By Samantha Veide As members of the coffee industry we have an opportunity—and a responsibility—to consider our impact on local communities and workplaces, as well as the communities from which we source coffee. Tracy Ging, deputy executive director of the SCAA, asks a key question, “We’ve spent a lot of valuable time talking about how …
By Chad Trewick As a specialty coffee industry we have a hot cup problem, a great big cup problem. Many estimates cite as much as 90 percent of our customers leave our shops with cup in hand to be disposed at a final destination. As a result, there is much urgency to do right by …
By Scott Conary “I don’t really like coffee…” And with these words, you are stopped short. All of your well-constructed arguments and delightfully thought out taste descriptions forced back in a choking cough. Nuanced aroma profiles are useless. They can’t help you now. What are you left with? How do you connect with this person, …
During your time at The Event make sure to take advantage of all the educational lectures and presentations that will help you develop as a coffee professional. All presentations are given by respected members of the specialty coffee community and are geared toward promoting development within the trade. This year, SCAA has implemented two Special …
By Emma Sage, Coffee Science Manager, SCAA A new study, published in the Journal of Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, has investigated the specific environmental impact of coffee waste on river water in the Jimma Zone of Ethiopia. This research was undertaken by collaborators from Ethiopian, US and Belgium Universities, as well as the local Jimma …
By Sarah Beaubien, with contributions by Al Liu, Mark Stell and Janice Nadworny Historically, coffee has been a crop grown to satisfy the demand of the developed world at the cost of a lower quality of life for producing communities. We can look at this situation through one of two lenses: Coffee is a major …
by Andrew Sargent, Michael Opitz, and Jan von Enden Nearly a decade after the coffee crisis of 2000/2001 and the subsequent introduction of several industry efforts to address its causes, consequences, and related issues, poverty and environmental degradation continue to be widespread among the 20 million smallholders for whom coffee farming is an important livelihood strategy. …
By Shauna Alexander Mohr In the mid-1990s, before most industries were tackling sustainability, specialty coffee companies came together with NGOs and research institutions to address issues such as shade-grown coffee, organics and Fair Trade. 1996 marked the First Sustainable Coffee Congress at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center. Four years later, Paul Hawken, in his keynote …
By SCAA’s Sustainability Council The Sustainability Council created the Sustainability Award in 2003 to promote, encourage and honor the efforts of those serving as role models in fields of sustainability. Each year, the council read about the depth and breadth of the sustainable work being done in all areas across the industry and chooses a …
By Tracy Ging Sustainability has been part of the discourse in the specialty coffee industry almost from the beginning and certainly for a better part of the past two decades. Early on, with vision and leadership bordering on radical, the industry made sustainability part of its mission. The SCAA also encouraged total quality, inclusive of …