Our Sustainability

When working with our farmer partners, we place importance in ensuring that the coffee we source is grown and processed in a sustainable way that respects both people and environment. You can find out more about our sustainability at origin in our Code of Conduct.

In addition to our sustainable approach to coffee growing, we also focus on constantly improving our roastery operations in the UK.

In 2019, we won the Gold Recycler Award by our recycling partner First Mile, being one of their top 10 recyclers out of 20,000 customers.

Here’s a few things we do towards sustainable operations

Light, fluffy and highly absorbent – all of our coffee chaff (the skin from roasted coffee beans) is recycled to provide bedding for the dairy cattle that produce our barista milk. In 2018 we sent 5000kg of chaff to the Northiam Dairy.

You can only imagine how much coffee we brew here! All the coffee grounds from our training sessions and office are recycled into bio fuel – sustainable coffee logs which are a great alternative to wood for fires.

Dotted around our office and roastery, you’ll find recycling bins all over. All our office waste is separated and recycled with a Zero to Landfill policy. In 2020, we recycled 31,400kg of waste which converted to 400kg of energy which saved 46 tonnes of CO2.

Roasting coffee demands energy and creates smoke. We’ve invested in a Loring roaster in our roastery for our online orders which uses a single burner for both roasting and incinerating the smoke created during roasting. In 2020, this saved 7.5 tonnes of CO2.

From our bright supermarket packaging and sturdy delivery boxes to delivery inserts and booklets, all our cartons, shipping packaging and print materials are made from recyclable, FSC-certified materials and are printed with vegetable ink.

Our paper coffee cups are 100% biodegradable and compostable, and recyclable where facilities exist. We acknowledge that use of paper cups is an environmental issue in the industry, and we actively promote the use of multiuse cups to our café customers and home consumers. We offer Union KeepCups and in our roastery we use porcelain cups.

We encourage cycling to work for our roastery employees, supported by a Cycle Scheme.

OUR PACKAGING

Coffee packaging accounts for 3% of the total carbon footprint of the coffee supply chain. While this may seem low, we aim to reduce the environmental impact at every stage of the coffee journey.

We know reduction of packaging is the first step – and we’ve made changes to reduce our packaging where possible. All our cartons were already fully recyclable but our coffee bags were unfortunately not.

In 2022, we launched fully recyclable packaging that is also made from 30% recycled material. This packaging can be disposed of through home recycling kerbside collections. Our front-of-pack features a green recyclable logo and clear recycling instructions, making it one of the most environmentally sustainable coffee packaging materials available.

Our current project is about improving the sustainability of our direct-from-roastery coffee packaging. Our intention was to launch this in 2022, but technical snags delayed us. Our revised target now, is to transition during 2023 by introducing fully recyclable paper packaging.

Learn more about our packaging changes

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