With the arrival of midterm season comes the increase in students pouring into coffee shops in and around downtown Kingston. But while Queen’s students are sipping their coffees and studying for their mid, they should also take the time to think about the environmental impact of their coffee consumption.
Coffee production and distribution spans several continents. Before a cup of coffee can be served up by a barista, coffee beans must first be harvested from coffee cherries and extensively processed.
Eighty-five per cent of coffee products on the market are derived from beans harvested from tree coffea arabica. These trees bear coffee cherries which are hand-picked or collected by machinery. Afterwards, the ripe cherries are typically mechanically ground and filtered to remove mucilage—a sticky substance plants produce that ensures their survival. The isolated seeds are then dried, removing 88 to 90 per cent of their moisture in preparation for export.
In North American processing plants, coffee beans are refined and roasted before they are shipped off to distributers.
Starbucks, a coffee corporation with locations throughout North America, receives their coffee from roasting plants in Mexico, Columbia and Kenya. The coffee beans are then shipped to North American roasting centres.
In past years, Starbucks has made attempts to reduce their coffee’s carbon footprint but it is not their biggest priority, said Jim Hanna, the environmental officer at Starbucks.
“Quality and performance come first,” he said.
Starbucks offsets approximately 69,482 metric tons of CO2 by purchasing wind renewable energy certificates, Hanna said. They have not yet announced plans to re-calculate their environmental audit.
The Sleepless Goat, a Princess Street café, only sells certified fair trade coffee which they get from Equator Coffee Roasters, an Ontario-based company.
Guy Roubatille, the roastmaster and production manager at Equator Coffee said, his company is unique in that all of Co-op Coffees—the overarching organization Equator Coffee falls under—have a direct relationship with the farming families they work with and only purchase coffee at fair trade prices.
“Our coffee has two warehouses,” he said. “When we need coffee we draw down on our commitments at the warehouse. All coffees arrive in North America on ships in containers that hold up to 250 bags of coffee each.”
He said Co-op Coffees maintains partnerships in regions similar to that of Starbucks, including Boliva, Nicargua and Rwanda.
Roubatille said, like other coffee importers, Equator Coffee employs similar harvesting and refinement processes and must abide to FDA guidelines and customs before crossing the border.
The Sleepless Goat’s coffee is prepared each week when they order it, said Roubatille.
“The Sleepless Goat orders coffee from us every week,” he said. “When we get their order, I’ll roast the coffee that they need and ship it to them in Kingston.”
Mo Owen, a long-time worker at the Sleepless Goat said Equator Coffee is a great business to work with.
“Five years ago we ran into a problem with our previous suppliers,” he said. “They couldn’t always guarantee us fair-trade coffee so we switched to someone who could.”
Owen said even though Multatuli Coffee Merchants, a local Kingston roaster, is much closer to home, the Sleepless Goat plans to stick with Equator Coffee.
“We’re not just business partners,” he said. “We’ve established a personal relationship with them.”
Owen said Multatuli has recently opened their own café, Coffeeco, located at Division and Johnson Streets.
“They’re big promoters of fair trade and one of the ‘greenest’ places in Kingston,” he said.
Owen said the Sleepless Goat probably has one of the lowest coffee carbon footprints in Kingston next to The Tea Room and Multatuli.
“We don’t necessarily look at it that way,” he said. “We do the best with what we can and we’re always trying to find new ways to improve.”
—With files from Madison Bettle
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