Posts Tagged ‘Global Climate Change’
Posted on July 21, 2008 - by deCadmus
Coffee, Climate Change and Canaries
What’s the impact of global climate change on coffee?
I’ve had conversations with a number of coffee farmers — particularly folks in South and Central America — about what they’re experiencing on their farms. The stories they tell are of seasons off kilter: of too much rain at the wrong time of the year, not enough when they need it; of coffee trees flowering and coffee cherries ripening in increasingly staggered spans — especially among farms at varying altitudes – making harvest more challenging. But still, they are simple anecdotes, these stories farmers tell… and every year has such stories. They are not, themselves, a body of evidence of climate change.
The report released by Oxfam this month — Turning up the heat, Climate Change and Poverty in Uganda — now that’s evidence of the impact of climate change on coffee production. And the evidence does not bode well:
“The outlook is bleak. If the average global temperatures rise by two degrees or more, then most of Uganda is likely to cease to be suitable for coffee..this may happen in 40 years or perhaps as little as 30.”
Keep in mind that the figures that Oxfam cites are for coffee production in all of Uganda. It’s more than possible — it’s likely — that coffees from premiere origins within Uganda could succumb to the devastating effects of a changing climate in only just a few years as they lose those unique microclimates that contributed to their coffee’s character. Coffees like Bugisu, the bluesy, saturated cup from Mbale that I profiled here a short seven years ago:
From an utterly selfish point of view, I don’t want to lose this coffee. But you don’t have to be self-serving to worry about the devastating impact of climate change on coffee, because it’s the very same impact that will be affecting the wider food supply. All the world’s food supply. Crops like coffee that thrive only in superbly balanced ecosystems and rarefied microclimes are likely harbingers of the greater threat of climate change. Where coffee fails, tea may follow. Where tea fails, rice may follow. Where rice fails, well… two thirds of the world’s population may follow.
Like canaries in the coal mine, specialty coffee — and the farming families who produce it — may prove among the first to succumb to the hazards of a warming world. And if that doesn’t worry you just a little bit, it damn well should.
Posted on June 25, 2008 - by deCadmus
I Can’t Hear You!
It reads like an episode of The Office. Turns out, it’s your government at work. From the New York Times:
“The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.
“The document, which ended up in e-mail limbo, without official status, was the E.P.A.’s answer to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that required it to determine whether greenhouse gases represent a danger to health or the environment, the officials said.”
Let’s make sure we’re perfectly clear on this. After years of foot-dragging on the part of the Environmental Protection Agency, the frickin’ Supreme Court orders the EPA to fish or cut bait, by making an agency-level determination whether greenhouse gases are, or are not, dangerous to our health and environment. Having exhausted its available “do-nothing” options, the EPA finally, reluctantly, sends its court-ordered findings to the White House where the Bush administration — in a fit of pique that would rival a three-year-old stickin’ his fingers in his ears and squealing “I can’t hear you!” — refuses to open the email.
This, my friends, is your government at work.
January 20, 2009 cannot arrive quickly enough.
- Hat tip: to Making Light, which you may want to visit to see the fireworks that occur in response to this development.
- Update: Don’t miss the fun conversation happening over at Scalzi’s place, where the trolls are in full throat and Scalzi’s whackin’ em like so many moles in an arcade game.
Posted on April 22, 2008 - by deCadmus
Green Up Your Coffee House!
It’s Earth Day 2008. The climate crisis is accelerating, vast sheets of ice are collapsing, islands in the Pacific have been drowned in rising seas, and weather the world over is growing increasingly violent. If we don’t take immediate action — all of us, and right now — we face a future unlike anything we’ve known.
But let’s be honest… running a successful and (ideally) profitable coffee house is something of a high-wire act at the best of times. And — economically-speaking — these aren’t the best of times. You’ve got a budget to watch; a creeping expense column can throw things out of kilter. Fast. It’s not going to do you or your environmentally-minded customers any good for you to bankrupt yourself in the name of ecology.
That said, there are savings to be found in running a more efficient and sustainable coffee house, coffee shop or espresso bar. Some of these savings can be realized pretty quickly, others require a longer view. If you can, don’t just consider today’s bottom line, but tomorrow’s. And next year’s. And — for goodness sake — don’t lose sight of the ultimate bottom line here… the planet’s climate is in crisis. And it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that the viability of specialty coffee is at the forefront of that crisis.
