Coffee news and miscellany

Coffee awards and competitions / Coffee news and miscellany

SCAA Sustainability Awards

The Specialty Coffee Association of the Americas (SCAA) presented its annual awards last night. One is the Sustainability Award, which honors individuals, businesses or organizations in the coffee industry that have created innovative projects to expand and promote sustainability.

And the winners are…

Essent Energy Trading and Solidaridad (The Netherlands) — for their partnership to use coffee husks (compressed into pellets) as biofuel. I wrote about this initiative late last year. At the time I wondered about the energy efficiency of shipping the pellets from Brazil to the Netherlands, where the biofuel is used. At the awards ceremony, it was explained how innovate this idea was to begin with, so the best source for this Dutch company (which originated the idea) was large producers in Brazil. It has been so successful that they did, in fact, state that in the future they hope to be using coffee husk biofuel to produce electricity in Brazil and other places in Latin America.

Another clarification: in the previous post I surmised that by “coffee husk” they meant just the parchment. From the short infomerical shown and the acceptance comments, it appears they mean the whole coffee skin and pulp. They mentioned how piles of coffee residue produces high pH leachate that can contaminate water and soil, and that the rotting piles produce methane, a greenhouse gas. Those facts, in addition to the fact that coffee pulp is not an animal feedstock or human feed source, makes it a really “green” biofuel with a lot of potential. Congrats to Essent and Solidaridad.

Alianza para la Sostenibilidad (APS) / Sogimex SA / Ecom Agroindustrial Corp Ltd. (Honduras) — for their efforts to increase sustainability efforts among specialty coffee producers in Honduras. The goals was to achieve overall sustainability throughout the coffee chain in Honduras, obtain critical certifications, and offer technical assistance to impact producers in the region. It’s been a huge success.

Honorable mentions went to Finca Selva Negra in Nicaragua for their waste water program, and Brazil’s Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza for their overall focus on sustainability.

Past winners:

2007 — Poabs Organic/Biodynamic Estates, India; Selva Negra Coffee Estate, Nicaragua; International Paper Company and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters; SOPPEXCCA, Jinotega, Nicaragua.

2006 — Sustainable Harvest Coffee Importers; Timothy’s World Coffee & Embera-Chami Coffee Community.

2005 — Las Nubes Coffee; Portland Roasting Company; Starbucks.

2004 — Thanksgiving Coffee Company; Dean’s Beans; ForesTrade;
PPKGO.

Coffee news and miscellany

The Specialty Coffee Association of America annual conference

The SCAA‘s 20th Annual Conference & Exhibition takes place in Minneapolis on May 2-5, and I will be attending along with Coffee & Conservation tasting panel member (also my dashing partner) Kingfisher. I will miss the Sustainability Symposium but will be attending lectures on sustainability and agroecology issues. It will be very interesting for me, as an ecologist, to see how these topics are handled and received by those in the coffee industry. There will also be several receptions where various sustainability awards are handed out, as well as the opportunity to hit the exhibit hall.

The SCAA is making this a “green” conference. They report,

The association’s carbon neutrality program will help offset emissions related to conference travel, lodging and energy consumption. Conference attendees will pay a small tariff [$7 person] to participate in the program, and funds collected from registrants—included in the conference fee—will be donated to the sustainable agroforestry non-profit organization, Trees for the Future, for the purchasing and planting of new trees. SCAA and specialty coffee importer, Sustainable Harvest representatives will provide oversight on funding the project.

There are many other green initiatives at the conference site, including elimination of paper hand-out; locally grown, in-season and organic food (with waste sent to a hog farm for use as animal feed and non-perishable, unopened food products donated to a local homeless shelter; and lots of recycling.

Stay tuned: I have a full schedule, but will try to keep up with posting on sustainability issues from the SCAA annual meeting!

Coffee news and miscellany

What does a great cup of coffee cost?

The biggest obstacle, in my experience, in getting people to switch from crappy grocery store coffee to sustainable coffee is price. Even people who profess to be bird lovers, concerned with the environment, and aware of the issues surrounding sun and technified coffee frequently default to price. This, it seems, is the American way.

