Brave New Leaf

5 Ways to Wake Up and Green Your Coffee

This is article 4 in a series. Read the other articles in the beverage series.

Worldwide, it’s the second most consumed beverage after water. Worldwide, it’s the second most traded commodity after oil. These two statistics alone should give you a sense for the enormous impact coffee has on our lives, and thus our environment.

Now that I've quit Diet Coke, I drink a cup every morning to avoid the caffeine headaches. And since I'm greening my beverages, I need to make sure my coffee is as green as it can be. Here are five ways I've found to green my coffee:

1. Home Brew
The best way to control the green-ness of your coffee is to home brew. Here you have more control over what coffee you're making, can easily use your own mug, and can minimize or recycle the waste that comes from it. It also reduces the carbon emissions you create while driving to the local Starbucks.

2. Learn eco-etiquette at Starbucks (or your local coffee shop).
Pressed for time every morning? Don't own a coffee pot? If you have to go to your local coffee shop, learn what they can do for you to support going green. For example:

• Did you know that you receive a $.10 discount on coffee at Starbucks for bringing your own mug? Talk about a latte factor - you could save $36 over the course of the year.
• Ask for fair trade. Fair trade coffee is more environmentally friendly (see below) and Starbucks is obligated to provide it for you if you ask.
• Get a green cup. Tully's now provides a fully compostable, biodegradable coffee cup. It's better if you bring your own mug, but this is not a bad alternative.

3. Buy local
Minimizing food miles is a good guideline whenever trying to green food or drink. Food miles are the distance the food traveled to reach you.

In practice, doing this for coffee is somewhere difficult since 99% of coffee is cultivated in South America, Asia, and Africa. Still, once the coffee is picked, it needs to go somewhere to be roasted and packaged. By supporting local roasters, you can minimize the food miles of your coffee.

Those that live in the Pacific Northwest can find locally roasted coffee brands at Locals Only.

4. Buy fair trade
Since going green, I've learned a great deal about Fair Trade Certification, and the standards a company has to meet in order to achieve this title. In addition to work and fair pay standards, Fair Trade companies must meet rigorous standards for environmentally sound agricultural practices. They don't have to go so far as to be organic, but they do need to practice sustainable agriculture.

The Songbird website can help you find hundreds of local places that sell coffee that meets this certification.

5. Waste not
As with all food and beverages, minimizing waste is important. Look for minimal and recyclable packaging on your coffee. Find a rocking mug you can use again and again.

If you home brew, don't use a paper filter. With most coffee pots, it's totally unnecessary. That gold filter that comes with your pot can go in the dishwasher, and should be enough to filter your coffee through.

If you compost, don't forget to compost your used coffee grounds. If you don't, you should be able to put them in your yard waste container for your recycling provider to compost. Check with your local recycling company.

Updated repeat after me: "No more plastic bottles, or #7 plastic, or things that leach BPA or aluminum..."

This is article 3 in a series. Read the other articles in the beverage series.

Ack! This is why going green can be so difficult sometimes. You make a simple trade-off to reduce your waste, and find out that you are potentially putting your health in jeopardy. Can't anything in life be simple and straightforward?

Yesterday, I recommended everybody switch their plastic bottles in for a regular-use water bottle. Little did I know the debate raging around the safety of such bottles. Here's what I've learned since then:

Rule #1: Don't use anything made out of #7 plastic.
#7 plastic is the official "other" category of the plastic family. By and large, #7 plastics are non-recyclable, which is one reason to stay away.

While many different types of plastic fall into this category, some can be dangerous to you.

Nalgene water bottles, some Tupperware, some baby bottles, the inner lining of soft drink cans, and other clear plastic containers are made with something called polycarbonate (PC) plastic. PC plastic has come under scrutiny lately for releasing a chemical called Bisphenol A or BPA.

BPA is a horomone, much like estrogen, that may possess significant health hazards when it leeches into our food and water. Recently it has been linked to breast cancer, obesity, neurotoxicity and schizophrenia. Yikes!

Because it's difficult to tell which items are made out of which material, it's safest to just avoid all #7 plastic. This means no Nalgene water bottles. I immediately ran over to my Tupperware to check it, but luckily mine is all made out of #5 plastic. :)

Here's a great article on health impacts of #7 plastic.

Rule #2: Look up the leeching studies for any water bottle you buy
Unfortunately, BPA isn't the only leeching thing you need to worry about. An aluminum water bottle could leech aluminum, which isn't healthy either. Other plastic chemicals leech as well. Go for a bottle that's as leech-less as you can find.

The big question: which water bottles are safest?
Some of my commenters expressed concerns over the Sigg bottles. Even though they are made out of aluminum, they are coated on the inside with a "water-based enamel" that they have not disclosed the ingredients for. Some believe this could mean the coating could be dangerous, leeching BPA.

I have not found any evidence of this, and in fact have found some studies to the contrary, showing that Sigg bottles leech no BPA.

If you want to be as safe as you can be, some people recommend the entirely stainless steel water bottles from Klean Kanteen.

As for me, if BPA leeches from the inside of soda pop cans, I'm about as innudated with it as I can be given my recent Diet Coke addiction. I think I'll stick with the risk of the Sigg bottle, given it's nicer design, durability, and shape.