In greening up your coffee house, there are (at least) three distinct areas where you can bring your efforts to bear: reducing energy, increasing sustainability, and making it easier for your customers to go green, too. We’ll look at each in turn. There’s a lot to slog through here, so I’ll get right to it.
Reduce energy.
A coffee shop is an energy sink. You’ve got lots of things to keep hot, things to keep cool, and excruciatingly specialized equipment to get them all mixed together. Where do you begin?
Start with an energy audit. Chances are your power company will audit your business at no charge, and provide you with a fairly comprehensive list of recommendations. It’s a great place to start… and an ideal way to benchmark where your business stands, right now. You’ll want that baseline to measure against after you’ve made some improvements.
While your power company will have lots of tips for you in terms of properly insulating your space (ceilings, walls, windows, doors) 
and savings you might achieve in terms of lighting (switching to CFL fixtures) and the like, chances are they won’t know enough about your specialized equipment — say, espresso machines — to tell you the whole story. You can augment what you learn on an audit report by using a portable or panel-installed power use monitor (think Kill-A-Watt and the like) to measure how much energy your specialized equipment consumes.
You’ll find your coffee house has any number of power-sucking commercial appliances. You’ll probably learn which of these costs you the most to operate in the course of your energy audit; you may not learn, however, which are the most efficient… or more importantly, which aren’t. Lacking any information to the contrary, here’s where you might want to start.
- Dishwashers. You probably know you can save energy and water by running your dishwasher only with a full load. (Of course you do!) You may not know that if you invest in an Energy Star rated commercial dishwasher you can see a pretty immediate return on your investment. An efficient dishwasher can save your coffee house up to 90 MBtus, (about $850 a year on your energy bill) and 52,000 gallons of water (probably another $200 a year).1
- Refrigerators and freezers. Today’s Energy Star rated chill chests are as much as 35% more efficient2 than the bog standard item of the last 10 years, due to advances in compressor and fan-motor efficiency and new anti-sweat technologies (’cause nobody likes a sweaty fridge.) Your new refrigerator can pay for itself in a little more than a year.
- Espresso machines and brewers. In a great many cases, you can insulate the boilers of your always-on equipment (much like you’ve insulated your shop’s hot water heater, right? Right?) Mind you, if you don’t know the internals of your brewers like the back of your hand, it’s probably best to have it done by your service-tech. A flaming espresso machine is decidedly not eco-friendly; we’re probably talking about kevlar, not simple fiberglass batting.
- Coffee roasters. Clean, clean, clean! A clean roaster is not only a safe roaster, it’s also far more efficient than one that’s choked up with years of coffee oils, a creosote-filled exhaust and clogged air vents. You may be surprised with the energy savings you realize.
So maybe it’s not in your budget to spring for new, high-efficiency appliances this year… there’s no reason you can’t make sure the appliances you have are operating at peak performance. Clean your fridge’s evaporators, condensers, and heat-exchange coils. Replace worn and leaky door seals. Better still, get a regular service regimen going so that all of your equipment is operating well throughout the year.
Increase sustainability.
Greening up entails more than just curbing your shop’s power demands. It’s also about breaking some bad habits, many of them having to do with things we simply throw away. After decades of disposable everything, we’ve become conspicuous consumers of our limited natural resources. And it’s got to stop.
- Enough with the plastic cold cups already. Bio-polymer alternatives biodegrade in commercial composting landfills inside a month; plastics are forever. Greenware cups from Fabri-Kal make petroleum-based plastic cold cups obsolete.
- Nix those unrecyclable paper hot cups. Look into compostable paper cups like the ecotainer from International Paper, lined with a corn-polymer resin that’s compostable and will degrade over time.
- Still double-cupping? Just stop, already. Please. Products like the Java Jacket are pretty much de rigeur and new biodegradable entrants like the ecoSleeve appear to work just as well for cold cups, too.
- Want to take a really big step? Consider getting rid of disposables altogether!
- Recycle! How many gallons of milk does your coffee house consumer every day, and how many plastic jugs do you empty as a result? If you’re not recycling, that adds up to a heaping pile of forever in a landfill. Recycle your consumables. More, make it easy — like, really easy — for your customers to do the same.
