Coffee And The Environment
Being built around such a popular drink, it's easy to imagine how the coffee industry
can have a negative environmental impact; however, few people realize just the extent of the impact a cup or two of coffee can have.
Most people, if at all, only consider the obvious things when thinking of how coffee affects the environment. Basically, these things include the waste produced by the vast amount of packaging needed to get a drink into someone's hand.
Of course this is an important consideration as there is a great deal of waste that ranges from the bag the beans come in all the way to the paper cups that are commonly used and discarded when selling the final product.
The environmental impact of coffee stretches even farther though. It goes all the way back to the plantations that grow the plants that provide the beans. Traditionally, coffee was grown in shaded areas meaning forests could be, and needed to be, maintained around the plants.
This preserved or provided a habitat and ecosystem for animals, insects and other plant life.
In the 70's a lot of this was changed. For many reasons, sun-grown coffee farms were popularized. This enabled coffee to be produced in much larger quantities, but it resulted in a great deal of forests being destroyed.
Making things worse were economical factors that left a lot of coffee plantations for broke after which they were destroyed in favor of urbanization.
No matter how the coffee is grown, a great deal of pollution is created simply by processing the beans. In between the time the coffee is picked and the time the beans are roasted, the coffee beans have to be freed from their many outer layers and then washed.
The entire process uses over a hundred liters of water for every kilogram of coffee.
Though there are varying methods of processing coffee, each results in at least some amount of polluted water. One popular method though, leaves most if not all of the needed water greatly polluted and dirty, not to mention highly odorous.
Then one must consider how the processed coffee travels. The plants are grown and cultivated in only a few countries, but the demand for it is high in nearly every country. Being a product that is traded more than almost any other, the environmental impact of simply shipping it is staggering.
Lastly, one must consider the leftover grounds. There are millions of cups of coffee served around the world every day, and each cup results in a significant amount of ground coffee that has to be thrown away.
Thankfully there is a bright side to a lot of this. New trade practices and consumer demands are resulting in a push for more environmentally sound practices. This means that in some cases, the less harmful methods of growing, harvesting and processing coffee beans are being favored.
Of course, every coffee drinker can do their own part to reduce the environmental impacts of the coffee industry, if only a little. Beans can be bought in bulk and, when at a cafe, reusable cups can be used instead of paper cups. What's more, if you have a garden you can collect your leftover coffee grounds and actually use them as fertilizer. Every little bit helps
by: S.Brooks
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