Comments on: Green Up Your Coffee Cup

By: Kay Marie

Kay Marie — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:28:53 +0000

Note to Nicko: Where do I go to read up on the manufacturing of paper cups–how is it resource intensive? What is the nature of the plastic coating?

Thank you.

By: Nicko

Nicko — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 23:44:08 +0000

Great post and great ideas!

When it comes to coffee cups, I think you found just the tip of the iceberg. Manufacturing coffee cups is extremely resource intensive, and the plastic coating on paper cups prevent them from being recycled. There’s almost nothing good about using disposable cups!

An environmental group I run has pulled together some interesting (and alarming!) facts about coffee cups. If you’re interested, pleases feel free to check out the website.

By: deCadmus

deCadmus — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 17:05:04 +0000

Larry’s Beans has an excellent reputation as a steward of fairly traded coffees. They are one of a handful of coffee roasters that caused a stir a coupla years ago when they walked away from Transfair USA in protest. Their beef was that Transfair has enabled companies like Starbucks to “greenwash” their coffee purchasing practices, buying 1% or so of their coffee from Fair Trade farms and then using that certification to say, “Oh yeah… we do fair trade,” and confusing customers in the process.

Long story short, Larry’s Beans are fairly traded, but not Fair Trade Certified™. And so they are challenged to overcome not wearing that easily recognized label. They’ve been doing a good job of it, so far as I can tell. An especially smart move is to publish the lot information on their coffees to make a document trail… I imagine we’ll be seeing more of that in the future.

All that said, I haven’t tried their coffees, yet. I’d like to. (Yo… Larry!) ;)

By: scully

scully — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:03:48 +0000

Excellent post, Doug! Speaking of FTC and organic coffees, I was wondering if you have tried Larry's Beans? I saw a piece on them on Fine Living last night on a program called "It's Easy Being Green" and I was thinking of ordering some of their coffee.