Can't live without coffee☕️? Here's the cost of a daily cup on the environment

Ever thought about the carbon cost of your daily cup of coffee? Here's how to reduce that carbon footprint 👟.

For many of us (including myself), coffee is a daily essential. Beyond the physical benefits of a daily cuppa to kick-start the day, there's also the secondary physiological benefit of indulging in that daily ritual to mark the start of one's work day.

As a working parent, I use the time making coffee (I use drop coffee when home) after dropping off my kids to think about work priorities and mentally tick off to-dos in the day.

The shift towards remote work from the Covid-19 pandemic has also shifted coffee consumption patterns towards takeaways and single serve products. The use of 'single serves' as we know is already contributing to the growing plastic waste management issue in our climate today.

The curse of single serves

That said, are single use products a boom or bane?

Firstly, 'single serve' products have revolutionalised convenience for consumers and improved hygiene standards.

The reality is in developing countries, single-use portions help families purchase portions of daily essentials out of pocket on an 'as needed' basis (vs. a forking out for a larger volume of a product at a single time). This helps households who get by on daily rated jobs.

Naturally other single-serve products impact the environment. One of my most visible image in the past 24 months has to be the takeaway coffee cup. Whether in a classic plastic bag & straw 'tapau' combo, or a coffee cup, takeaway culture has only accelerated into the future in the past 24 months.

As a reference, Singapore consumes ~ 15,000 metric tonnes of coffee a year. Divided by its population, this works out at around 2.6kg per capita.

A conversation about coffee takeaways

If people consume so much coffee, what are the most frequently used takeaway sources of coffee? |I did a straw poll and came up with a few:

1. Coffee capsule
2. Plastic bag (and straw)
3. Personal, reusable container
4. Drip coffee
5. Coffee on a pot/stove (instant, beans, filter)
6. Bottled coffee (glass or plastic)

Any thoughts on which consumes the most energy to make a cup?

If you're thinking of coffee capsules, you might be surprised. For capsule lovers, the market for this product has sky-rocketed. The coffee machine market was valued at USD 5.11 billion in 2020, and is expected to reach USD 6.36 billion over the next 5 years. So while coffee machines and single capsules may be the single biggest consumption trend, that may not necessarily be the biggest hit on our environment.

Arguably when considering the environmental impact of coffee drinking, its necessary to consider the end-to-end energy needed to make the cup of coffee. Consider the upstream amount of energy to grow, process and package the coffee beans, and the downstream energy that goes into brewing the drink.

Coffee capsules, while generating an excessive amount of downstream waste does optimise the 'upstream' amount of energy required to produce, package each single portion. Single shot capsules are now also going greener though admittedly, it still has some ways to go.

The biggest contributor to energy usage (pound for pound)? Well its actually filtered/ coffee on a pot. Reason being, cup for cup,

• Filter coffee uses more beans than a capsule to prepare a single cup (7g vs ~5.7g)
• Larger servings means more beans to be grown, harvested, processed and transported
• Add this across billions of cups of coffee drunk around the world and it quickly adds up on the huge amount of energy used

Another reason: The energy needed to make a single cup. Think about the barista brew on that huge coffee machine to make each individual cup of espresso, vs. a single flesh heat of a household coffee machine. When it comes to filter coffee, there's often inordinate amounts of energy to boil the kettle or to leave the pot on a heated stove through the day.

🌿 Tips to reduce your coffee footprint 🌿

So if that is the case, what can we do as a consumer?

We know about certified standards on sustainable coffee sources - here's some practical tips we can all consider day-to-day when making our caffeine choices :

1. If you are using a reusable container - Do it justice; Reuse it!
2. Glass containers consume significantly higher amounts of energy to produce vs. plastic containers. Iced coffee lovers, do think twice about ditching the glass. Reuse them.
3. Recycle responsibly - empty your waste contents before recycling. Also, a wet coffee cup could render the whole load in a recycling bin unrecyclable.
4. Go easy on the dairy - Milk for your coffee almost doubles your carbon emission per cup (0.55kg for a latte vs 0.3kg for black coffee). Latte and kopi-si lovers, go for plant-based milks, or go black for once.

The act of recycling does not naturally begin after you dispose of your cup into a recycling bin. There is a huge amount of work that goes into industrial recycling that makes the process sustainable.

At the end of the day, across the 3Rs of Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, the biggest shift we can make individually is the first 'R'. Reduce sustainably. Break the cycle of excessive consumerism and ditch one item you can reduce consistently and sustainably.

What's your preferred takeaway source you can ditch? I'll love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

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