According to the 2008 National Coffee Drinking Trends Summary, young adults (age 18-24) who drink coffee consume an average of 3.2 cups a day. I completely represent this statistic. I often drink multiple cups of coffee in the morning to get me going, and sometimes require a booster cup in the afternoon to keep up my momentum. Most of the college students and young professionals that I know have a similar routine. For most us, coffee is not a want, but a need: it makes us more alert, and it helps to be more focused and productive when we study or tackle a project.

I’ve tried to reduce my daily coffee intake, and even quit, because coffee stains my teeth an lingers on my breath far longer than I’d like it to. However, I always wave the white flag after 48 hours and, with twitching hands, exhume my coffee pot from the depths of my pantry so that I can get my caffeine fix. Addiction is rough.

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OK, I must admit, I’m not a coffee snob. If it’s thick as tar and wakes me up, it’s coffee. However, I know others who are. Especially here in San Francisco. I heard a lot of buzz about this “Blue Bottle” place, and although I haven’t yet tasted the elixir myself, I have a heartwarming story to tell. My sister-in-law told me about a recent experience she had at Blue Bottle at the Ferry Building. She asked the barista “Do you have fair trade coffee?” to which the barista reportedly replied in the negatory. So she and two others in line behind her left and went to the nearby national chain that happens to be the world’s largest buyer of fair trade coffee.

Image credit: Banky177 at Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

But I Want to Support the Indie Coffee Shop

Because I enjoy living in a diverse and entrepreneurial economy, I try to support independently owned businesses where possible. So it bothered me that this company which seems to be extremely particular about the beans they roast would not take the next logical step and choose fair trade coffee. So I asked them why. And here’s the heartwarming part. I got the following response from Blue Bottle’s Head Roaster:

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I need to be very careful in what I say about this topic because it would be easy to scare people beyond what is rational.  I could also also easily make enemies in the Wheat industry which is about the last thing I’d like to do.  I’m going to try to hit the right balance, but it is risky.

Mycotoxins

Most people don’t know that Mycotoxins are a very real issue in our food supply.  These are nasty, natural chemicals that are produced by certain fungi that infect crops. This is not something new.  In Medieval times there was a wide-spread neurological disorder called “Ergotism.” It was caused by mycotoxins in the rye crop produced by a disease called “ergot.” The poor people who lived off of rye, rather than wheat, were disproportionately effected.

Mycotoxins are still an issue today.  2009 has been a particularly bad year for a toxin called “vomitoxin” in wheat, barley and pasta wheat.  Its not a secret, but unless you read the farm press or trade news, you would never know.  Sometime do a Google News search for “vomitoxin.”  If there is rain when these grains are flowering, they can become infected with a fungus called Fusarium graminierum. The disease starts by reducing the farmer’s yields, but it can also produce a toxin in the remaining grain called deoxynivalenol (more commonly called DON toxin).  The trade term, “vomitoxin,” comes from the physical response that animals have if they are fed too much of this contaminated grain (which is obviously not pretty).

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]]> http://sustainablog.org/2009/09/20/an-agricultural-scientists-food-supply-worries-part-2-vomitoxin/feed/ http://ecopreneurist.com/2009/09/11/debcos-version-of-i-am-not-a-paper-cup/ http://ecopreneurist.com/2009/09/11/debcos-version-of-i-am-not-a-paper-cup/#comments Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:38:37 +0000 John Simonetta http://ecopreneurist.com/2009/09/11/debcos-version-of-i-am-not-a-paper-cup/ This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of Proforma Simonetta Freelance, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy (see proformagreen.com). John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.

Debco has recently released a version of the MoMA I Am Not A Paper Cup which they are calling the DA4299 COFFEE MUG and selling at an EQP of $9.73, which is nearly half the $18.08 cost of the MoMA model. Aside from the fact the DA4299 COFFEE MUG does not come in MoMA packaging and is not printed with the MoMA logo, there is nearly no difference in quality between these two models.

This post contains additional media. Click here to view the full post.

