Recyclable cups and homegrown brands: choosing a better coffee brew

The 16.3 million coffees Australians collectively gulp down on average each day have a lot to answer for. As one of the planet’s most traded commodities, coffee is big business. But it is problematic.

Major production starts in some of the world’s poorest nations, where coffee plantations are linked to rainforest clearing. Farms often rely on cheap labour. Multiple investigations have uncovered evidence of human trafficking, forced labour and child labour on plantations – kids as young as five were common employees on Honduras farms, a study in 2016 by Finnwatch found.

As an added problem, too many of us choose to consume our caffeine hit in ways that create tonnes of rubbish each year.

But if you can’t live without your morning coffee, our guide offers the best options for consuming it as ethically as possible.

Choose ethical brands that care for the environment

Much of coffee’s environmental and human impact happens during the growing stage, so choosing ethical brands is key. Although no label is perfect, certification bodies such as Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade Australia New Zealand help to indicate that products have been mindfully cultivated. Keep an eye out for organically grown coffee, too, with Australian certified organic and NASAA certified organic among the most well known.

For fewer food miles, local Australian-grown coffee does exist but the industry is small; production is low and growing costs are high. Much of the domestic coffee production is centred around the subtropical region from Noosa south to Coffs Harbour, where about 35 growers operate under the Australian Subtropical Coffee Association. That includes the family-run and certified organic High Trees Estate plantation on the Alstonville plateau near Byron Bay, which has picked up a bunch of foodie awards over the past decade or so. Half an hour away, Rebecca and John Zentveld set up Zentveld’s coffee roastery in 1993, growing coffee without pesticides on a property registered with Land for Wildlife.

“We can be pretty proud of our sustainable practices,” says Rebecca Zentveld. “Most Australian growers do not use harmful sprays and also plant shade and rainforest around their crops. “Other coffee-growing lands are in poorer, less developed nations, where growers and hand-pickers are paid minimal wages, which is unacceptable in Australia. Our growers get well remunerated for their efforts.”

Make your coffee without the plastic and capsules

When making coffee at home, avoid coffee pods. Leftover capsules too often end up in landfill because they can’t be recycled by normal council facilities. Nespresso, for example, expects consumers to save each pod before driving them to a designated TerraCycle drop-off point or posting them back in the mail – extra effort only some will bother to make. That’s worrying, considering the plastic and aluminium used in each pod will take centuries to break down.

More sustainable pods are emerging, though they’re not yet perfect. In Australia, cricketers Ed Cowan and Steve Cazzulino have launched Tripod Coffee, which offers compostable polymer- and paper-based pods that fit Nespresso machines.

“When successfully moved through an industrial processor, our pods break down to 1% of their original form within 90 days,” Cowan says. Still, few Australian councils have facilities to process in this way. “We understand the ‘holy grail’ is for a certified home compostable capsule, and we are working tirelessly to bring this to market.”

Better make-your-own options are filter or plunger coffee, which largely sidestep single use components. Even instant coffee isn’t too bad, environmentally speaking – just make sure you only boil the water you need.

Obsessed with cafe coffees? Skip wasteful single-use coffee cups

Craig Reucassel illustrated the wastefulness of our national takeaway coffee obsession last year when he filled a Melbourne tram with 50,000 single-use coffee cups – every half hour, Aussies send another tram-load to the tip. Nationwide we use more than one billion disposable coffee cups each year, the ABC’s War on Waste TV series revealed, and nine out of 10 end up in landfill. That’s because single-use cups look like cardboard, but have a thin plastic lining that can’t be recycled.

Even so-called biodegradable cups made with a more sustainable corn starch lining are not yet a real panacea. Such cups break down only under industrial-scale composting and few such facilities exist in Australia, meaning most simply get turfed.

Solutions are on the horizon. In 2016, an environmental solutions company Closed Loop brought the United Kingdom-pioneered Simply Cups recycling initiative to Australia. It’s trialling machinery that separates paper from polyethylene lining; the stripped out plastic could be used to make outdoor furniture, building materials or food trays.

A smarter fix is avoiding all that rubbish in the first place by investing in a reusable cup. Since 2009, a Melbourne brother-and-sister team, Abigail and Jamie Forsyth, have sold more than eight million KeepCups across 65 countries. After last year’s ABC series aired, KeepCup sales spiked by 400% and the website crashed. “I think social norms are beginning to change. A high consumption life is increasingly being seen as empty and wasteful rather than aspirational,” Abigail Forsyth says.

Once armed with a BYO cup, find outlets that reward that choice with discounts by searching the Responsible Cafes map.

Reuse ground beans

Plants enjoy a caffeine high as much as humans, yet mountains of nitrogen-rich coffee grounds end up rotting in landfill. Instead, make use of that fertiliser by throwing coffee grounds into compost or worm farms – 20% is about the ideal amount.

Groups are now popping up to help cafes do the same. A Broome community group, Incredible Edible, collects coffee grounds to resell as garden fertiliser, while Ninna Larsen’s Reground social enterprise has redirected inner-city Melbourne cafe coffee grounds to community gardens and home veggie patches since 2014.

“We have diverted 104 tonnes of ground coffee from [more than] 50 cafes, roasteries and offices. That equates to 3.4 million cups of coffee,” Larsen says. “In Melbourne, we do drink a lot of coffee. The quality of coffee is impeccable almost anywhere you go. So the question now becomes: what values and processes can you support when drinking your coffee?”

• Additional research and reporting by Nicole Lutze