Is really great coffee really that expensive?
I recently decided to splurge on some expensive coffee just for myself (while many of the Coffee & Conservation tasting panel is on spring break). I ordered a half-pound bag of the #2 coffee in the 2007 Bolivian Cup of Excellence competition, Juana Mamami Huanca’s San Ignacio farm, from Terroir Coffee Company. It was $34.95. That is high-dollar coffee. But based on two tablespoons of coffee per six-ounce cup, it still works out to less than $3 for a cup of fantastic coffee.

Most of the specialty coffee that is reviewed here costs in the range of $9.95 to $14.95 for a 12-ounce bag. That works out to $0.32 to $0.48 a cup. A pound of coffee from Caribou or Starbucks runs about $13 a pound, or $0.32 a cup. This is at least six times cheaper than a couple of shots of decent scotch or a glass of wine from a $15 bottle, not to mention less than the cost of a cup of (unsustainable) coffee at McDonald’s or Dunkin Donuts.

It might be a little less convenient to make coffee at home, but it’s obviously economical. In fact, I think this little exercise demonstrates that the excuse that specialty coffee is too expensive is a bit far-fetched. Do the math: Folgers is about $0.25 a cup, or you can enjoy this sweet, fantastic, organic shade-grown coffee for $0.55 a cup. All things considered, drinking the grocery store coffee just doesn’t add up.

Photo by Scott Feldstein; thanks for publishing under a Creative Commons license.

Coffee news and miscellany

Five great charitable donations related to sustainable coffee

Looking for a holiday gift idea related to sustainable coffee? Here are my five top picks of where to direct your charitable giving. These organizations either directly help coffee farmers or their communities, or support bird research in coffee growing areas. Happy holidays.

  1. Coffee Kids — International non-profit organization established to improve the quality of life for children and families who live in coffee-growing communities. Now operating under a larger foundation.
  2. Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center — Establishing criteria and certifying Bird-Friendly coffee is not the only function of the SMBC. They have many other very important and worthwhile research projects. The donation form directs funds to the parent organization, Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute.
  3. MoSI — Sponsor a bird banding station in the tropics. The Institute of Bird Populations (IBP) coordinates a series of bird research stations across the American tropics, many of which are on or near coffee farms. They provide absolutely vital information on how birds use these habitats in areas where this kind of research is still uncommon and underfunded. MoSi comes from the Spanish “Monitoreo de Sobrevivencia Invernal” or Monitoring Overwintering Survival. You can support the research either by joining IBP at various membership levels, or adopt an entire station for only $300.
  4. TechnoServe — This organization helps people in developing countries launch and build businesses that create income, opportunity, and economic growth. They have an entire agriculture sector that has done solid work specifically on coffee projects, often working with farmers and co-ops, in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and other countries.

Coffee news and miscellany

"Fortified" coffee: flim-flam alert

Spava Coffee [which went out of business after this post was published] is organic coffee “fortified” with natural ingredients to “enhance wellness.”  There are currently five varieties, such as “Calm” and “Clarity.” It’s amazing to me the number of news sites and blogs (with the exception of TheShot) that have reported on this, regurgitating press releases and not critically assessing this product. Let’s take a look.

The supplemental ingredients are added to coffee by first being powdered and added to directly to ground coffee, or dissolved in water or propylene glycol and then sprayed on whole beans, according to the patent application.

The nutrition information on the packages indicates that the quantity of the supplements in the coffee are very small, a practice known as “angel dusting.” The labels specify these amounts are as packaged. In other words, before the coffee is prepared. Even if you received the full 20 mg of ginkgo per serving in the “Clarity” coffee, for example, this is far below the dose of greater than 120 mg (used daily for extended periods) that two studies suggested may be effective (although not for mental clarity in healthy adults).

“Fortifying” coffee in this way also assumes that the ingredients are delivered in the form that preserves the potency and properties of the biologically-active compounds (which may not be ground-up powder), that chemical properties of the ingredients remain stable through the coffee brewing process, and that these compounds are not altered by the potent chemical properties of coffee and caffeine itself.

