{"id":27605,"date":"2022-05-18T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-05-18T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/freshcup.com\/?p=27605"},"modified":"2022-08-17T23:36:18","modified_gmt":"2022-08-18T04:36:18","slug":"becoming-a-carbon-responsible-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freshcup.com\/becoming-a-carbon-responsible-business\/","title":{"rendered":"No One Way To Be Sustainable: On Becoming A Carbon-Responsible Business"},"content":{"rendered":"[et_pb_section admin_label=”section”]\n\t\t\t[et_pb_row admin_label=”row”]\n\t\t\t\t[et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text”]\n

Farmer Justina Gutierrez Munos planting saplings to reforest her land in Nicaragua as part of Taking Root\u2019s carbon project.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“There is no such thing as one sustainable business,” entrepreneur Judy Wicks stated in her October 2014 lecture, “Building a New Economy: What’s Love Got to Do With It?”<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“No matter how many great practices we have in our company\u2014recycling, paying a living wage, solar hot water\u2014we can only be part of a sustainable system,” she goes on, “and we have to share and cooperate in order to build that sustainable system.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although no one actor can address all sustainability concerns, individual coffee roasting and caf\u00e9 companies are starting to take more responsibility for the carbon footprint of their operations and supply chains. Together, they construct a larger sustainable system that reduces new emissions and sequesters existing carbon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“When roasting [and other coffee] businesses want to reduce their impact on climate change,” says Guillaume Nadeau, Deputy Director-General of ECOTIERRA<\/a>, an agroforestry project developer based in Sherbrooke, Canada, “there are a few steps to follow: identify emissions sources, quantify emissions, reduce emissions where possible, and offset emissions with the voluntary purchase of carbon credits.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jose Tinoco and Manuel Villalobos Perez map out future plantings in Peru. Photo courtesy of ECOTIERRA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This article will break down each of the steps Nadeau identifies and how coffee businesses worldwide are implementing tools to measure their impact and fight climate change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Identify Sources & Quantify Emissions <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Amavida Coffee<\/a> consists of a wholesale roastery and four caf\u00e9 locations in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida. They’re one of the 24 members of the importing collective Cooperative Coffees<\/a> and have been a certified B Corporation<\/a> since 2014. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Our journey with carbon goes back to when we started with the B Corp,” says founder Dan Bailey. “I remember reading [a question], ‘Do you measure carbon?’ Fast-forward many years, and we made incremental improvements to our company in the various tenets B Corp advocates of being a responsible business.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further inspired by Cooperative Coffees’ initiative to measure the impact of carbon from grower to roaster, two years ago, Amavida set out to answer the question, “What would it take to become a carbon-neutral company?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Amavida is part of Cooperative Coffees, which works with Sol Y Caf\u00e9 Cooperative in Peru.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The exercise of calculating emissions\u2014from employee commutes to electricity usage\u2014obligates businesses to take a close look at their operations. Like all accounting, this process defines which activities are most costly in terms of carbon and requires parameters to strike a balance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“You have a choice with what you will measure,” explains Will Sheldon, Commercial Director for Vancouver-based not-for-profit Taking Root<\/a>. “It’s called scoping: asking, ‘What am I going to take responsibility for?'”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the standards outlined by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol<\/a>: <\/p>\n\n\n\n