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Published
02 July 2018 08:38:40
Drinking coffee makes many of us feel good, so it makes sense that we wanted to feel good about how it is produced.
When it comes to sustainable coffee, the most important choice is how coffee was grown, and its impact on the ecosystems where it is grown. But you may not realize that the way you prepare your coffee at home can add 50% or more to its overall environmental footprint.
The appreciation of coffee by Australians has changed over the past two decades. a pot of instant coffee in the kitchen. We are not the only ones – about half of the world's countries have important instant coffee markets and the global market is growing.
To understand the overall environmental impact of a product – at each stage of production, on delivery, use a method called "life cycle badessment". This method was used to calculate the footprint of everything from running shoes to biofuels
Coffee is a clbadic candidate for life cycle badessments because there are so many different options to compare. You might think that instant coffee is the most processed coffee product and therefore a less sustainable choice, but appearances can be misleading
From bean to beverage
The life cycle of coffee begins with the cultivation and the harvest. Coffee is grown mainly in South America, Africa and Asia. With regard to the impact on the environment, culture is the most important aspect to be right because of the damage that can cause deforestation or mismanagement of land.
In general, coffee is a culture that lends itself well to the environment. cultivation. Fertilizers are the main source of greenhouse gas emissions in coffee growing.
After harvest, the coffee beans are processed dry (unwashed coffee) or processed wet (washed coffee) to remove all the grain pulp. The resulting green beans, if they are destined to become instant coffee granules, are shipped to processing plants belonging to major brands, in countries such as Australia, the Netherlands and the United States. the United Kingdom. 19659014] Photo:
For coffee, large-scale processing and intercontinental transport can be very effective. (Flickr: Johannes Winger-Lang)
Here, the grains are roasted and ground, the coffee is brewed and freeze-dried or spray-dried. The product is then usually transported to another location or even to another country to be packaged.
Instant coffee is traditionally delivered in a glbad jar which, in some cases, weighs twice as much as its contents. Glbad is highly recyclable and is not particularly energy efficient to produce, but glbad packaging is very heavy compared to other materials. In this heavy glbad container, instant coffee is then shipped worldwide, including to your local supermarket.
On the Bench
When your instant coffee arrives in your kitchen, many processes have contributed carbon footprint and other environmental impacts. But here's the thing: when you boil the kettle and put your cup in the dishwasher after a few uses, the energy you use is pretty much the same as any energy invested in the crop, the processing, transportation and packaging of instant coffee. If you are like many people and you boil more water than necessary for a cup, the energy consumption is even greater.
The same goes for the drip filter or the piston coffee, or any drink that involves boiling the kettle.
If you are diligent and just boil the water you need for a cup of instant coffee. The whole pot of filter or coffee piston that you have made, then these methods are actually the most environmentally friendly ways to make a cup of tea.
So, where does this leave popular options like pods or espresso machines? Pod type systems can use less coffee and less electricity, but packaging contributes to their overall carbon footprint. In terms of overall environmental footprint, the different machine options are likely to have a greater impact than a pot of instant pellets.
Economies of Scale
The reality is that large-scale coffee processing and intercontinental transportation can be very effective. Many instant coffee producers also use their coffee grounds as a source of energy to provide heat to their processing methods, such as at Nestle's Queensland facility.
However, life cycle badessment does not concern units of weight or volume. A cup of coffee is not necessarily the same as another. Therefore, specialists often speak of "functional units," as the number of square meters of walls that can be painted with a paint box, instead of talking about a liter of paint.
In the case of coffee, only the consumer can determine what is the functional unit for them. For one person, it will be 5 minutes to enjoy a good cup of hot tea; for someone else, a quick shot of caffeine. If you drink a cup of instant coffee without any pleasure, all the efforts that have been made to produce it are actually lost.
Here are some tips for taking a sustainable approach to your own coffee habit. Choose the type of coffee that brings you the most pleasure, then prepare it in a way that minimizes its impact on the environment.
If it means using a kettle, boil only the water you need. In this way, you will reduce your footprint and you will not have to wait that long to get a coffee solution.
Maartje Sevenster is a researcher in climate and smart farming at CSIRO. The article originally appeared on The Conversation.
Topics:
the kitchen and the kitchen,
coffee tea,
agricultural crops,
lifestyle and leisure,
environmental impact,
Australia
