How Green is Your Coffee?

As the national obsession with greening our lives grows, examining how the things we love impact the environment has become a common topic of discussion. Up now: How green are different coffee beans? The folks over at Greenopia devised a Leaf Awards rating system that is used to evaluate a coffee company's overall greenness by gauging its percentage of organic, ethically sourced, naturally decaffeinated, eco-friendly packaged and efficiently produced and transported beans. They also looked for sustainability and environmental impact reporting. They then assessed 25 different brands from all over the US to determine how they measure up. We can't help but feel the findings a bit disheartening: Of the brands they evaluated, nearly half of them didn't rank at all! Coffee that we love by the likes of Illy or Lavazza didn't get a single leaf, while large American brands like Starbucks or Stumptown got just a couple of leaves. One ranking that shined was Bellevue-based Kalani Organica, coming in at 3 leaves! We have a personal connection to this truly lovely coffee: In the mid-to-late '90's, we cut our barista teeth slinging java at the Speakeasy Cafe in Seattle's Belltown district. The cafe was a devout supporter and server of Kalani Organica until the cafe was closed by a fire in 2002 -- despite the fact that we regularly had small competitive roasters try to convince us to switch. We stuck with Kalani because of the founder Karen's commitment to organic, ethically-sourced coffee -- something that is talked about a lot these days but wasn't seen as particularly important 15 years ago. We're thrilled that her work is getting recognized and hope that a rating like this will help expand Kalani's availability around the country.