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]]> http://ecopreneurist.com/2009/09/11/debcos-version-of-i-am-not-a-paper-cup/feed/ http://redgreenandblue.org/2009/07/23/tradition-biofuel-and-famine-in-uganda/ http://redgreenandblue.org/2009/07/23/tradition-biofuel-and-famine-in-uganda/#comments Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:17:25 +0000 Kay Sexton http://redgreenandblue.org/2009/07/23/tradition-biofuel-and-famine-in-uganda/

Traditional farming is about to make a come-back across Uganda, according the country’s Agriculture Minister, Hope Mwesigye. Traditionally, Ugandan’s rich soil and fairly abundant rainfall allowed farmers to grow a range of staple foods, from plantains, cassava and sweet potatoes through to grains like millet, sorghum and corn as well as beans, and groundnuts.

Since the 1980s, the major cash crop in Uganda has been coffee, closely followed by tobacco, and then tea and cotton, although the ‘70s and ‘80s saw collapses in the infrastructure which meant that cotton and tea in particular lost their markets and farmers started to sell their staple crops for cash in regional and local markets instead.

Diversification was the message of the 1990s and many non-traditional exports were attempted, supported by the World Bank and the Ugandan Development Bank. So why now does the government want to return to traditional farming practices?

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]]> http://redgreenandblue.org/2009/07/23/tradition-biofuel-and-famine-in-uganda/feed/ http://ecoworldly.com/2009/07/20/global-wheat-crop-threatened-by-rust-fungus-african-seeds-may-offer-hope/ http://ecoworldly.com/2009/07/20/global-wheat-crop-threatened-by-rust-fungus-african-seeds-may-offer-hope/#comments Mon, 20 Jul 2009 18:45:40 +0000 Michael Ricciardi http://ecoworldly.com/2009/07/20/global-wheat-crop-threatened-by-rust-fungus-african-seeds-may-offer-hope/

You may not have heard of Ug99 yet, but, if its rapid spread continues unchecked, chances are you will not only be hearing about it, but you’ll be paying for it too. That’s because this fast-spreading strain of the fungus that causes stem rust–a seemingly unstoppable plant disease–and is now spreading around the globe and threatening to devastate the world’s wheat harvest.

One hopeful remedy may in fact lay in certain native, durum wheat species (”landraces”) found only in certain African nations–in particular, Ethiopia–which are believed to possess “slow rusting” genes. These native durum wheats are stronger (durum is Latin for “hard”) than7  other strains and originally evolved under much different environmental conditions than European and Western Hemisphere varieties. These durum landraces have most likely evolved slight gene variations as a result. These variations in gene sequences (and/or their expression in the wild), it is believed, can confer survival advantages to the plants when transplanted in a different locale.

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You know about bringing your own mug, but it’s just so…clumsy. And it’s not the right size for the machines your barista uses, so they have to use a different cup when making it, defeating the purpose of you bringing a mug.

Yes, their cups are made from recycled paper, but they’re coated to make them waterproof, heat resistant, etc. Which means they aren’t getting recycled a second time. Compostable? Biodegradable? Possibly, but still, some materials had to be used to make that single use cup. Often more than twice the weight of the resulting cup. And for many, unless you have a professional grade facility at home, composting or biodegrading isn’t going to happen any time soon.

What to do? KeepCup has what may be just the thing:

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Green Mountain Coffee Roasters is getting a little greener.

The Waterbury, Vt., coffee maker is adding 530 solar panels to the roof of its distribution center. When complete it will be the largest solar installation in Vermont, the company said.

The 100 kilowatt system will only provide a small percentage of the power the coffee company needs, but the real value of the system is demonstrating that solar can work for business in the Northeast, the company said.

“Renewable energy must be a part of our overall energy strategy,” Paul Comey, Vice President of Environmental Affairs for Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc., said in a statement.  “We
want to show our state and federal governments that solar energy works, and that we need
a policy that provides a broad-reaching structure for renewable energy.”

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Engaging customers to become activists.  Don’t think that’s in the McDonald’s “Premium Roast” marketing plan.  But Peace Coffee doesn’t play by anybody’s business rulebook. As a successful, Minneapolis-based coffee company with an ecopreneurial zest for leaving this world a better place, Peace Coffee uses their java beans to do more than brew coffee.

