Conscious Coffee Consumption

Earth Day is coming up again this month. April 22nd, the date each year we demonstrate support for environmental protection so today we wanted to talk about coffee and trees.

In previous months we’ve noted how coffee farming on Mount Elgon is causing a loss of trees on the mountain: 25% gone in the last 20 years. Sadly, this pattern is replicated in the other coffee-growing regions where we operate: Bwindi Forest in South Eastern Uganda, the slopes of Mount Kenya, and the coffee-growing highland forests of Ethiopia, all have seen devastating levels of forest and biodiversity loss in just these two decades.

On our planet 1/3 of the world’s land, four billion hectares, is covered in forest. Every year, this area decreases by an average of 13 million hectares (about twice the size of Ireland), and the coffee sector is estimated to be responsible for 100,000 hectares of this deforestation each year (three Dublin’s a year!).

In many cases, this deforestation is due to poverty as farmers seek more land to farm and poor environmental legislation or protection of habitats in many countries of the coffee belt but growth in demand by consumers in the West also plays a major part, and as we know global coffee consumption is due to triple by 2050.

We see this as a vicious cycle that must be broken. Through our work at Moyee, we are redesigning our business model to create positive impacts and achieve our environmental goals. We're committing to reducing our carbon footprint, and by undertaking various significant projects, we're striving to achieve our environmental ambitions all while providing living wages through our FairChain model.