or is due to another commodity/problem). The coffee industry should embrace a traceability revolution!
Ineffective solutions and flawed certification schemes
The Sustainable Coffee Challenge or the Global Coffee Platform (GCP), the Taskforce of the International Coffee Organization, the Coffee Price Crisis Response Initiative and other platforms currently exist for collective coffee sustainability action. There are also numerous certification schemes in coffee, including 4C and C.A.F.E. Practices. Unfortunately to date the platforms and certifications not been successful at transforming the coffee industry on key sustainability issues. For example, being a member of these platforms does not mean companies commit to a living wage for coffee farmworks, and the platforms have not enforced 'zero deforestation', let alone a pathway to 'net zero' or 'nature positive'. Most certifications do not ensure a living wage or living income - meaning they may actually be certifying poverty (which creates major risks for child labor and other abuses). Coffee platforms and certifications can and should up their game to guarantee big, concrete solutions like living income, no deforestation, and agroforestry.
Environmental and social issues are intertwined
Social sustainability challenges found in coffee such as exploitation, poverty, slavery, child labor, frequently intertwine with environmental sustainability challenges. For instance, the widespread use of pesticides in coffee intersects with child labor: when children working in coffee are exposed to pesticides, the kind of labor they are involved in is deemed to be “hazardous child labor” according to the ILO.
Another example of intersectionality is that where coffee farmers are monocropping, they become hostage to the vicissitudes of market shocks: if the price of coffee is high, they thrive, but if it plummets, they are impoverished. In contrast, agroforestry coffee farmers can not only boast a far better performance on carbon/biodiversity - they can also benefit from income diversification and thus protection from market shocks: with several crops on their farm, such smallholders are less affected when any single crop price shoots down on the global market – their vulnerability to poverty and exploitation is somewhat less than that of monocroppers. A good agroforestry coffee system will also help farmers with planting crops that can contribute to their food security.
Coffee companies should examine interlocking problems in a holistic way and roll out solutions that take into account the bigger picture.