Repeat after me: "No more plastic bottles"

This is article 2 in a series. Read the other articles in the beverage series.

It’s Environment 101: don’t buy plastic bottles.

Practically, it’s so difficult to do sometimes. I go to the gym and there’s something gross in the drinking fountain, so I buy a bottled water. I’m traveling in an airport and really thirsty, so I purchase a big bottled water to stay hydrated on the plane. I’m on the go in the summer, running a bunch of errands, and run into a Starbucks to grab some water so I don’t melt.

In case you haven’t heard the rhetoric, plastic bottles are bad. Some people feel like plastic bottles should be the new cigarettes: if you see somebody using one, you should guilt them into submission.

Even the bottled water manufacturers are getting such a bad rap they are inventing different bottle shapes that supposedly reduce packaging. Of course, they reduce the water contained inside too. By the way, this is called “greenwashing”. Definition: when a company pretends like something they are doing is environmentally friendly, markets themselves as such, but they are most definitely not.

But why are plastic bottles so bad? We can recycle them right?

Plastic is made from oil
I say this all of the time, but plastic is largely made from oil, a finite resource that is getting more expensive and more rare.

3 fl oz. of oil are required to make every plastic bottle. With 28 billion bottles manufactured in the US last year, we’re talking 645 million gallons of oil.

Plastic is difficult to recycle
Even though US consumers have taken to newspaper and aluminum recycling, plastic production continues to outpace plastic recycling at a pace of 5 to 1. Why is it so hard to recycle plastic?

For starters, those numbers on the bottoms of your plastic jugs represent different formulas of plastic. When you melt aluminum to recycle it into cans, all of the aluminum melts the same and can be mixed up in one big vat. When you melt plastic, unless it shares the same number, and thus the same formula, it just won’t stick together. So plastic needs to be sorted, either in homes (which is hard), or at recycling facilities (which is also hard).

Also, because plastic containers commonly contain dye and additives, they become less reusable than other materials we recycle. 

Bottled water is a HUGE scam
1.    It’s usually tap water. It is no safer than what your sink gives you.
2.    It’s way more expensive than out of the tap
3.    It takes five liters of water to make the one liter of bottled water.

Still, in 2004, more bottled water was consumed in the US than coffee and beer combined. 70 million bottles PER DAY.

I’m quitting Diet Coke right now. It’s been a rough couple of days: the cravings are pretty bad and I’m having to regularly dose with ibuprofen to ease my throbbing head. I need to make sure I don’t get dehydrated, so, I am going to invest in a good water bottle. A good water bottle can come with me to the gym, to the airport, and on the go so I never have to buy plastic again.

There’s a lot of active debate on which water bottles are the safest and greenest, but SIGG water bottles come highly recommended from several green sources. A percentage of their profits go to environmental organizations. They also make great bottles for kids too. I’m going to pick one up.

Sigg Traveler Classic Water Bottle (1.0-Liters)
from $19.99 at Amazon.com

I'm Quitting Diet Coke to Save the World

It's getting around time to green my food and beverages. I've done the research, and now I'm ready to make some changes. I'm going to start with beverages first, because it is a much more finite universe.

A quickie beverage audit reveals what I drink in a week:

• 28,000 Diet Cokes (you think I’m exaggerating but little do you know…)
• A few cups of coffee, brewed at home
• A few glasses of water from the fridge
• One plastic bottle of water, purchased at the gym
• Two cups of tea
• One beer
• One glass of red wine
• Two glasses of San Pellegrino

Yes, I know. Not the most healthy set of beverages in the world. Remarkably unhealthy, in fact, with all of the data coming out about the link between aspartame and metabolic syndrome. And yes, my blood is caramel color and carbonated.

It’s time to green my beverages. First stop: I’m quitting Diet Coke.

There, I said it. I’m going to stop drinking Diet Coke. I’ve drunk 4-6 per day for 10 years, and I’m putting an end to it. Not only should this increase my health, but it should help the environment as well. Why?

No more aluminum cans
In our waste audit, you saw how many aluminum Coke cans we generated in a week. We’ve gotten wonderful at recycling these, but aluminum is still incredibly energy-intensive to mine, produce, and recycle.

Plus, many people still don’t recycle them. In 1999, 44 billion cans and bottles from soft drinks were thrown into landfills. Given the Coca-Cola Co.'s 44 percent market share, that means that 19 billion cans and bottles with Coca-Cola Co.

Water Scarcity
On a global level, the Coca-Cola company is responsible for aggressive policies that are contributing to water scarcity.  Generally, that seems like a silly thing to worry about, since the product they are producing is 99% water, but many people do not know that it takes three times as much water to make soda products as is produced. That’s 6.24 liters of water to make your two-liter bottle of Diet Coke.  Do the math – it doesn’t make sense.

The Corn Crunch
Making high fructose corn syrup is the second largest use of corn in North America; feeding livestock is the largest. But corn prices are going up because more and more of it is being used to product ethanol. Now, the effectiveness of corn-as-fuel can certainly be debated, but drinking regular pop doesn’t help the issue any.

I’ll discuss how I’m going to green the rest of my beverages a bit later. I think I feel a caffeine headache coming on…