Coffee to Go: Single use plastic straws

Guilty of using plastic straws for your chilled coffee? Even if you are not, many others are. Single-use plastic straws were found to be the seventh most collected item during a beach clean up, and the eighth-most common ocean trash. This is appalling as it not only reveals our reliance on plastic straws but also our lack of responsibility in disposing of waste.

Undoubtedly, plastic is a man-made product, unreplicable by nature. Plastic straws are typically made of type 5 plastics (polypropylene) which contain additives such as phthalates and Bisphenol A (commonly known as BPA) (Panagaes, 2019). Upon decomposition, the toxic chemicals, like BPA, are released into the environment. These chemicals affect our hormonal system by inflammation of selective membranes and potential gene mutations due to certain biological processes.

Between humans and animals, the latter is more likely to be affected by the toxicity of plastics as they may ingest them by accident. The animals thus have direct contact with the toxic chemicals as the chemicals are released within their digestive systems (Panagaes, 2019).

Image: Plastics found within a dead bird. Plastics take millions of years to decompose. Once ingested, the plastics may reside within the bird while releasing the toxic chemicals, eventually killing the bird. Source: Clark

The problem with straw disposal is its weight and its low cost of production. According to Mosquera, while viable, recycling factories are unwilling to recycle plastic straws due to their lightweight. Being extremely light and small, plastic straws pose a problem to recycling machinery as they may fall through the cracks and disable the machines. To not recycle plastic straws because of such a reason is disappointing as the technology for proper disposable is available, yet due to mere inconvenience, millions of marine animals and birds were killed over the years.

Plastic straws are also very cheap to produce. This cheap solution for people to consume their drinks conveniently rose in popularity after World War 2. When the war just ended and people found this convenient and cheap solution, research on the detriments of plastics were not well developed. Eventually, it became too late when scientists uncovered the truth about plastics as people have become overly reliant on them. The amount of plastic straws produced has already proliferated all around the world.

All is not lost. In recent years, activists and major food brands have proposed and joined in on the straw ban. While this does not reduce the total amount of toxicity in the world caused by plastic straw decomposition, it helps to slow down the rate of pollution. Hopefully, somewhere in the near future, suitable technologies can be developed to disintegrate plastic completely.

Coffee to Go: Starbucks and green marketing

Green marketing - a strategy adopted by businesses to minimise their environmental damages at every stage of the production cycle, as a response to the growing concerns of environmental protection (Tsai et al., 2020). Green marketing is increasingly prevalent among businesses in different industries as it leaves a good impression on consumers and thus generates brand awareness and support (Tsai et al., 2020).

Green marketing is made up of four dimensions:

1. Green management
2. Green brand image
3. Green brand relationship
4. Green brand equity

The first dimension involves establishing a cleaner production network and developing cultures, products and activities that are more environmentally sustainable.

The second dimension involves being unique in green efforts to create a lasting, positive, and favourable memory of the brand for the customers.

The third involves developing satisfactory green products to earn the customers' trust and their attachment to the brand.

Fourth consolidates the second and third dimensions to maintain a brand's relevancy in the long run.

Given the rising awareness of how coffee production pollutes the environment, Starbucks had been engaging with green marketing to appear socially responsible for a long time now. If you are a Starbucks enthusiast, you will no doubt remember the discounted drinks when you bring your own tumbler, or felt mixed emotions about the straw ban in 2018.

Regardless of Starbucks' green strategies, the company is unable to the garner support from the environmentalists, as the strategies seem to be a decoy from the true extent of pollution they generate. For example, while Starbucks tried to collaborate with McDonalds to develop a recyclable/compostable cup solution by 2015, the solution never materialised (Mahdawi, 2018), and seems to be forgotten. Futhermore, it is believed that more than 8000 takeaway cups still end up in the landfill, pushing the environmentalists in Bellingham to speak out.

Image: "Cup Monster" built by the environmentalists in Bellingham as part of the "Better Cup" campaign to pressure Starbucks into using "100 percent recycled or tree-free cups". Source: Levy, 2017

Another example is the straw ban, which resulted in straws to being replaced by sippy cup lids. While Starbucks claim that this potentially reduces the use of plastic straws by the billions, skeptics still question the effectiveness of the move, as customers can still get plastic straws elsewhere (Viswanathan, 2018). In other words, the importance of reducing plastic pollution in not internalised by consumers.

Image: Sippy cup lids rolled out by Starbucks in attempt to replace plastic straws. The lids are claimed to be recyclable, but how many of them are truly recycled? Source: Sullivan

The effectiveness of the two strategies introduced may seem like a marketing gimmick by Starbucks. However, it is still a small step towards reducing marine and land pollution. For such "gimmicks" to work, we consumers should do our part in reducing our material wastage as well.

Milk Coffee: How does dairy production affect human health?

In recent years, there has been a growing preference for alternative milk due to reasons related to the environment and health. However, this switch is not prominent enough as dairy production is still projected to grow by 1% per annum over the coming decades (OECD). 

