The UK loves coffee. Even more than tea (The Guardian). Sourcing sustainable and organic coffee is not easy amid disruptions to global supply chains from the effects of climate change. Source Climate Change Coffee has been importing organic coffee to the UK for more than a decade.
Fix Our Food
The current food system is not fit for purpose. Fix Our Food is a campaign in Yorkshire where the highest concentration of food and drink businesses, 10-14% of livestock and 13-17% of the UK’s crop growing area are based. It’s also home to some of the most underprivileged children in the UK. They are lobbying for policy changes. At the same time, they are working on three strands: hybrid business models, regenerative farming and sustainable healthy food for children.
They interviewed Cristina Talens, founder of Source Climate Change Coffee for a series called Yorkshire Stories of Sustainability.
Sustainable coffee
Cristina started Source Climate Change Coffee after a life-changing trip to the Amazon in Peru, where she saw first hand the ‘cloud forests’ and the rain cycle that sustained the forests. At the same time she witnessed deforestation and the effect that it had on the local environment.
Source Climate Change Coffee rewards coffee growers for conservation and reforestation activities. The organic coffee is imported from Mexico, Nicaragua, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania from growers who are involved in agroforestry projects. They grow trees in their coffee plantations and are paid for them. At the same time the trees shade the coffee plants, prevent water runoff and increase harvests.
The first coffee that Source Climate Change imported was from Mexico where 30 Mestizo and Mayan communities help protect 2,200 plant species and 5,500 animal species in El Ocote Biosphere. The decaffeinated coffee from Mexico is 99% caffeine free and is processed using the mountain water method.
Source Climate Change Coffee has also developed a home compostable coffee capsule that can decompose in home compost within 24 weeks. The UK purchases 800 million coffee pods a year, and many of those that claim to be compostable are not home compostable, they require specialist industrial composters. Consumers are confused by this and assume that ‘compostable’ means ‘home compostable’ but they are different. And just last month the Advertising Standards Authority ruled that it was misleading to label a coffee capsule ‘compostable’ if it could not be home composted (The Guardian). In any case, this innovation from Source Climate Change is a huge step forward in sustainability.
Coffee and climate change
The biggest challenges facing the coffee industry are the rising prices and climate change. Coffee requires very specific growing conditions and it can be affected by changes in temperature, rainfall and natural disasters like fire and flood. Currently, coffee prices are rising steeply due to drought and heavy rain in some of the countries that are the main producers.
And small scale farmers may not have the resources and technology to meet new legislation. While Cristina welcomes the new EU regulation on deforestation, which aims to guarantee that products consumed do not contribute to deforestation, it will be difficult for her growers to meet the requirements and prove their sustainability. This means that Source Climate Change may not be able to purchase coffee from them.
Find out more about Source Climate Change Coffee and buy their products on their website www.sourceclimatechange.com