Their coffee serves as a change agent, positively changing and greening the lives of everyone involved in the process.  From the farmer in Guatemala now supporting his family thanks to a fair living wage to me direct to me, drinking my morning cup on my Wisconsin farm, this innovative business changes people through their purchases ever since they started as a fledgling brainchild of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) in 1995.

“We’re not out to be the biggest coffee company in the universe,” explains Melanee Meegan, marketing manager at Peace Coffee.  “When people choose our coffees, their purchases go directly toward improving the quality of life for farmers across the globe.”

Here are three innovative approaches Peace Coffee uses to engage and inspire their customers:

1.  Keep Local Priorities
Peace Coffee doesn’t want to sell me coffee.  Trust me, I asked. 

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Am not.

But I dare say I might become one.

I do enjoy a good cup of coffee, but caffeine sometimes makes me edgy.  Though I have managed to mostly avoid the lure of Starbucks, I have been known to indulge in a white chocolate mocha at Second Cup, or a French Vanilla at Tim Horton’s… and don’t get me started about Iced Cappucino in the summer!!

Then I read 5 Ways to Green Your Coffee and I got the itch.

So I bought myself a french press and some fresh-ground, organic, Fair Trade coffee.  And I just had to share a little about the company behind my coffee.

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Tired of being tired?  It tends to go with the season.  Everyone is still catching up from the holidays and getting ready for spring.  With work, school and social lives who has time for sleep?

With a little help, you can still look your best even if you are running on less than a full night.

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Another wave of caterpillars is moving through crop fields in Liberia eating their way through plantains, bananas, coffee and cocoa.

The current wave is a different species than the first. Experts say the second caterpillar is black and white, while the one responsible for the damage in January is black and yellow (Achaea Catocaloides). The first damaging caterpillar has moved into the Ivory Coast and is eating crops there. Ivory Coast is the top cocoa producer in the world.

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I am a stay-at-home mom of three.  I wake up at 4:45 a.m. every morning to help my husband get ready for work.

I drink a lot of coffee.

I’m not alone.  More than half of Americans are coffee drinkers, and many of them procure that morning cup of coffee outside their home.

In 2007, Starbucks alone used 1.9 billion disposable paper cups. That’s a lot of non-recyclable paper headed for the landfill, not to mention the water, trees, and energy used in production!

Here’s some tips to shrink your coffee footprint:

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Crazy Rumors vegan-friendly lip balms have come out with a new line to compliment their coffee and tea flavors.  A La Mode Lip Balms combine the most

delicious ice cream flavors with nature’s most moisturizing ingredients for a totally sweet experience.

Available in six luscious flavors, like Banana Split and Mint Chocolate, these fun little balms will keep lips moisturized and are good for you and the environment.  Made with organic Shea Butter and Jojoba Oil for maximum softness (without the ”greasies”) and vitamin enriched.  A hint of natural Stevia makes them super yummy!

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This morning I stopped at Starbucks for a treat - a soy gingerbread latte.  As I walked through the door berating myself for not bringing my travel mug, I noticed again all of the disposable cups and associated waste we now accept as part of our morning coffee ritual. 

Over 50% of adult Americans, more than 150 million people, consume coffee daily.  That’s a lot of joe, and a huge opportunity to caffeinate more sustainably.  Here are a few tips to green your morning coffee.

1. Brew Your Coffee at Home

Or, in the words of Bon Appetit, become your own barista.  In addition to reducing landfill waste, you’ll save money and have more control over the beans you brew, not to mention any sweetener or milk you add.  I’m currently in love with coffee made with a French press, and ask for a medium grind when I buy beans at my local specialty roaster.

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From subqns at Flickr under a Creative Commons License

As the mercury drops this winter season, the Grande Latte is in vogue again - but will set you back almost $4.  Here are 5 tips for how to have your cup o’ Joe without breaking the bank.

