Coffee with a shot of conservation: Part 1

Home or Away? 

I love foo-foo coffee drinks, coffee concoctions as smooth, thick, and scrumptious as melted ice cream—with flavored syrup, whipped-cream toppings, chocolate shavings—the works. That’s caffeinated comfort food!   But the coffee drinks I buy away from home aren’t good for my wallet, my health, or for the environment. 

At one time, I frequently bought coffee on the way to work; I often couldn’t resist the more “fangled” selections. But for many reasons, I’ve moved away from this. Coffee drinks:

• Are expensive
• Have a lot of calories (at least when I choose something other than black coffee)
•  Are served in single-use cups that can’t be recycled

Single-use cups create a lot of waste.  I’ve seen estimates that 14 to 16 billion paper cups are generated each year by Americans alone. This figure doesn’t include plastic and Styrofoam cups. Our society uses a lot of disposable cups. In addition to the waste generated by these cups, their production consumes a great deal of water and other resources.  Paper coffee cups can’t be recycled, because the inside is coated with a plastic. While many of the plastic cups are made from recyclable plastic, I have trouble finding a recycling location near me that takes them. (My curbside pick-up takes only #1 and #2 plastic bottles, not cups).

Starbucks and its customers alone generate 4 billion disposable cups each year. To be fair, Starbucks is making efforts to reduce the amount of waste generated by their business.  I’m always pleased when a large company shows awareness of a problem and takes meaningful steps to change. But the slow progress of Starbuck’s efforts haven’t eliminated the problem, so some of the progress needs to come from changes I make—and ideally from all of us changing our business-as-usual.

Any way I look at it, brewing my own coffee at home is the way to go.  Besides being the best option environmentally, it saves money AND calories (since I often drink my home-brewed coffee without cream or sugar).

Reusable coffee filter basket

In order to have my coffee “to go,” I’ve purchased reusable travel cups that keep hot coffee hot, and iced coffee cold. To reduce waste even further, I brew coffee with a reusable filter basket, rather than use paper filters.

But can home-brewed coffee still be comfort food? I think it can—and is. It still has caffeine to provide a physical pick-me-up. And psychologically, I can make my own coffee a little more “foo-foo” by adding chocolate soy milk as creamer, without adding much in the way of calories or fat (organic soy milk, of course). Another way to make home-brewed coffee more out-of-the ordinary is with a special cup.  When on vacation, I buy a travel cup as a souvenir. Then when I use it, I not only avoid a disposable cup, but I'm reminded of pleasant memories from my journeys.

I anticipate that, at times, I'll still buy coffee away from home. But I’m going to start carrying a “just-in-case” reusable cup with me; some places encourage customers to bring their own cups and give discounts for doing so.

Although I now brew my morning coffee at home, my quest for a greener cup of coffee hasn’t ended. Turns out that not all coffees are created environmentally equal. In Coffee with a shot of conservation: Part 2, I’ll share what I’m learning about coffee certifications and labels that help me choose more sustainably grown coffee.