"Sustainable coffee is produced on a farm with high biological diversity and low chemical inputs. It conserves resources, protects the environment, produces efficiently, competes commercially and enhances the quality of life for farmers and society as a whole."
-- Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, First Sustainable Coffee Congress overview paper
Categories
Sustainable coffee: Coffee growing: Retail coffee: All the rest:
Related links
Birds, Biodiversity, & Shade Coffee- Birds that use coffee plantations
- The Grind over Sun Coffee
- The Case of the Disappearing Warbler
- Bird-Friendly coffee slide show
- WWF: Coffee and habitat conversion
- Shade certification issues
- Why Birds Are Crazy for Shade Coffee
- Audubon Magazine shade coffee article
- "Bird-Friendly" certification standards
- "Bird-Friendly" farms
- Rainforest Alliance certification standards
- Rainforest Alliance certified farms
Trade and consumer
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C&C Clipmarks home
Retail and specialty roasters category archives
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July 3, 2009: Special on Bird-Friendly coffees
Golden Valley Farms Coffee Roasters is having a special on some of their Smithsonian Bird-Friendly certified coffees. You can get seven one-pot pouches of ground coffee -- El Salvador, two Perus (one decaf), Mexico, three Colombians (of different varietals) for...
April 21, 2009: $2 off Caribou Rainforest Alliance beans on Earth Day
Caribou Coffee sources over 50% of its beans from Rainforest Alliance certified farms, and they are included in at least eight of their offerings; their Guatemala El Socorro is 100% RA certified. On April 22, 2009, in honor of Earth...
March 19, 2009: Bird-Friendly coffee now available in Europe
I'm back from Nicaragua -- and yes, I did see Emerald Toucanets at two different shade coffee farms. I'll be writing about my trip soon. Meanwhile, news from the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center. Certified Bird-Friendly coffee is finally available in...
March 14, 2009: National Geographic Terra Firma coffee
National Geographic is introducing a line of coffees called "Terra Firma." Remarkably, none of them are certified organic or shade grown.
February 21, 2009: Birds&Beans now available
The Birds&Beans: The Good Coffee web site is now up and running. Since I posted about this initiative, which offers only Smithsonian Bird-Friendly certified coffee, there have been a few tweaks and changes. For a limited time, you can order...
February 17, 2009: Green Mountain to fund climate change projects
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters will award four grants of $200,000 each to organizations with ideas to combat climate change in four core areas: transportation-related emissions (including GMCR's product shipping), threats to coffee-growing communities (enormous, given that climate change is already...
February 5, 2009: Trader Joe's coffee
Trader Joe's offers many varieties of private label brands of coffee. For the most part, they are very secretive about their suppliers, and don't disclose specific origins of their coffee.
January 29, 2009: Birds&Beans: a new Bird-Friendly coffee initiative
A new initiative to featuring Smithsonian Bird-Friendly certified coffee is being launched next week in the New England and New York area. "Birds&Beans: the good coffee" will be sold by subscription, and promoted via "Voices for the Birds" talks by...
December 19, 2008: Coffee at Panera Bread
Panera Bread serves coffee that is roasted and sourced in a way that is far more transparent and responsible than any other non-specialty coffee chain I've encountered.
October 22, 2008: Two roasters, two new marketing approaches
Two of my favorite responsible roasters have come out with new tools to market their coffees. Intelligentsia has launched In Season, a web site emphasizing that coffee is a seasonal crop, and highlighting the coffees that are currently within 10...
July 7, 2008: Counter Culture Coffee's Direct Trade program
Counter Culture Coffee recently launched its Direct Trade program. It is a natural progression from their Source project, and is a robust example of similar models employed by other roasters, most notably Intelligentsia. Counter Culture is a pioneer, however, in...