Finally, you have to believe that these supplements actually “enhance wellness.” The health benefits of most of them have little peer-reviewed science behind them. Vitamin B6 has not been proven to help depression as suggested by Spava for their “Calm” coffee, and the 150 micrograms per serving is 9 times less than the 1.3 milligrams or more recommended dietary allowance. Echinacea, an ingredient in the “Immunity” coffee, is unproven in helping bolster the immune system. The other ingredient, Siberian ginseng, is derived from the plant Eleutherococcus senticosus, which is a cheap alternative to Panax ginsengs. It contains none of the active compounds in Panax species that have been scientifically studied.

And so on. Spava Coffee is a feel-good product not from a literal perspective, but a psychological perspective.

Perhaps this is a benign, clever marketing tool, although Spava’s parent company Voyava Republic has received criticism for its plan to improve the nutrition of Mexican children by giving them fortified coffee. The company and the local coffee co-operative, La Selva, believe they can deliver adequate doses of folic acid and iron via coffee, which they say the kids drink anyway. As discussed above, this is dubious to me. If the company wants to help, why not just do the obvious and provide standardized, accepted nutritional supplements? Presumably because under the current deal, Voyava profited by selling La Selva its technology and equipment, and La Selva got a deal where 10% of Voyava’s fortified coffee must be from Chiapas. I also have to wonder if Mexican children typically suffer from folic acid deficiency, given that some of the best sources of folic acid are common foods in tropical regions:  beans, eggs, and citrus fruits in particular.

Update: In a recent announcement, Spava revealed the amount of folic acid in their coffee will be 80 micrograms. This is a third of the RDA, and 20 micrograms less than the amount used in fortified flour. Even the amount in flour has been criticized as being far too little to help prevent birth defects, the reason for flour supplementation. Read more in this New York Times piece.

Overall, the concept of fortified coffee just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Coffee news and miscellany

Coffee husks as biofuel

Dutch energy company Essent is the first company in the world to introduce the use of coffee husks as biofuel. The source will be Brazil, and the husks will be used to produce electricity in some of Essent’s power stations — in the Netherlands.

The husks* of this year’s harvest (estimated at 5000 tons) will be compressed into pellets and used at an Essent power station in the southern part of the Netherlands. If this works out well, another 20,000 tons will be used. Brazil could potentially produce upwards of 150,000 tons of coffee husk pellets for use annually.

On the surface, this is an appealing use of a by-product of coffee processing, but I see a few problems.

According to Essent, the use of coffee husks as biofuel could result in a CO2 reduction of at least 90 per cent. That seems remarkable. How much (carbon-emitting) energy does it take to produce the pellets?  Or more critically, how much energy and emissions are used to ship that many tons of coffee pellets from Brazil to the Netherlands?

Essent is committed to using as much biomass as possible for the production of energy.One of the company’s conditions for biomass selection is that the production of the biomass must not have any negative consequences for the food and animal feed chains, biodiversity, or economy of the countries from which the biomass comes. As we have seen in our previous post, coffee production in Brazil does indeed have significant negative impacts on the biodiversity of the country.

All coffee processing by-products are not entirely waste. Coffee pulp makes up 25% or so of the entire coffee cherry. It contains caffeine and other compounds and thus can be a bit tricky to re-use. However, it is often composted and used as mulch or organic fertilizer. Dehydrated, pulp can also be used as livestock or fish feed. Coffee hulls, on the other hand, make up less of the cherry (15%) and are already utilized in other ways. Compressed, they have been used to make logs that can be burned, bricks
used as building material, or pellets used in animal feed.

Finding further uses for coffee processing by-products close to production areas is an excellent goal. And it would seem that using coffee husks as biofuel would make a hell of a lot more sense if it was done in Brazil (or domestically in any coffee-producing nation) rather than transporting tons of them halfway around the world.

*Presumably what is meant by “husks” is the coffee parchment. The by-products produced when coffee cherries are processed are the skin and pulp, and the thin parchment covering the two beans (the parchment has a mucilaginous coating itself). The parchment is often referred to as the “hull,” is high in cellulose, and is therefore combustible.

