Two Key-Points To Bear In Mind For The Green Coffee Business

Coffee is a very productive and important business, however it can cause several problems with the environment: according to The Guardian, they propose a two key-points guide for the green coffee business.

The most important thing to do is to choose ethical brands with certification bodies like the Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade Australia New Zealand which make sure that the product has been ethically cultivated.

A second key point is avoiding the use of coffee pods: even if there are emerging business like Ed Cowan and Steve Cuzzolino’s Tripod Coffee, which use compostable polymer and paper-based coffee pods, there is still a long way to go in order to achieve a fully recyclable pod.

Different solutions have been proposed by several companies. In 2016, Closed Loop, an enviromental company, brought the so called Simply Cup (a machinery that separates paper from polyethylene), first introduced in the UK, to Australia. Another solution goes to the core of the problem: it aims to avoid all the possible rubbish, investing in a reusable cup: KeepCups is the enviromental solution found by Abigail and Jamie Forsyth, who have already sold more than eight million Keep Cups in 65 countries.

Coffee grounds are also loved by plants: an answer to this kind of enviromental problem is throwing away coffee grounds into compost: in this way it is possible to reuse it as fertiliser.

There are several emerging groups who help cafes to do so. Incredible Edible is one of these: it collects coffee grounds to resell as garden fertiliser. Since 2014 something similar has been made also by Reground, a social enterprise, which has redirected Melbourne coffee grounds to community gardens.