May 20, 2008: Free coffee samples at Caribou
To celebrate winning the Roasters Choice Tasting Competition at the recent SCAA conference, Caribou Coffee is giving out free samples of the award-winning Roastmasters Reserve Ethiopia Yirgacheffe, along with its other Ethiopia, the lighter-roasted Roastmasters Reserve Sidamo, in stores May...
March 9, 2008: Allegro/Whole Foods shade coffee promotion
It was nice to be in a Whole Foods Market today and see some of their Allegro Coffee varieties in a display featuring birds and their "Caffeinate Your Conscience with Shade Grown Coffee" promotion, going on through early April. The...
December 31, 2007: Green Earth Coffee: A cautionary tale
[July 2008 update at bottom of post] I recently received an inquiry about Green Earth Coffee Company, which sells several varieties of Costa Rican coffee promoted as eco-friendly. This struck a reader as at odds with my post on how...
November 3, 2007: Roast Magazine's 2007 Roasters of the Year
The November/December issue of Roast Magazine includes their picks for roaster of the year. (You can check out my posts on previous winners here and here.) In the micro-roaster category (annual output less than 100,000 pounds) is Higher Ground Roasters....
August 3, 2007: Caffe Pronto goes Bird-Friendly
One of C&C's favorite roasters, Caffe Pronto in Maryland, has just received Bird-Friendly certification from the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center. Most people associate the SMBC certification with farms, but roasters may also participate. Obviously, they need to sell SMBC certified...
June 30, 2007: Counter Culture announces "Source"
One of the major criteria a roaster must meet to get favored nation status on the left sidebar as a source of sustainable coffee is transparency. C&C is all about educating consumers on how to recognize and appreciate sustainable coffee....
February 15, 2007: Green Mountain and Starbucks make top 100 list
The CRO (Corporate Responsibility Officer, formerly Business Ethics magazine) has just published its eighth annual 100 Best Corporate Citizens, considered the third most influential corporate ranking. Companies are rated on their performance in eight categories: shareholders, community, governance, diversity, employees,...
December 18, 2006: Coffee review: Audubon coffee
Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #13. Audubon Premium Shade Grown Coffees. A review in our conservation organization coffee series. The National Audubon Society promotes a small line of "habitat-friendly certified organic premium shade grown"...
December 11, 2006: Conservation organization coffees: Introduction
The way many consumers "get into" sustainable coffee is through special coffee clubs or promotions which are sponsored by conservation organizations. How good are these coffees? If they aren't substantially better than what people are used to drinking, they won't...
November 17, 2006: Interactive roaster map!
One of my main goals here at C&C is not only to provide background information so that consumers can choose coffee that does not harm biodiversity, but to do some of the heavy lifting myself. I've been as conscientious as...
November 15, 2006: Heads up, NC readers
Counter Culture Coffee, in Durham, NC, is having a reception and public talk on November 25, 2006 by El Salvadoran coffee grower Aida Batlle, she of the Finca Mauritania we reviewed here. She'll discuss her production methods, raising standards of...
October 28, 2006: Roast Magazine Roaster of the Year
Roast Magazine has just announced the winners of their 3rd annual Roaster of the Year Award. Macro Category Winner: Intelligentsia (Chicago). It's hard to say too many good things about Intelly's commitment to great coffee, from the farm to the...
August 18, 2006: Updated list of sustainable coffee sources
I'm revising the list of sustainable coffee providers once again. There are a lot of great roasters out there, and many carry sustainable coffees, but I don't intend to list them all. The intention is to provide links to places...
August 10, 2006: New Cafe Femenino origin
I've previously written about Cafe Femenino, sourced from a Peruvian project run entirely by women. These beans are available from a variety of roasters, although I've always purchased from Grounds for Change, which makes an additional donation to the project....
July 29, 2006: Sweetwater bonanza
When I wrote my post about East Timor, I said I'd review a couple coffees. I poked around, wanting to try a Timor from a roaster I hadn't tried yet, and came across Sweetwater Organic Coffee Company in Gainesville --...