Besides the atmospheric pollution caused by cow manure, an excessive use of antibiotics used in the dairy industry pollutes the products they produce. The intensive use of antibiotics was introduced by policymakers, to expand the dairy production (Clay, Garnett, & Lorimer, 2020) while keeping diseases in check (Sentient Media, 2019).

Image 1: Confinement feeding system. Cows are kept close to together which encourages the spread of diseases. Hence, antibiotics were used to prevent disease spreading. Imgae source: Dairy Global.

The use of antibiotics in dairy production is a global issue that affects both the developing and developed countries. While we generally view antibiotics to be helpful as we use them to fight off diseases when we are sick, the excessive and indiscriminate use of antibiotics for cows (particularly beta-lactum based antibiotics) have increased the resistance of microbes, posing problems to the human and animal health (Groot and Hooft, 2016).

Groot and Hooft also adds that when antibiotics leak into the soils and waters, it inhibits the growth of useful bacteria that denitrifies the nitrates (NO3-), contributing to the acidification of soils and waters. This threatens the sustainability of plant and animal health that depend on the said mediums for survival.

An example of a type of the antibiotics - cephalosporin - is found to be particularly persistent in the environment, as it requires high temperatures and light to degrade (Das et al., 2019), suggesting that cephalosporin can terrorise the balance of the microbial ecosystem for a long time. This is especially so in countries without proper waste treatment facilities as well.

Fortunately, some governments, in countries like the Netherlands and the U.S, have realised the detriments of the excessive antibiotics use and placed are actively regulating such chemicals in the dairy and agricultural industry. 

While regulations by the state can help in cushioning the impacts of excess antibiotics leaking into the environment, we can also do our part in reducing dairy demand or switching to organic dairy options instead. Perhaps, with our collective efforts, we can reduce the scale of antibiotics pollution in the environment, starting with the dairy industry.

Ways to reduce coffee pollution: Improve sewage treatment facilities and adopt bioengineering

In a previous post, we discussed the common wastewater treatment methods to remove harmful chemicals from coffee affluence to reduce the pollution in water bodies. Similarly, we would be exploring sewage treatment facilities again, but for a different purpose - human waste.

If you think that coffee stops polluting the Earth after the post-processing phase; when it is shelved, brewed; thrown away, think again. A pollutant, that most people are addicted to, continues to reside within the human body and enters the water systems through the sewage systems when we use the toilet (Mowbray, 2022). This pollutant is none other than caffeine.

Caffeine has been termed as an emerging contaminant, which means that it can have "lethal impacts on human and wildlife endocrine systems, even if available at trace quantities" (Antunes et al., 2021). While Raj et al. (2021) found that the existing waste treatment facilities can remove between 64-100% caffeine from wastewaters, the wide range suggests that in many circumstances, caffeine can still escape the treatment process and into the waterways. As such, what are the available solutions to prevent disturbances in the ecosystem caused by caffeine discharge?

The video below briefly discusses the impacts of pollution caused by the caffeine expelled by humans, its impacts on the environment, along with some suggestions to reduce the caffeine discharged via the sewage systems:

Some key points include:

• Outdated or incapability of wastewater treatment facilities to fully remove the caffeine content in human waste.
• Climate change overwhelming sewage flows, which results in caffeine contaminated waters to spread even in the terrestrial ecosystems, negatively impacting human, animal, and plant health.
• Expanding and upgrading wastewater treatment plants and stormwater storage are viable solutions, but they require years before they are operational.
• Use nature-based solutions to detoxify wastewaters instead can be more effective and are quicker to implement.

Of interest is the final point. Nature-based solutions involve bio-engineering techniques to sieve out nutrients in the waters, typically with the help of plants, before the waters enter the waterways. While the video suggested plant-based solutions like rain gardens to purify and recycle waters, such solutions must still be carefully considered as the effects of caffeine on plants are still ambiguous (Diaz, n.d.; Mahaney, 2019).

Overall, careful planning and adequate time are key to implement both nature-based and man-made solutions to remove caffeine from wastewaters, to prevent pollution in the waterways, which could harm the health of those who dwell on Earth.

Coffee Farming: What is preventing farmers from cultivating coffee crops sustainably?

Coffee crops are widely produced along the coffee belt due to their lucrativeness and the high demand for coffee beans worldwide. While the mention of coffee brings big brands like Starbucks and Nescafe to mind, did you know that majority of the beans are produced by smallholders? 

According to Akenroye et al. (2022), there are, overwhelmingly, 21 factors that hinder smallholders from achieving sustainability (some are similar and thus combined into the following list):

Figure 1: List of factors hindering smallholders from achieving sustainability. 

Figure 2: Count of the factors derived from figure 1.

Within these factors, financial constraints seem the most obvious problem that discourages sustainable farming methods. This is not surprising as smallholders are at the bottom of the coffee production chain, which means that the primary products they produce are worth less than what secondary or tertiary producers produce. It would hence be unfair to the smallholders to adopt organic farming methods as they have to shoulder most of the burden of the high certification costs and manual labour involved. 

