”We’re a small part of the (global) population,” she says, “but we’re a huge part of the problem.”
She’s not just talking about coffee roasters, but about everyone who lives in the U.S. - but it was curiosity about the impact of her business that got her going.
”I knew I couldn’t go into a business that would be creating harm to our planet and the people on it,” she says. “I’ve always been conscientious about what we’re doing, what we’re offering and what impact we’re having. Even though we’ve done the Fair Trade, the organic and all the sustainable coffee, and we recycle and do all those kinds of things, the coffee industry still has a huge carbon footprint.
”We have to bring the coffee here. It can’t grow in the United States, except for Hawaii, and we have to bring it here from halfway around the world; from Indonesia, South and Central America, and from Africa. So we’ve got all that fuel from bringing
The coffee travels on freighters, which is better than traveling on airplanes, she says, but when it reaches its destination, she says, “we burn fossil fuels to roast the coffee. And then, there’s all the electricity used to brew the coffee. What do we do about that?”
Lee-Thomas says that everybody in the coffee chain needs to take responsibility for their cup of brew. It was her green bean broker who showed her the way, she says.
”He’s the one who made me aware of this. He did this (carbon foot-printing) quite a few years ago and he took responsibility for the coffee beans from the country of origin to his customers. He’s getting the coffee and he’s considering what he’s responsible for and offsetting that. I’m taking responsibility for what lands at my door to the customers’ door and offsetting all that impact.”
Signature Coffee is now a certified carbon neutral business and she’s hoping the eventually the entire coffee industry will be able to say that.
”That’s my mission right now,” she says. “I gave a speech at the last coffee conference to encourage people to do this. There’s probably a couple of brokers and a handful of coffee roasters who are doing it so far. But if everybody in any line of business took this responsibility, then it would all be covered.”
Lee-Thomas took her crusade to a recent Garberville/Redway Rotary meeting and convinced her fellow Rotarians to calculate the club’s carbon footprint.
There are several carbon footprint questionnaires available on the web. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Nature Conservancy and BP all have on-line carbon footprint calculators for both households and businesses. All three are accessible from the Trees for the Future website, which is where Lee-Thomas started her footprint calculations.
”The first step in becoming carbon neutral,” she says, “is to reduce everything you can.”
Once you’ve achieved that, she says, you calculate what you can’t reduce and then figure out how to compensate for it.
”We got the mileage that everyone drives to Rotary meetings,” she says. “Then I added in the board members’ meeting once a month, the four who go to district-level meetings, our Rotary Exchange students’ international flights, the several of our Rotarians who go down to the clinics that fix cleft palates, my mileage to Mexico when I took some money down for a Rotary project. Now our club’s footprint will be offset by the planting of 2,500 trees.”
She says the total was actually less than they had allowed for, but she suggested they just double their donation to the tree planting and that’s what will happen.
”The trees sequester the carbon,” she says. “They take the carbon out of the atmosphere and convert it into oxygen.”
She says her first reaction when she found out about planting trees to absorb carbon was “why don’t we plant them here?”
The answer, she found, was that trees planted in the tropics sequester more carbon.
”Trees for the Future is the organization that we go through, and they work in degraded areas in Third World countries where the landscape has been stripped. They go in and pick the right species of tree to be planted. They plant trees that will grow deep roots real fast and that brings up all the soil and nutrients. They plant a mixture of fruit and nut trees and hardwoods and work to bring the area back to being a living forest. The forest gives the inhabitants a way of making a living.”
Lee-Thomas says that the global impact of the coffee industry is huge, much larger than most people probably realize. More than 10% of the world’s population is dependent on coffee for their livelihood and more than one billion people consume coffee every day.
Being a hands-on kind of person, Lee-Thomas has picked coffee beans and understands how hard it is.
”The coffee trees grow on steep hillsides and the pickers are carrying 50-pound baskets of coffee,” she says. “And they do that for four dollars a day if they’re lucky. Some places it’s only two dollars. And if you’re not buying Fair Trade coffee, they aren’t even getting that.”
Fair Trade Coffee or Fairly Traded Coffee sellers are people who will do an internal audit of their own to make sure that they are paying a fair price. Fair trade coffee is to ensure that producers are getting a fair price for their coffee.
”It’s for small farmers only,” she says, “and they have to belong to a democratically-run cooperative and the coffee is sold through the cooperative. So much of the price goes to the cooperative and so much goes to the farmer and maybe some goes to the mill or to education. Quality is very important to sustainability because if it’s not quality coffee no one is going to buy it. When we started putting quality in that equation, then the bigger, straighter roasters were more interested in sustainability.”
More of her customers want to know where their coffee comes from, she says, and that’s good. Occasionally, she will have a customer who doesn’t know that Sumatra, for instance, is a country.
”There’s still a lot of education to do,” she says. “Luckily, on the West Coast, I think we’re way more educated and a lot more sophisticated in our wining and dining. Coffee drinkers ought to know how many lives are impacted by coffee drinking. There are a lot of hands that touched that coffee. And people want to know more about the coffee they drink.”
Coffee consumers might want to give some attention to their individual carbon footprints and the impact of global climate change on their favorite beverage.
”Coffee growing regions around the world have already been impacted,” Lee-Thoms says, “because it doesn’t take much fluctuation in temperature to affect coffee yields. Mud slides in Guatemala have washed out villages and coffee plantations. Droughts in Africa are affecting the coffee plantations there.” If trends aren’t reversed, we may be looking at a global coffee shortage.
Consumers can do their part in making the world a carbon neutral place, she says.
”They can do their own carbon assessment,” she says. “Go to Trees for the Future, download a form for their individual house and calculate how many gallons of propane they use, if they’re on the grid, what kind of car they have, how many miles they drive. And Trees for the Future will calculate that into how many pounds of carbon are being poured into the atmosphere. And then they can try to figure out how to reduce it.
”There’s tons of things out there now, like the compact fluorescents and walking instead of driving. I believe in it. At least it’s doing something and I had to start somewhere. I always try to stay on the leading edge of what can be done. That’s why I serve on the Sustainability Committee for the Coffee Roasters of America. We try to stay on the leading edge of sustainable issues.”
For the future, she is looking at getting a bio-diesel delivery van and a more efficient roaster. And, she is going to Honduras in July to spend a day planting trees with the Trees for the Future folks.
”That’s my due diligence,” she says, “to make sure that they’re doing what they say they’re doing. I want to know that my money is going to a good cause.”
She’s also looking forward to more Rotary Clubs getting on the carbon neutral path.
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