Coffee news and miscellany

Guatemalan green power project

There was an interesting article in the new issue of Fresh Cup Magazine [no longer available on the web site], Green Power to the People — Alternative energy brings greater independence to coffee growers. It focuses on the 40-family cooperative, the Union of Independent Workers of Alianza Property (STIAP), in Nueva Alianza, located south of Huehuetenango, well west of Lake Atitlan, and more or less in the coffee growing region known as “San Marcos.” In addition to coffee, the co-op grows macadamia nuts. Locally available waste oil and unsellable nuts are used to fuel a biodiesel reactor that helps provide electricity to this remote town. The biodiesel project has been made possible through funding and support by the University of San Carlos, Barefoot Coffee Roasters, Sweetwater Organic Coffee, and Matthew Rudolf, a recent college graduate from North Carolina. What a great partnership!

In addition to the article, you can read more about Comunidad Nueva Alianza at their web site, this blog post, and this Flickr photo set.

Coffee news and miscellany / Fair and Direct Trade / Retail and specialty roasters

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. All the knowledge in the world won’t help a coffee buyer if the roaster doesn’t provide enough information on where they get their beans. If a roaster provides country, region, and co-op or farm it goes a long way in helping consumers understand whether the coffee was grown in a sustainable manner. When a roaster has a close relationship with a farmer, they can provide even more data on exactly how the coffee was grown.

Counter Culture Coffee has always been excellent about giving customers lots of information on each of their selections on their web site. They recently announced an expansion and refinement of this commitment, which they are calling “Source.” Each bag of Source coffee includes the farm or co-op’s real name; authentic production details and tasting notes; a precise roast date; a regional map; and vibrant, original artwork inspired by the community that produced it. Indeed, the whole point, noted in their press release, is to

“…achieve a deeper level of consumer education through real, transparent information about each coffee’s distinct seasonality, tasting notes, geographic and cultural origins, and artisan cultivation methods.”

This program goes well beyond marketing and consumer education. Like Intelligentsia’s Direct Trade, and similar “unbranded” programs by other roasters, Source is about working closely with farmers to improve coffee quality and the quality of life for farmers. Fair Trade is such a darling of the green set, but it’s certification is restricted to cooperatives, and does little to address quality. Programs like Source or Direct Trade can do even more than Fair Trade, including paying higher than Fair Trade prices straight to farmers for their crops. For example, Counter Culture paid a 153% premium to the Guarapamba farmers for their La Golondrina Microlot, one of the Source coffees.

Not all roasters can follow this model. Economies of scale make it difficult for very large roasters; they are profit-driven and treat coffee as a commodity rather than a specialty food crop. You simply will not find specialty-grade coffee and close relationships with farmers from corporate coffee roasters. Very small roasters often don’t have the resources to develop working partnerships with individual farms or co-ops (which is not to say many are not sources for sustainable coffees).

Hats off to all roasters who strive to follow this philosophy. Working to transform coffee from an anonymous caffeinated beverage to an identifiable crop, nurtured by real farmers on land that sustains people and biodiversity, is a model we’d be wise to adopt for all of our food. Only then can we choose to purchase sustainable products, increasing demand, and in turn take steps to help to transform the world.

Coffee and the environment / Coffee awards and competitions / Coffee news and miscellany

Recent sustainability awards

Rainforest Alliance Cupping for Quality. This event was started in 2004 as a competition for Rainforest Alliance certified coffees. The most recent cuppings took place last December and in April, with over 100 samples submitted. There are many top-flight sustainable coffees available; I was disappointed to see that most of these coffees scored under 90 points (specialty coffee = 80 or greater).

Here are the top farms:

  1. La Esmeralda, Panama, 90.04. Arguably, the most famous and pricey specialty coffee in the world.  We offered background here and a review here. It also won first place in the SCAA 2007 Roasters Guild Cupping Pavilion Competition earlier this month (for the third year in a row), and the Best of Panama, once again, last month. We have a jar on my desk to save up to try this one again. It just sold at auction for $130/pound, $80 more per pound than last year, it is just not worth it.  It was very distinctive and interesting, but this pricing reflects novelty/celebrity status.
  2. Carmen Estate Coffee S.A., Panama, 88.96.
  3. Santa Teresa, El Salvador, 88.25. (All bourbon coffee from four farms, from western El Salvador in Ahuachapan, is milled at the Santa Teresa Estate.)
  4. Finca Medina, S.A., Guatemala, 87.46 (Antigua;10% of the farm is regenerated native forest.)
  5. Grupo Aguadas de Caldas, Colombia, 87.04.

SCAA Sustainability Awards.  Established in 2004, this award recognizes specialty coffee companies that have created innovative projects to expand sustainability within the coffee world while inspiring others to initiate similar endeavors. These are the winners for 2007 announced earlier this month.

  • Poabs Organic/Biodynamic Estates, India. In the Nelliyampathy hills in the Western Ghats (Palakkad district, Kerala), pioneers of organic farming not only of coffee, but also tea and other crops.
  • Selva Negra Coffee Estate, Nicaragua. Sustainable coffee producer — read about their shade production, which incorporates Smithsonian Bird-Friendly criteria.
  • International Paper Company and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. For producing the first hot beverage cup made from fully renewable resources (ecotainer), a compostable corn-based material produced in a greenhouse-gas neutral manufacturing process.
  • SOPPEXCCA, Jinotega, Nicaragua. Cooperative alliance of coffee producers with many community initiatives, as well as a move from conventional to organic production.

Rainforest Alliance Green Globe Awards. RA honored companies which significantly advanced the goals set forth by the Rainforest Alliance and have integrated environmental and social sustainability into their work at their 20th anniversary gala last month. Honored were:

    • Caribou Coffee. Caribou has made a larger commitment than any other big coffee house to buying RA-certified beans, and they are up-front about exactly how much they use. By 2008, Caribou Coffee has pledged that 50 percent of its coffees will come from Rainforest Alliance-certified farms. Caribou Coffee’s lines that currently bear the seal, and the percentage certified in each blend include:    — Daybreak – 50 percent
      — Colombia – 100 percent
      — Guatemala El Socorro – 100 percent
      — Caribou Blend – 75 percent
      — Fireside Blend – 30 percent
      — Espresso Blend – 75 percent
      — French Roast Blend – 75 percent
      — Reindeer Blend – 30 percent
      — Perennial Blend – 30 percent
      — Amy’s Blend – 50 percent
  • Nestlé Nespresso SA. Okay, this is why I take a somewhat dim view of some of RA’s work. This recognition is for their AAA Sustainability Program. I’ve read through their whole web site, and the emphasis here is more on quality than environmental practices, and seems to lack stringent environmental criteria. Although this is a partnership with RA, it is not indicated that RA certification criteria are even required.  Some of the individual projects seem quite worthwhile. But even if we could agree that this particular program is completely righteous, it supplies 30% of Nespresso’s beans (50% by 2010).  Nespresso is a subsidiary of Nestlé and represents only a small amount of the total  beans purchased by this huge company which has a poor track record on many environmental issues, including pollution, water rights, and recycling (read more at Responsible Shopper).  I just can’t get behind rewarding a company like this unless they make an across-the-board effort to clean up their act.
  • Another award went to “innocent”, a UK smoothie brand.

Certifications / Coffee news and miscellany / Organic coffee

Organic coffee safe for now

Last week I posted about the recent U.S. Department of Agriculture ruling which will require every farm in a cooperative to be inspected annually in order to receive organic certification. It was feared this would make organic certification too expensive for small farmers and reduce the amount of organic coffee on the market.

Yesterday the USDA issued a statement that the rules for organic certification will not change at this time, but that the matter will be discussed further in the fall and amendments to the rules are a possibility in the future.

Hat tip to Samuel Fromartz, who authored the original article at Salon and has been keeping up with the issue at his blog Chews Wise.

Coffee news and miscellany / Retail and specialty roasters / Starbucks

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, environment, human rights, and product.

Coming in at #1, for the second year in a row, is Green Mountain Coffee Roasters.  The Mermaid also made the top 10, placing ninth; Starbucks has made this list all eight years. Whole Foods Market (owner of Allegro Coffee) was at #54. Missing from the list were any of the big four corporate coffee pushers.

Certifications / Coffee news and miscellany / Rainforest Alliance

KLM to serve Rainforest Alliance coffee

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines joins Asiana Airlines (Korea) and ANA (Japan) in pledging to serve Rainforest Alliance certified coffee on all its flights.  KLM serves 22 million cups of coffee annually.

This is a step in the right direction, but only a step.  First, the commitment is for "at least 30%" of the coffee it buys to be RA certified. This is the minimum level allowable by RA for a product to carry the RA seal.  It’s a familiar figure…remember the Yuban ad campaign?

According to the press release, the certified bean portion of KLM’s coffee comes from shaded coffee farms in the highlands of Colombia and the cerrado region of Brazil. I’m sure the Brazilian coffee isn’t shaded, since cerrado is savannah, not forest, and RA standards call for "Farms in areas where the original natural vegetation is not forest must dedicate at least 30% of the farm area for conservation or recovery of the area’s typical ecosystems."  I have yet to find a Brazilian coffee I am comfortable with, because the cerrado area is so unique, biodiverse, and endangered that I am reluctant to encourage any further expansion of coffee agriculture there.

I can understand the charges of greenwashing reported in the press, as environmentalists correctly point out that airlines produce massive emissions that contribute to global warming. An industry spokesman made a great point when he said, ”While this is not a directly hypocritical move and it’s great that sustainable coffee is being used, it does not make KLM an ethical company.” 

I tend to think that any move in the right direction is a good one, which I believe is the outlook taken by RA when they are criticized for what appears to be aiding large corporations green their images.  If RA required 40% of beans to be certified to allow use of their seal, would that really thwart some companies from participating? Could they require a phased approach, with increasing volumes over time as a requirement?  Frankly, it looks like there needs to be a "next step" beyond these first steps.

Coffee news and miscellany / Corporate coffee

Genetically-engineered coffee

Nestlè, whose coffee brands include Nescafe and Taster’s Choice, has obtained a patent on a genetically modified coffee plant that will improve the solubility of instant coffee powder made from its beans. The patent also includes other aspects of the process which produces the coffee powder.

Nestlè has come under fire in the past for not labeling products that contain GE ingredients and insufficient third-party testing.  Must we take any risks for something as mundane and profit-oriented as faster-dissolving instant coffee?!

Other genetic manipulation going on by various groups working with coffee includes goals such as:

  • Simultaneous ripening of coffee cherries. Cherries would ripen to a certain point then stop; final ripening would be triggered by spraying with ethylene, at which point they could be picked by machines. To be practical, this would have to be done on short coffee varieties that also require high chemical inputs to maintain good yields.  A lot of this work is being done at the University of Hawaii, and Kona coffee growers strongly object to any GM coffee being put in the field in Hawaii, as they are concerned about the genes “escaping” and contaminating their own plants, a situation not without precedent.
  • Beans with little or no caffeine. As explained in a previous post, caffeine protects plants from pests, so “decaffeinated” plants may require more chemicals to protect them. The work I’ve seen so far is being done on Coffea canephora — robusta — which has far more caffeine than higher grade arabica beans.  This might seem like starting at a disadvantage, but the choice is no doubt due to the ability to mass-produce robusta in large, sunny, chemically-doused plantations. There are naturally-occurring low caffeine coffee varieties that are bitter and not commercially viable. Attempts to breed these traits into arabica varieties (which are not closely related) have been unsuccessful.  Recently, several mutant low caffeine arabica plants were located in Ethiopia.
  • Pest-resistant varieties.  Initially, crops implanted with proteins that are lethal to pests (usually derived from Bt) may lead to decreased pesticide application. Many transgenetic Bt crops target specific pests, and that may cut
    down on broad-spectrum insecticide application. On the other hand, other case studies have indicated that there is a lack of support for claims that GM crops result in a widespread decrease in chemical use. Pests are more likely to become resistant to insecticides in genetically-modified crops than are crops that are sprayed with pesticides.  There is also concern about impacts on non-target organisms. Since many coffee pests can be kept in check by careful cultivation and integrated pest management the risks associated with GM Bt coffee seem unreasonable.

Coffee awards and competitions / Coffee news and miscellany / Retail and specialty roasters

Roast Magazine Roaster of the Year 2006

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 cup.  Read this super article about green coffee buyer Geoff Watts, and this note from Geoff regarding Fair Trade and Direct Trade.
Runners-Up: Coffee Bean International and Portand Roasting (both Portland, OR)

Micro Category
Winner: Metropolis Coffee (Chicago)
Runners-Up: Cinnamon Bay Coffee (Clearwater, FL), Sacred Grounds (Aracta, CA)

All these roasters offer at least some environmentally-friendly coffees, a great testament that sustainability does not sacrifice quality. Congrats to these roasters.