- Use green cleaning products. Green cleaning agents are safer for your employees to use, and they typically don’t contain any VOCs (volatile organic compounds).3 Check with the Green Restaurant Association for a list of endorsed products.
- Buy food locally. When you purchase locally grown foodstuffs, suddenly all of your customers are localvores. More to the point, locally produced milk, fruits and vegetables are fresher, taste better, and your dollars support your own community (rather than some faceless transnational food cartel.)
Make it easier for your customers to go green, too.
People are waking up — finally! — to the stark realities of global climate change. And increasingly, folks the world over want to do something about it. People are setting back their thermostats, choosing cars with better gas mileage, replacing their light bulbs — all the while looking for opportunities to do more. You can help.
- Offer organics. By all means, start by offering a selection of great organic coffees. More, make an organic coffee your house blend; your standard espresso. But don’t stop there! Look for local, organic milk and dairy suppliers, bakers and folks who farm great produce. Make organic an every day thing.
- Switch to recycled paper products. From paper towels to napkins to bath tissue, recycled paper products — no longer limited to options of “brown” and “rough” — are an increasingly compelling alternative to virgin fiber sources.
- You know and I know that folks just love those cute little bottles of water. More, we both know those little plastic bottles are just plain stupid, ecologically. So do something about it. Offer ice-cold, filtered water to refill your customer’s reusable bottles, to start.
- Encourage customers to use their own mugs. Whether you want to host a wall of customer cups for your regulars, or offer a discount for folks who drop in with their travel tumbler in-hand, get behind your customers’ efforts to green up their own lives.
- Educate your customers. Going green isn’t one of those private, hair-shirt-wearing sort of things… it’s something that you want to make some noise about. Let your customers know that you’re going green. And how. And why. By demonstrating your commitment to the environment, and by making it easy for your customers to make good choices in your place of business, you help them make greener, more sustainable choices everywhere.
Final thoughts… and an invitation.
Greening up your coffee house can save you money (in the long run, certainly, even if it may have some up-front costs). And going green can improve the morale of your staff even as it boosts the loyalty of your customers — all of them. Greening up means a safer, healthier place of business, and will ultimately lead to a safer, healthier environment. Most of all, going green is simply the right thing to do.
While I’ve thrown a lot of ideas into this article, it’s really just a start. I welcome your feedback, your ideas, and your stories about how you’re greening up your coffee house… the challenges you face, and how you overcame them. We’re in this together, after all.
I’m not the only one talking about the intersection of coffee houses and sustainability these days. See also:
- Matt Milletto’s Going Green in Your Coffee House, part 1 and part 2.
- Stewart Fritchman’s Sustainable Coffeehouse video
Notes and Links
- Source: Energystar.gov commercial dishwasher savings guide. ↩
- Source: Energystar.gov commercial solid door refrigerator / freezer savings guide. ↩
- See Treehugger.com for more on volatile organic compounds. ↩
Posted on April 21, 2008 - by deCadmus
Bloggle Redux: Green Up Your Coffee Cup!
On the eve of Earth Day, here’s an oh-so-topical post from the Bloggle archives. Read it, already? Good! I challenge you to give it another review and see how your efforts to green up over the last year stack up. (And feel free to post a comment bragging on how you’ve done!)
Tomorrow, a new Earth Day post: Green Up Your Coffee House.
In the face of the now very real threat of global climate change, this year’s recognition of Earth Day carries with it a certain sense of urgency. 
It’s time to change some habits. Permanently. The good news? Greening up your coffee cup doesn’t mean sacrificing the quality of your coffee! Here’s some tips to get you started…
- Enough of the paper filters, already. If you enjoy your coffee in a press pot, good on you, you’re already there. But if you’re making a drip cup, consider some alternatives to your paper coffee filters. The gold standard of reusable drip filters are made by SwissGold, and they have a product line that covers most every filter basket style — from Mr. Coffee to Bunn to Melitta-styled cone filters — used in auto-drip machines today.
- Enough of the bottled water, too. I’ve written quite a lot about the importance of good water for good coffee. So by all means, use great water, but make it great yourself. Start with water from your own tap and filter it with any number of great filtration products (I like Brita, and PUR.) You’ll save oodles of money, and save oodles of carbon emissions from all the shipping that bottled water requires.
