How do specialty coffee roasters achieve a low carbon footprint?

The climate crisis is the biggest problem facing our planet. How to achieve carbon neutrality is becoming an increasingly important topic for businesses around the world, including the coffee industry.

What is carbon neutrality?

Carbon neutrality refers to the total amount of carbon dioxide or greenhouse gas emissions directly or indirectly generated by an enterprise within a certain period of time. Through afforestation, energy saving and emission reduction, etc., it can offset the carbon dioxide or greenhouse gas emissions generated by itself to achieve positive and negative offsets. Achieving relatively "zero emissions". Therefore, a carbon neutral company can be described as a company with zero carbon emissions.

Why are coffee roasters aiming for carbon neutrality?

According to research, growing just one kilogram of Arabica coffee and exporting it to the UK can generate as much as 15 kilograms of carbon dioxide. That makes for a worrying statistic when you consider that around 95 million cups of coffee are consumed every day in the UK.

But by adopting more sustainable practices throughout the supply chain from seed to cup, these emissions could be reduced by nearly 80 percent. For specialty coffee roasters, this is important not only to reduce their carbon footprint, but also to attract customers.

How to achieve carbon neutrality?

The coffee industry must do what it can to reduce carbon emissions and offset any carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. The coffee roaster's internal carbon neutrality plan will involve "fundamental" changes to its business operations and supply chain relationships, from more sustainable sourcing of green coffee and other ingredients to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from logistics, production and retail operations.

Partnering with charities to offset carbon emissions by planting trees, etc.; green travel delivery methods, reducing carbon emissions through local delivery services by electric vehicles or bicycles; investing in greener machinery to reduce emissions, and more.

Sustainable packaging is also another effective way to reduce carbon emissions. Replacing single-use plastics that require a lot of energy to produce and have very short life cycles with plant-based materials such as renewable raw materials such as recyclable or biodegradable will help create more environmentally friendly products.

For specialty coffee roasters, the focus should be on how to achieve carbon neutrality by reducing their carbon footprint and offsetting greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible.