A dip into water footprinting … and Friday Fun!

posted at 10:20am, 18 Jun 10 by Whitney [ 13 comments ]

In case you didn’t know, this week is the 2nd annual “Water Saving Week”.  A newly born sibling to the longer-running ‘Energy Savings Week’, this occasion is meant to spread some water wisdom and “help water users to rethink their attitude to water.”

Inspired by this week, I’ve been doing some thinking about the growing trend of water footprinting, which is following hot on the heels of the now ubiquitous carbon footprint.  While most of our work in the last year has focused on understanding our carbon footprint better, we’re exploring water usage in our supply chain as well.

According to the Water Footprint Network, a single cup of coffee carries with it 140L of ‘virtual water’, or the water that has gone into producing the coffee from growing to consuming.  The biggest proportion of this 140L comes from growing the coffee trees.  Now, many people bandy this number about to shock people and make them think this is a huge amount.  Though it is certainly larger than the 34L of virtual water assigned to a cup of black tea, digging below the surface to understand what’s behind the number is crucial.

To explain a bit further, in the case of the small farmers that Cafédirect works with, nearly all that water comes from rainfall, as opposed to irrigation, which uses up surface water (from lakes, rivers and streams) or from groundwater (from aquifers).  In addition, the rainwater probably wouldn’t have been used to grow anything of higher value to the farmers (or else they’d already be growing it!), so its use to grow coffee has a low ‘opportunity cost’.  In return, the coffee crop allows small farmers to enter a commodity market that brings income to them and their communities, especially when they participate in the Fairtrade market.

So … having given you a splash course in water footprinting, now on to the Friday Fun!  Here at Cafédirect HQ, we’ve installed low-flush toilets and waterless urinals in our loos to cut down on water use.  To win this week’s lovely prize, tell us any creative ways that you save water at home or work.

Liquid-related prize

To enter, simply post your entry in the comment box below by 5.30 today. The most creative water-saving activity, as chosen by our panel of judges, will be announced on Monday on our blog. The winner will receive a packs of our delicious coffee and tea and a fabulous water bottle and travel mug … to take your water and hot drinks along with you, of course! Prizes can only be sent to a UK or ROI postal address.

Update from São Tomé & Príncipe

posted at 3:40pm, 03 Jun 10 by Whitney [ 4 comments ]

Just received this dispatch from Jacquie, our Head of Communications, describing her thoughts on the visit to our cocoa partner in São Tomé & Príncipe.

“A week ago Anne (our CEO) and I were in São Tomé to visit our newest cocoa partner.

Its been amazing to see how far this project has come in such a short period of time.  For the last 2 years, we’ve been working with local cocoa farmers (supported with additional funding from DFID’s FRICH programme) to create a cooperative consisting of 11 communities to enable them to sell their cocoa internationally, bypassing the local middlemen. In addition, we have been developing the infrastructure to enable the communities to process their wet cocoa into dry cocoa, which has 5 times the value.

This project typifies the Cafédirect way of working. Rather than just being satisfied with paying a minimum price, we actually seek to enable communities to trade in the first place. In this case the 11 communities that make up the Sao Tome cooperative are now able to sell their cocoa internationally for the very first time. It was also crucial to develop as much value at origin as possible through enabling them to process the cocoa. We want the local growers to not only get a fair price, but to actually get a decent proportion of the price of the finished product that you see on your shelves.

Cocoa pods before being opened.

And all this work has happened before they have even got the Fairtrade certificate! We are now working with the cooperative to meet all Fairtrade regulations so that we can purchase the cocoa. In the meantime, we’ve worked with them to source other international buyers for their harvest.

We’ve got film and photographs of all the wonderful people that we met, so watch this space for the next installment!  For the moment, here is a glimpse of some gorgeous cocoa pods freshly cut from the trees as well as the island’s lovely coastline.

The island's beaches.

An Earth Day story about coffee from deepest, darkest Peru

posted at 2:36pm, 22 Apr 10 by Whitney [ 1 comment ]

Instead of boring you with an Earth Day list of actions that you (probably already know) to reduce your impact on the earth, I thought I’d bring you a little story from deepest, darkest Peru. It’s a story that shows you the connection between the purchases you make at the supermarket here in the UK, and the fruits of the labour of smallholder coffee farmers in another hemisphere.

Our coffee partner, CECOVASA, is a co-operative of Quechua and Aymara (two Peruvian indigenous groups) smallholder farming organisations.  These farmers happen to be located on the outskirts of one of the most impressive natural reserves on the planet (ok, maybe I’m biased): the Tambopata National Reserve.  While the area is home to amazing wildlife (e.g. Jaguars, Giant Otters and Anacondas), it’s also home to settlements of indigenous farmers looking to make a living from their surroundings.  Since becoming a national reserve in the 1990’s, the border areas have been the scene of telltale struggles between authorities trying to preserve the natural landscape and increasing numbers of people seeking land and livelihoods.

Map of the Tambopata Nature Reserve

So … where does coffee fit in? The biggest threats to the natural area are gold mining, illegal logging, extraction of forest resources (wood, plants, animals, etc.) and increased farming, especially cattle ranching.  Coffee farming, on the other hand, is seen as one of the best solutions to striking a balance between keeping much of the nature intact but allowing people to make a living.  As high quality coffee can be grown organically and under the shade of native trees, it’s a relatively eco-friendly system of agroforestry.

Just last week at the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) conference in California, one of CECOVASA’s coffees won the prestigious ‘Coffee of the Year 2010′ competition for coffees from Peru. The winning coffee, called TUNKI, was grown organically by Wilson Sucaticona, a farmer member of one of CECOVASA’s primary co-operatives.  This international recognition speaks volumes of the efforts of smallholder farmers to improve the quality of their crops in order to compete with coffees from around the world, and also to the success of a sustainable farming model that balances environmental concerns with human needs.

And with that, I say CONGRATULATIONS TO CECOVASA & HAPPY EARTH DAY 2010!

CECOVASA’s coffee goes into our:

Classics Medium Roast Freeze-dried Instant coffee

Classics Decaffeinated Organic Freeze-dried Instant coffee

Fresh Ground Medium, Rich, Decaffeinated and Espresso coffees

A glimpse into our 2009 carbon footprint

posted at 11:25am, 01 Apr 10 by Whitney [ 0 comments ]

We conducted our first ever carbon footprint in 2005. This year, with the ongoing support of our partner Forum for the Future, we completed a bigger and better footprint that exemplifies how we do business:  not limiting the view to those parts of the supply chain that we control, but seeing the bigger picture with an eye to improve the whole.

The footprint covers out entire range of products and includes carbon emissions coming from growing crops, transporting the raw material, processing it, packaging it, consuming the final product (both in and out of home), and disposing any waste.

The graph below shows the carbon emissions per cup of our best selling products, followed by explanations of three important findings and what we’re doing to address each.

1. The carbon intensity of processing our coffee, tea and cocoa is high, especially decaffeination and freeze drying.

In response, we’ve set ourselves a target to reduce the absolute carbon emissions from processing our products by an average of 15% by 2015, based on our 2009 baseline. Because we don’t own the factories ourselves, any progress will be made by working in collaboration with the companiesthat process our products.  It’s a difficult challenge, but luckily we’re not starting from scratch and work with some very eco-minded partners  who are already doing what they can to minimise the impact.

2. The majority of the carbon emissions in a cup of our coffee or our tea (drunk either in the home or out-of-home) comes from the consumption stage! This means from putting the kettle on and powering the espresso machine.

Our data show that on average 72% of the carbon is emitted at this stage, which means consumers and out-of-home venues have the power to minimise those emissions.

In response, we’re educating our consumers about this through channels like our website and blog, and we also have a message on all our packaging reminding consumers to ‘only boil as much water as you need’. This is one of the easiest ways to reduce the carbon emissions from your cuppa. Others include purchasing a kettle that makes it very easy to measure the amount of water you need, and switching to 100% renewable energy for your home or workplace.

3. Contrary to what you would guess, relative to other parts of the supply chain, the carbon emissions from shipping our coffee, tea, and cocoa, from making and disposing of our packaging, and from all our office operations (including flights and electricity usage) are minimal.

As the pie chart shows, our office operations are hardly visible in the overall footprint for our supply chain in 2009!

Company footprint based on 2009 sales

That said, we’re still committed to doing what we can to reduce these impacts. We started 2010 by making the switch to sourcing 100% renewable energy from our friends at Ecotricity.

Regarding shipping, we have made continual efficiency improvements in recent years, all of which result in small reductions in carbon emissions. This year we cut out one of the port stops in our coffee supply chain, consolidated our cocoa processing into one factory and negotiated full-truck only deliveries to one of our distributors. These may sound like
small steps, but they all add up.

Packaging is a high priority for our consumers, so we have set two ambitious goals to both reduce the overall amount of packaging we use, and to choose more environmentally friendly materials.

- By 2015, we aim to reduce our overall packaging by an average of 15% based on our 2009 baseline.

- We also want all of our packaging, including the outer casing, to be 100% recyclable or compostable by 2012.

Stay tuned for more on our progress over 2010!