Going Green: How the Coffee Industry Embraces Sustainability

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Wonderstate’s roastery is 100% powered by a solar array.

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The PuroSole roasting system uses direct sunlight to roast coffee, unlike traditional hot air or infrared systems.

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illycaffè offers eco-friendly products like E.S.E. compostable paper pods for espresso preparation.

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The Bellwether roasting system is 100% electric and fully automated.

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From solar power to electric roasting, coffee companies across the supply chain find ways to integrate sustainability into their business models.

From the farm to the final pour, a lot of work goes into a cup of coffee. Like many industries, coffee must contend with its impact on the environment. Deforestation, carbon emissions, and waste are byproducts of the coffee business, but operators throughout the supply chain now adopt business practices to address their environmental impact. What does embracing sustainability look like for businesses in the coffee space?

For Wonderstate Coffee in Wisconsin, the journey to more sustainable energy began back in 2015. The coffee roaster always operated based on a value-based mission, sourcing organic coffee and looking for ways to support equity throughout the supply chain. The team, led by founder and president TJ Semanchin, began to explore what it would take to install a solar field at its roastery in Viroqua, Wisconsin.

The company connected with Ethos Green Power Cooperative, a local solar advocacy group, which guided the team through the process. Ethos knew how to navigate the funding process, directing Wonderstate to tax credits and a USDA grant. Next, they helped the Wonderstate team determine optimal placement for their solar panels. “If you’re actually building your own solar array, it’s very site-specific in terms of your exposure and where you can put it,” Semanchin explains.

By the time the summer of 2016 rolled around, Wonderstate’s solar system was fully powered up. While sustainable energy was the initial impetus for exploring solar power, Wonderstate quickly realized the economic benefits as well. The 30-kW solar array supplies 100% of the roastery’s power today. In 2022, Wonderstate has paid off its initial investment, which means the electricity powering its roastery is essentially free moving forward, according to Semanchin. The Wonderstate team tracks the amount of electricity supplied by its local grid that it uses to see how its solar panels offset that usage. “The initial intention was consistent with our values, and we sized up the investment. It made a ton of sense,” he says.

A significant amount of coffee’s environmental impact happens at the farm level, which means that a lot of the bur- den of adopting more sustainable practices falls to coffee farmers. Addition- ally, coffee farmers are the part of the supply chain most vulnerable to climate change. “Coffee as a crop is being very threatened, and the farmers are carrying a lot of that risk as the weather patterns change and yields are impacted,” says Semanchin.

In addition to investing in renewable energy at home, Wonderstate works with importing organization Cooperative Coffees to build direct relationships with farmers. Cooperative Coffees searches for ways to remunerate farmers who adopt sustainable practices, like carbon sequestration. For example, the Cool Farm Tool, a free tool for growers, measures green- house gas emissions, biodiversity management, and water usage. Wonderstate is involved in developing a system to pay farmers for positive environmental im- pacts as measured by this tool.

Solar power is being harnessed in the coffee industry in other ways. Italian technology company PuroSole developed a solar system for roasting coffee.

“We at PuroSole designed, built, and patented a small field of heliostats, which are simply motorized mirrors that all at the same time send the reflected sunlight towards the point where the container of the coffee being roasted is located,” says Daniele Tommei, founding member and technical chief of PuroSole. “The results have been so encouraging that today we are here to produce and sell high-quality coffee as well as the solar system to be able to roast it.” PuroSole’s system is de- signed for small roasting companies.

Other technology companies are taking a different approach to sustainable roasting. Bellwether Coffee, based in Berkeley, California, offers a fully auto- mated, all-electric roasting system.

“Coffee roasting accounts for 15% of the carbon footprint of coffee,” says Grayson Caldwell, senior sustainability manager at Bellwether. “From an environmental perspective, the Bellwether roaster significantly reduces the carbon emissions and VOCs associated with the roast cycle.” Bellwether’s customers include independent coffee shops, bakeries, restaurants, grocery chains, and direct-to-consumer wholesalers.

Berkely was the first US city to enact a natural gas ban, a move that means new buildings cannot incorporate natural gas hookups. Other cities and municipalities in the US followed with similar bans. As this trend continues, Caldwell expects that interest in alternative roasting methods, like electric roasting, will grow.

Italian coffee company illycaffè also takes sustainability to heart. The family- owned business developed an award to recognize sustainable coffee growers. It first granted an award – “Premio Ernesto Illy de qualidade sustentavel do cafè para espresso” – in 1991 and then expanded this framework internationally in 2016. Now, it bestows the Ernesto Illy International Coffee Award.

“This award is given to the best sustainable coffee among 27 of the best coffee producers participating from 9 of the most significant coffee-growing regions,” says David Brussa, total quality and sustainability director of illycaffè. “The 2021 ‘Best of the Best’ winner was Jumboor Estate in India where the coffee is grown within an agroforestry farming system, a demonstration of virtuous agriculture and high-quality coffee pro- duction that will be shared among our grower community.”

The company also laid out a roadmap to become carbon-free by 2033 and embraced a number of initiatives to reduce waste. For example, illycaffè prioritizes the use of compostable, recyclable, and eco-friendly materials. In 2020, the company launched a program in partnership with TerraCycle to collect and recycle its plastic and aluminum capsule products.

Going green and reshaping business practices to be more sustainable continues to gain traction in the coffee business, but work remains to be done through the entire supply chain. “The next 10 years will make the difference. As an industry, we need to share resources, efforts, and knowledge collectively to make the over- all coffee industry more sustainable and continue to compete for the taste of our coffee rather than for the title of ‘most sustainable’. Sustainability is not consumable; it’s about the way we produce,” says Brussa.