While I sat sipping my Grande Latte on a cold December day, I was taken aback by how much lighter my wallet felt as a result.  In between sips I managed to calculate that at the rate of 20 sips per cup, each sip  was costing me $0.20!  The realization that I could just as easily down a gallon of crude oil instead and still have some left over for a biscotti, made me vow to do whatever it took to ween myself from my addiction - here’s my story:

1. Bring your own mug

At first I went easy, and brought my own travel mug to the store.  At Starbucks this will save you a paltry $0.10 a visit, but I figured it was better than nothing.  Besides, I found my spiffy Starbucks Mug made me feel ultra cool since I was saving trees by not using paper cups.  I also discovered that I wasn’t re-heating my coffee in the microwave, an extra boon in my book.

2. Skip the milk

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The images are super cool and only organic cotton is used.  The shirts and onesies are packaged in unbleached coffee bags, which are easily then reused at the coop for organic coffee.

The bag lists the ingredients, “one unbleached organic cotton t-shirt roasted with love, laughter and comfort”.  Thus, Baby Blend Tees are T-Shirts for the Daily Grind!

My fave shirt is the Beach Cruiser; I’d wear it if it came in my size!  Of course, the tee or onesie is made from 100% organic cotton and printed with water based inks. Why organic?

We, at Baby Blend Tees, buy organic fruits and vegetables and shop regularly at all of the environmentally friendly stores around, yet it is very difficult to find hip, fun clothes that are made with organic cotton for our children.   We decided to look into printing our designs on organic cotton and found it to be a feasible idea - so along came Baby Blend Natural Tees.

Conventional cotton farming makes up less than 3% of the agricultural farmlands in the world, but it accounts for 25% of the insectcide [sic] and pesticide use.

Like many of the eco-friendly companies we feature on Eco Child’s Play, Baby Blend Tees was started by a mom and is socially responsible. The company is a member of 1% for the Planet.

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Ecopreneurist.com asked me to post a few more ideas on what an Ecopreneurist might give for the holidays.

I wanted to approach the idea from two points. First, I am in the promotional items business. For our industry the main purpose of gift giving is to say thank you to the clients you have done business with in the past year, and to keep your name in front of those clients so that they do business with you next year.

Second, as an Econpreneurist gift giving gives my business a chance to show off our green credentials but also - maybe - influence our clients, not all of whom are green, about becoming more green in their own businesses.

In this article I want to point out two everyday items your clients likely already use that are now being produced with eco-friendly materials and that would make great end of the year client gifts.

Day-Timer® Eco Zippered Portable Planner - Did you know that Day-Timer now makes an eco version of their most popular portable planner? The Day-Timer® Eco Zippered Portable Planner from Leed’s is an example of a very useful, very popular and well regarded brand that is now available in a new green formula.

The rich bonded leather cover is made from recycled leather fibers and natural latex and includes nickel-free rings and zipper pulls. Recycled paper used in the planner is certified by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative. Other than that it is a standard Day-Timer® featuring two-page-per week format, with each day’s space including areas for to do list, appointments, diary, monthly tabbed calendar/dividers, loose-leaf address and phone directory, monthly planning pages, set of reference sheets, etc.

The usefulness of the Day-Timer® Eco Zippered Portable Planner makes it a great gift because people will use it and hang on to it, plus in 2009 you can send your client a refill of the inside planner pages, giving you both an opportunity to touch your client again and promote a core green idea of reuse. Day-Timer® Eco Zippered Portable Planner runs about $39 including your organization or company logo.

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One of the main limits to the acceptance of biodiesel as an alternative fuel is its price premium above regular diesel. To bring the price of biodiesel down, the industry uses as much waste material from other industries as possible to make it — such as used fryer oil and animal fats from poultry processing.

In holding with the idea of cheap biodiesel feedstocks, a team of researchers in the Chemical and Materials Engineering Department at the University of Nevada figured that maybe spent coffee grounds would fit the bill too.

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According to the EPA, “The wastewater produced from the wet-processing of coffee places a heavy burden on the local ecosystems. Currently, there are few environmentally sound measures that monitor the discharge of this effluent. It is often discarded in a manner that disrupts both streams and the local water supplies.”

What’s the solution? A team of students at Appalachian State University, located in Boone, North Carolina, think they might have the answer. You might call it (as the EPA has) “fair-trade ethanol.”

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