July 26, 2006: Counter Culture Sanctuary Coffees
Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #6. Counter Culture's Sanctuary Shade Grown Coffees. Fred Houk, an avid birder and a former member of SCAA’s Environment (Sustainability) Committee, was one of the co-founders of Counter Culture...
July 20, 2006: A really eco-friendly roaster
Cameron's Coffee is a Port Perry, Ontario roaster that has really pulled out all the stops to be eco-friendly. Business practices: It gets its electricity from Bullfrog Power, which sources electricity exclusively from wind and low-impact water power producers. Fuel-efficient...
July 17, 2006: Northwest Shade Coffee Campaign update
In March 2006, I posted about the Northwest Shade Coffee Campaign, a Seattle Audubon Society project whose mission is "to protect habitat for wintering neo-tropical migratory birds in Latin America and the Caribbean by increasing consumer demand for shade-grown coffee,"...
July 13, 2006: Carbon neutral coffee companies
Trees for the Future is a global sustainable agroforestry organization. It works with businesses to offset their carbon emissions. Three of the four of their current Global Cooling Business partners are coffee companies: Cafe Imports, Dean's Beans, and Thanksgiving Coffee....
July 10, 2006: Coffee review: Intelligentsia Hacienda La Esmeralda Especial
Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #5. As promised in my previous backgrounder, a review of Hacienda la Esmeralda from Intelligentsia. The beans: This was quite a light roast, just at city, medium brown with...
July 6, 2006: Coffee review: Counter Culture Ethiopian Yirgacheffe Ambessa
Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #4. The coffee: Mark Overbay of Counter Culture Coffee was kind enough to include a bag of their Ethiopian Yirgacheffe Ambessa with my last order. Yirgacheffe is an area...
July 6, 2006: Roast Magazine Roaster of the Year 2005/06
The July/August 2006 issue of Roast Magazine announced it's winner of Roaster of the Year: Oren's Daily Roast. Members of the Roaster's Guild submitted coffees for tasting by their executive council, who picked their top 10. These were voted on...
June 19, 2006: Free coffee coolers at Caribou, June 21
Caribou Coffee will be giving away 12-oz. Caribou Coolers -- coffee; ice; caramel, chocolate or coffee syrup; whipped cream; and a "secret ingredient -- on June 21 from 2 to 3 PM at all its stores except for mall and...
June 8, 2006: Coffee review: Rocket Coffee Company Ethiopian Sidamo
Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #2. The main reason I launched the C&C tasting panel was because Larry of Rocket Coffee Roasters in Phoenix wrote to me and generously offered a sample for review....
June 6, 2006: Some new roasters added
I've added some more roasters to the sidebar. New providers of certified shade coffee have been flagged in the original post. New additions to the "Uncertified but righteous" list are below. We'll be reviewing coffees from all roasters in the...
June 5, 2006: Sources of certified green beans
Like to roast your own beans? There aren't many places that I've found where you can get certified shade grown green beans. Here are some online sources, noted as being certified either by Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center (SMBC) or Rainforest...
May 4, 2006: Caribou Coffee and Rainforest Alliance
Caribou Coffee, based in Minneapolis with stores in 15 states, announced last July that it was partnering with Rainforest Alliance (RA) to provide certification for much of their coffee. They expected 20% of their coffee to be certified by the...
March 29, 2006: Gloria Jean's certified shade coffees
Gloria Jean's Coffees, are retail stores most often found in malls in the U.S., but also internationally. Perhaps due to this type of location with its endemic teenagers, they tend to serve a lot of sweet and flavored coffees and...
March 26, 2006: Who evaluates non-certified shade coffee? Part 2
In Part 1 of "Who evaluates non-certified shade coffee?" I pointed out that roasters, importers, and retailers of non-certified shade coffee have assorted means of "verifying" that coffee is shade grown. These are usually described as farm visits by roasters,...
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