Our Mission and Purpose
Sustainability is our daily journey
It’s easy, isn’t it, for us busy folk to forget the sheer effort and worldwide logistics that go into creating the things we love?
Your cup of coffee is born of absolute dedication. Years of growing, hundreds of pairs of hands carefully picking, preparing, and packing, and thousands of kilometers traveled before the beans arrive with us, ready to brighten your day.
At Coffee Beans Delivered we have always felt the responsibility behind the brewing of exceptional coffee. A worldwide supply chain that begins in most under-developed countries with delicate eco-systems means that there are incredibly resilient but vulnerable communities to care for when we purchase our coffee beans.
We’ve worked tirelessly to create relationships directly, or once removed, with coffee farmers across the world, so we can rest assured that what we purchase provides a decent living for the farmers and their families.
We pay attention to the details of how the beans are farmed, whether the farmers are paid livable wages, whether they have adequate tools and infrastructure, and what kind of education is required to improve a farm’s longevity and yield.
Striving for Sustainability
On the home front we are devoted to protecting the environment, and sharing the love, in every way we can.
Each year we donate many kilos of coffee beans to support our community of social workers and support aid workers, families in need, and caregivers to show our appreciation for this amazing community.
CBD cups are sourced from managed plantations and coated with Ingeo™ – a bioplastic made from plants, not oil, and printed with water-based inks. They are compostable and biodegradable. We accept your multiple-use cups on-site to reduce waste.
Striving for Sustainability
Our lids are also compostable and made from Ingeo, can be composted, and will biodegrade. Our napkins are made with Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC) certified pulp and are certified carbon neutral. FSC is the industry benchmark for sustainably managed wood and wood products.
The coffee trays are made from 100% post-consumer recycled paper pulp and can be popped in your recycling or compost bins.
We also donate coffee grinds along with cardboard boxes to local farms and nurseries to be used as compost and fertilisers.
Used coffee grounds are great as a mulch for garden beds, for making body scrub or facial exfoliator as well as many other home uses. Visit our blog here to see the different ways you can give your coffee grinds new life! It’s the big and the small moves that make lasting change.
Fighting for Farmer Equality
Consider this: a 50c hike in the cost of a cup of coffee when delivered directly to the farmers can help to support the education, production, and wellbeing of entire communities.
For too long, coffee farmers have been exploited by large corporations, being paid a pittance. This practice continues, binding people into an endless cycle of poverty, whilst everyone else across the world benefits from their physically demanding and time-consuming work.
We can’t condone that kind of blatant disregard for human rights.
We believe in creating trust and opportunity. Adequately remunerating people’s hard work is vital. We want to ensure the farmers who grow the beans we source are being paid 1.5 times the average wage so that they have the capacity to nurture themselves, their families, and their crops.
We actively support women-led coffee initiatives – these have enormously positive impacts on their communities. You can read more about the women behind coffee here. We will always find ways to champion gender equality in the coffee industry so that women can experience freedom, leadership, and empowerment.
We’ve partnered with incredible human beings across the globe, working hard for their cooperatives to ensure they run a fair system that supports an equitable industry. Check out our chat with one of our long-term partners, Guadam, who runs the Muraho Trading Company, bringing specialty coffee from the hills of Rwanda, and putting people before profits, always.
There is much work to be done to protect the coffee producers and their lands from weather and exploitation risk, but together we can aim for a sustainable future for coffee and those who create it.
Saving the future of Coffee
As the climate shifts, causing unseasonal temperatures and diseases like leaf rust, the production of coffee becomes increasingly volatile. Socially, younger generations are choosing to leave their family farms and pursue education and more equitable employment. For many coffee farmers, the income is just not enough to live on, so they simply can’t continue.
All things considered, there is an uncertain future for our beloved bean.
It has been estimated that climate change alone will reduce suitable coffee-growing land across the globe by up to 50% by 2050. That’s soon.
And what it looks like is a steep decline in availability and a necessary hike in cost. So, what on earth can we do to support coffee farmers and help them to hold onto their livelihoods?
Education is key
As diseases like leaf rusts arise, science is there to work out how to mitigate their effects. Recently a hardy coffee plant species called Coffea stenophylla was rediscovered in Sierra Leone. It tolerates warmer temperatures and may have a natural resistance to leaf rust.2 The Brazillian Icatu bean also holds similar promise, which you can read about on our blog, here.
As coffee crops age, their productivity falls, but in Ethiopia farmers have learned that a practice called ‘stumping’ (an extreme prune back) can increase their yields three fold.3
To improve the quality of the soil, especially given a coffee bush takes three years to mature and produce fruit, companion gardening has become a key practice. This, in tandem with organic farming, means healthy plants, and healthy production.
Our mission is to share knowledge and identify where support is needed. Distributing valuable education to coffee farmers around the world, and providing them with the resources to harness it, will mean that together, everyone can thrive. We hope to inspire the younger generations of coffee producers to follow in their elders’ footsteps into a future ripe with possibility.