subject: Environmental Impact Of Coffee Roasting [print this page] How can a certified fair trade and organic cup of coffee still be a source of major environmental and social problems? After all, the social issues are dealt with through fair trade, by paying coffee growers a decent, higher-than-subsistence price for their crops. And the environmental problems should have been handled through the growers learning to farm with organic methods. Yet it's during all the steps afterwards of hulling, coffee roasting and so on that the problems appear.
While fair trade and certified organic coffee is frequently handled conscientiously at the level of cultivation and harvest, you may be surprised to learn that there can then be problems at different processing levels.
Before roasting even takes place, the pulp of the fruit needs to be removed to reveal the seed, what we know as the coffee bean. When hulling is done via wet methods, massive amounts of water are used, and waterways can be contaminated with organic pollutants. Yet dry hulling methods produce a lower quality product.
Although it sounds so innocuous, coffee roasting is quite an involved process and produces pollutants as byproducts. The smoke alone from the roasting carries alcohols, organic acids, and nitrogen and sulfur compounds. Most roasters use ovens that are powered by natural gas. And there is usually a second oven meant to clean the air of all the pollutants, which adds to the gas used and the CO2 emissions. Even though steps are now being taken to use just one oven and even recapture the heat from the cleaned air, your morning cup of fresh coffee is definitely looking less green by the minute.
Buying coffee through fair trade retailers may still be the best choice for fair trade and environmental reasons, but even the fair trade industry for coffee has a long way to go before it's completely green. Producers still need to find new methods for coffee roasting and hulling, methods that will reduce both water and air pollution and energy consumption. Fair trade may have helped coffee growers, yet what happens to the crops after they are harvested needs to be addressed.