- Heat your water on-demand. Long-time readers will know that I’ve proclaimed my love for Bunn coffee makers in the past… but I have to tell you, that relationship is over. Home coffee makers that keep water hot 24 hours are energy hogs, pure and simple. Instead, use a water kettle to boil up only exactly as much water as you need. Chances are it’ll take no more time than your Bunn ever did.
- Take your mug on the road. If you’re heading to your local coffee house, take your mug with you! There’s thermal travel mugs and tumblers of every sort to make sure you don’t spill a drop on your commute, and chances are your coffee shop will thank you! (One of a coffee shop’s biggest costs is paper, and the lion’s share of that is paper cups.)
- Choose Fair Trade Certified™ and Organic coffee. Yes, you really can make a difference by choosing coffee with eco-friendly bona fides. And you have been! Sales of Fair Trade and Organic coffee continue to see accelerating double-digit growth. Keep it up! These coffees are ecologically sound, sustainable, and make for safer, healthier coffee-growing communities.
Posted on April 18, 2008 - by deCadmus
It’s a Fabulous Eco-Friday
The birds are singing, the trees are budding, and the snow is all but a dirty-white memory. The crocuses that herself planted last fall which are not blue or purple, but yellow — Yellow! Scott, I blame you – are blooming. By golly it must be mud season Spring. And if that weren’t sign enough of the change of seasons, the dance-card is full of ecologically-minded events, many right here in Vermont.
- Earth day is Tuesday, April 22nd. This year — in the face of looming climate crisis — it’s important to not only act locally (you can find an Earth Day event near you) but also to make some noise.
If you’ve been following the seemingly endless string of political debates (don’t even get me started on the recent ABC debacle) you may have noticed something missing — the climate crisis. That’s not an accident. Most all of these debates have been sponsored by front groups for
Big Oil, and they’ve been excruciatingly effective at keeping global climate change out of the conversation. Let your elected representatives know that you haven’t forgotten the climate crisis.
- Vermonters will want to note, too, that Small Dog Electronics is once again doing their Earth Day affiliated electronics recycling event. It’s free (recycling fees are being picked up by Small Dog’s sponsoring partners) and it’s a great way to keep heavy metal “e-waste” out of Vermont landfills. Be sure to note, too, that it takes place Saturday, April 19th.
- Green Up Day is, as always, the first Saturday in May — this year, May 3rd. Green Up Vermont is in its 38th year, and this time ’round more than 12,000 volunteers will be lined up along the state’s highways, byways and streams, bagging and hauling off junk and garbage revealed by the snowmelt.
So get on out there and get your green on!
Posted on July 24, 2007 - by deCadmus
Coffee Notes from All Over
- National Geographic News reports that — as if Uganda didn’t have enough to worry about, already — Uganda’s coffee crop is under threat of collapse due to global climate change. I find this report extraordinarily worrying, as I suspect it’s merely the tip of the proverbial (and ironic) iceberg. Ugandan coffee has the capacity to be really remarkable stuff… more about that here.)
…Even a slight increase in temperature could wipe out Uganda’s entire coffee crop, which brings in more than half of the East African country’s revenue.
“Climate change has affected coffee production already,” said Philip Gitao, executive director of the East African Fine Coffees Association.
- Starbucks is raising prices. Again. Despite having switched from whole milk to 2% across the board, its dairy prices are beginning to hurt. Moo.
- It’s the new, new way to office… WiFi-powered cafes are fast becoming mobile sales departments. And some cafes are happy about that.
Of Panera’s 1,056 locations in the country, 940 are equipped with free WiFi, said spokeswoman Liz Scales.
“We’re the largest provider of free WiFi in the country,”Â? Scales said. “There are people that are there and don’t want to buy anything and that’s all right. But most people do and we have had nothing but positive remarks about this.”Â?
- Six years ago this week Bloggle was recognized as a Blog of Note by the nice folks at Blogger.com. It’s been all downhill from there. ;)
Posted on April 26, 2007 - by deCadmus
I had a light bulb moment this week…
While I’ve long been ecologically-minded, I’m the first to admit that such mindfulness hasn’t always translated into action. I recycle… largely ’cause my community makes it so darn easy. I choose Energy Star rated appliances. I’m increasingly a localvore — most of the food I buy and eat is grown in my own neighborhood… in season, anyway. 
(I imagine I could do better there.)