Sure, some say that consumers are willing to pay a higher premium in support of organically grown coffee. However, Naegele (2019) found that the premiums paid are not proportionate to the quantity and cost involved in the production process. Furthermore, with the unpredictable elasticity of coffee, farmers are not advised to raise their bean prices too high so as to protect their profits (Wienhold, 2021). Therefore, it is perhaps more favourable for large firms with supernormal profits to chip in, in order to promote sustainable farming practices. 

Some ways firms could chip in are to absorb some of the high costs that accompanies the organic certifications, impart knowledge on organic agricultural methods, and engage in research and development for more sustainable and less labour intensive ways of cultivating reasonably yield crops.

While these methods may lower profits earned by the firms, in a circular economy, what goes around comes around. By helping smallholders adopt sustainable practices as part of their corporate social responsibility, firms may eventually benefit from higher sales as consumers tend to support brands they resonate with (Hsu & Bui, 2022).

Overall, as the lack of access to sufficient finance is one of the main causes of unsustainable agricultural practices, big firms should consider aiding smallholders in their cultivation process. In the long run, this could be useful to reduce the soil, water and atmospheric pollution caused by coffee farming.

Coffee at Home: Packaging beans

People who prepare their coffee from the beans usually get them prepackaged in a bag. Different brands of coffee sell their prepacked beans in different kinds of bags, ranging from plastic to paper. These packages attribute only about 3% of the coffee industry's carbon footprint (Fornero, 2020), and as such its impacts on the environment are less discussed than the other pollutive processes in the industry.

According to a study by Salomone (2003), packaging contributes negligibly to greenhouse gases emissions, ecotoxicity, and ozone layer depletion. This suggests that attention on packaging used in the coffee industry is not the main concern when dealing with environmental impacts. While true that there are bigger pollutants in the coffee industry, unsustainable packaging has been forefronted by many climate change activists, making the topic of sustainable packaging relevant in today's context. 

The problem of packaging is similar to that of coffee cups, which was previously discussed. The ambiguous and misleading logos indicating that the packages are recyclable are just not helping consumers to understand the proper means of recycling. Many times, packages containing beans would be made of two or more materials. This would mean that for effective recycling, materials must be separated, else, it would be as good as throwing them into the landfills.

While some may argue that there are biodegradable packaging available, it is found that only up to 60% of materials from such packages can biodegrade (Fornero, 2020). However, depending on the materials, the remaining 40% can be recycled in their corresponding bins. In this sense, biodegradable packaging seems like a favourable alternative to recyclable bags. However, to really reap the benefits of such packages, people have to step up and play their part in recycling. This seems difficult as recycling rates in many countries fall below 50%, suggesting that the non-biodegradables are highly likely to end up in landfills.

To conclude, coffee packaging contributes little to the pollution brought about by the coffee industry. However, that should not be a reason to ignore the problem as a little bit of pollution goes a long way, especially when we consider the size of the industry. While 'biodegradable' packaging is currently the most sustainable packaging available, consumers have to start recycling properly to reap the full benefits of such packages.

Coffee Farming: Pests begone

Pesticides are commonly used in conventional coffee plantations as farmers want to prevent infestations in their farms, which are costly and cumbersome to resolve. However, the reliance on pesticides can degrade the environment and be harmful to human health. 

Pests come in the form of insects and fungal diseases. While the best way to combat fungi is prevention, removing moist or rotting elements (dead wood, overwatering etc.), and copper spraying, farmers typically use pesticides that contain a mix of cypermethrin, deltamethrin, chlorpyrifos, carbaryl and malathion to remove insects (Boyd, 2015).

The chemicals in the pesticides are harmful to the environment in the following ways:

Chemical	Harm
Cypermethrin and deltamethrin	Highly toxic to fishes, bees, and aquatic insects. However, the chemicals are short-lived (generally less than a month) and have low volatility in soils (NPIC).
Chlorpyrifos	Highly toxic to birds, bees, and aquatic life. Chlorpyrifos can remain in soils or surfaces for up to months and can be transported to long distances when eroded into water bodies, or bioaccumulated in animals (NPIC).
Carbaryl	Highly toxic to earthworms, bees, and some aquatic life. Depending on the physical conditions, carbaryl can take from days to months to break down completely. While carbaryl is not as toxic as the previous chemicals, it is highly volatile in soils and water surfaces (NPIC)
Malathion	Highly toxic to bees, some beneficial insects, and some aquatic life. Its residence time and volatility are like the carbaryl’s. However, malathion is also highly volatile in the air (NPIC).

In light of the impacts that these pesticides can bring to the environment, organic certifications (examples), have been introduced to promote sustainability in coffee farms. Surprisingly, despite the lack of pesticide use in organic coffee plantations, these plantations have a 6-15% less chance of being infested by pests. A director of an organic coffee farm, Juan Vargos, explained that such positive results were due to preventive measures, using composts and hard manual labour (Perfect Daily Grind, 2019).

Overall, pesticides undoubtedly pollute the environment. An option to reduce pollution can be to go organic. However, whether farmers opt to use pesticides depend on considerations like the cost and labour involved.