I’d like to think that, if there’s a continuum between the conscientious and the conspicuous consumer, I lean more toward the former than the latter. But this week, just leeward of Earth Day, I want to do more. I’m going to start with the simple stuff. And what could be simpler than changing a light-bulb?
Six months ago I replaced the bulbs in the garage and the basement — two places where somebody often forgets to turn off the lights — with compact fluorescent equivalents. They’ve been absolutely problem-free, and at this point they’ve paid for themselves in energy savings. What’s more, they’re likely to last 3 to 5 times as long as incandescent bulbs.
If every American home replaced just one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR rated bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 2.5 million homes for a year and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of nearly 800,000 cars.
It’s all well and good to replace utility bulbs… but what about the spaces where we live? I’m picky about lighting. Most all of my overhead lamps are on dimmers, and my table-lamps are 3-ways so I can control my lighting pretty precisely. But there’s new compact fluorescents on the market that are dimmable, and 3-way switchable, and I guess I have no more excuses. So this week I’m replacing about 1200 watts of incandescent bulbs with about 150 watts of compact fluorescents.
The cost? About $85, which will pay for itself in energy savings in a year’s time. But over the life of these light bulbs I’ll also be saving:
- 5,500 kilowatt-hours of power generation
- 5,000 pounds of coal to generate that power, and
- 13,000 pounds of carbon dioxide that would have been released into the atmosphere.
Wow… talk about a light bulb moment.
Posted on April 22, 2007 - by deCadmus
Green Up Your Coffee Cup
It’s Earth Day…
In the face of the now very real threat of global climate change, this year’s recognition of Earth Day carries with it a certain sense of urgency. It’s time to change some habits. Permanently. The good news? Greening up your coffee cup doesn’t mean sacrificing the quality of your coffee! Here’s some tips to get you started…
- Enough of the paper filters, already. If you enjoy your coffee in a press pot, good on you, you’re already there. But if you’re making a drip cup, consider some alternatives to your paper coffee filters. The gold standard of reusable drip filters are made by SwissGold, and they have a product line that covers most every filter basket style — from Mr. Coffee to Bunn to Melitta-styled cone filters — used in auto-drip machines today.
- Enough of the bottled water, too. I’ve written quite a lot about the importance of good water for good coffee. So by all means, use great water, but make it great yourself. Start with water from your own tap and filter it with any number of great filtration products (I like Brita, and PUR.) You’ll save oodles of money, and save oodles of carbon emissions from all the shipping that bottled water requires.
- Heat your water on-demand. Long-time readers will know that I’ve proclaimed my love for Bunn coffee makers in the past… but I have to tell you, that relationship is over. Home coffee makers that keep water hot 24 hours are energy hogs, pure and simple. Instead, use a water kettle to boil up only exactly as much water as you need. Chances are it’ll take no more time than your Bunn ever did.
- Take your mug on the road. If you’re heading to your local coffee house, take your mug with you! There’s thermal travel mugs and tumblers of every sort to make sure you don’t spill a drop on your commute, and chances are your coffee shop will thank you! (One of a coffee shop’s biggest costs is paper, and the lion’s share of that is paper cups.)
- Choose Fair Trade Certified™ and Organic coffee. Yes, you really can make a difference by choosing coffee with eco-friendly bona fides. And you have been! Sales of Fair Trade coffee rose ten-fold between 2000 and 2005, and Fair Trade and Organic coffee sales are right now seeing accelerating double-digit growth. Keep it up! These coffees are ecologically sound, sustainable, and make for safer, healthier coffee-growing communities.
Visit TreeHugger.com for still more ideas to green up your cup.
Posted on April 13, 2007 - by deCadmus
Coffee Notes, Friday the 13th Edition
I really want to continue the organic coffee thread (and I will) but I’m putting in altogether too much time on a super-duper-secret, very special, Special Reserve coffee for Green Mountain. Happily I won’t have to keep it secret much longer (I hate keeping secrets!)
Meanwhile… here’s fodder for your Friday the 13th. (more…)
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Hello.
Bloggle is the online playground of Doug Cadmus, a usability guy, writer, photographer and sometime dramatist who moved to Vermont for the coffee. When not writing, reading or walking his old, blind golden retriever, he roasts coffee in his garage and is the Web Guy for Green Mountain Coffee in Waterbury, VT. Flickr Photos
