Coffee news and miscellany

Sips: Site updates

First, a general housekeeping update. A couple months ago, I had to re-do the appearance of C&C due to a theme implosion. The temporary one was awful, but I’ve now tidied things up considerably. There are no doubt still a fair number of startling font sizes, misaligned bullet points, peculiar spacing, and the like, but progress has been made. As I worked on code, I also edited and refreshed posts and links. A lot of this would not be obvious unless you came upon a post in which I made updates. Thus, I will provide some highlights by resurrecting the “Sips” news briefs, and link to the older material. I’ll begin with research that has been highlighted in the excellent Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine.

  • Daily Coffee News had a story (January 2025) about recent research confirming that the fungicides used to combat coffee leaf rust (Hemileia vastatrix), known as “la roya”, have health risks to farm workers applying them to coffee in Brazil. Full use of personal protective equipment was reported by only 23% of farm workers, and health impacts revealed disruption to endocrine and metabolic functions. My posts on coffee leaf rust include this overview of the disease, the impact it has had on organic coffee, and other overall impacts. The study summarized by Daily Coffee News is cited below, and is open access.
  • Sticking with Brazil, the journal Nature Conservation (January 2026, citation below) published a lengthy and detailed review of the dire habitat destruction in the Brazilian cerrado region. I wrote an overview of coffee growing in the Brazilian cerrado, and in the ensuing years the crisis has grown. Over 55% of the native vegetation has now been destroyed. Agricultural expansion, especially in the coffee growing regions, is an important reason, although coffee is not the only agricultural product grown there. The paper provides an excellent analysis of the biodiversity of the area, which unique species are at risk, the extent and source of threats, impediments to conservation, etc.
  • Although arabica coffee is self-pollinating, cross-pollination by insects improves fruit set and yields. I’ve written several posts on this topic, including how coffee grown in shade provides habitat for pollinators, how shade coffee specifically benefits suites of bees in Mexico, and even the status of bees as pollinators of robusta coffee in India. This story, again at Daily Coffee News (January 2026) and featuring Brazilian research, summarizes the use of managed colonies of a species of stingless bees on sun coffee farms, their impact on yield (it increased), and the uptake (traces were found) in coffee leaves, pollen and nectar of neonicotinoid pesticide applied to the soil (citation below). The Daily Coffee News story also referenced another meta-study (2022) of the impacts of bees and other pollinators on coffee yield worldwide. I’ve included that citation below as well.
  • I have also written an overview of coffee growing in China, as well as an update. Daily Coffee News (Janaury 2026) summarized how models utilizing machine learning can analyze satelite images to map land growing coffee. Also cited below.
Marciano LPA, Kleinstreuer N, Chang X, Costa LF, Silvério ACP, Martins I. 2024. A novel approach to triazole fungicides risk characterization: Bridging human biomonitoring and computational toxicology. Sci Total Environ.953:176003. doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.176003.

Pereira, C. C., W. Kenedy-Siqueira, L. R. Maia, V. da F. Sperandei, L. Arantes-Garcia, S. Fernandes, G. F. C. Fernandes. 2026. The Cerrado crisis review: highlighting threats and providing future pathways to save Brazil’s biodiversity hotspot. Nature Conservation 61: 29–70.

Ramos JD, Santos GS, dos Santos CF, De Oliveira Kaminski TS, Cione AP, Alves DA, Quenzer FCL, Campbell AJ, Pereira AM, Thompson H, Martins de Queiroz AC, Bento JMS and Menezes C. 2026. Stingless bees in coffee: yield gains and assessing neonicotinoid impact. Front. Bee Sci. 3:1644205. doi: 10.3389/frbee.2025.1644205.

Moreaux, Céline, et al. 2022. The value of biotic pollination and dense forest for fruit set of Arabica coffee: A global assessment. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment 323: 107680.

Huang Q, Cheng X, Chen Y, Ding X and Jia H. 2025. Coffee extraction from remote sensing imagery based on multiple features: a case study of Pu’er City, China. Front. Remote Sens. 6:1696570. doi: 10.3389/frsen.2025.1696570

 

K-Cups/Keurig brewers: alternatives

K-Cup recycling: I told you so

Encore! Here’s another piece on K-Cup recycling, published in Grist in December 2024. The (same) beat goes on.

Some years ago, I swore off writing any more about K-Cups, a product line that was antithetical to the concept of sustainable coffee.  A few years later, I did post yet another update on the lack of recyclability of used K-Cups. And here I am again, back to beat the dead horse!

Daily Coffee News reports that K-Cup owner Keurig Dr Pepper (itself owned mostly by JAB Holding and minority holder Mondelēz International) has reached settlements in Canada and the U.S. in lawsuits stemming from false or misleading claims regarding the recyclability of K-Cups. As I described in my last post on the topic, although the K-Cups are (finally) made of a recyclable material, it is #5 plastic (polypropylene), which is not accepted in all communities. The Daily Coffee News piece notes less than 3% of polypropylene plastic is recycled in the U.S., due to both logistical and capacity issues. The Canadian settlement is for US$2.3 million. The U.S. case is class action, the preliminary agreement has not yet been disclosed, and the parties have another month to begin the finalization of the settlement.

These lawsuits are separate from the antitrust/price-fixing settlements agreed to by Keurig in 2021.

Recycling plastics is a failure at best and a big con at worst. There are plenty of no-waste ways to make a single cup or whole pot of exceptional coffee. Since coffee making is often a daily occurrence, kicking the single-use pod/cup is a great step on the road to quitting plastic.

And while we’re on this pony, I have also revised and updated my post on the recycling saga of Nespresso coffee pods. That’s a product made of a completely recyclable material, aluminum, that also has a poor recycling rate for some of the same reasons as K-Cups (consumer inertia, lack of acceptance at recycling centers). I’ve tossed in Nespresso’s dirty little secret that despite all their splashy ballyhoo discussing how great their pods are because they are made of recyclable aluminum, they only just started using any recycled aluminum in their pods. And all the new aluminum they use is supplied by the nasty mining conglomerate Rio Tinto. Ugh.

 

Coffee regions / Corporate coffee / Nestlé/Nespresso

Deforestation from commodity coffee drags on

The New York Times Magazine published a well-written account about the ongoing illegal coffee growing in Sumatra’s Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park. The article focuses on the Wildlife Conservation Society’s investigations into continued forest clearing in the park by small farmers who sell their coffee at rock-bottom prices to middlemen, who then sell to large coffee companies. The article notes this probe began around 2015. However, the World Wildlife Fund put out a detailed report on this issue in 2007, and a paper in a well-respected peer-reviewed journal in 2009 outlined that this problem had already existed for 30 years. Below I list all the posts in which I summarized or wrote about the illegal coffee growing (and purchasing) in this region.

The Times piece nicely laid out the complexities of the situation and the plight of the exploited farmers. The Wildlife Conservation Society concluded the certifications and traceability were not working because the supply chain was so complicated that the auditing was “too expensive for exporters specializing in cheap, bad coffee.” Nor was expelling or punishing farmers the solution, so WCS launched a program to help farmers improve their yields and livelihoods, even at the borders or within the park with the goal of reducing additional deforestation and eventually reforesting plots.

I’m not going to delve into the pros and cons of this approach, other than to say that I don’t think conservation organizations need to be in the business of agricultural extension services when the giant corporations raking in billions of dollars of profits at the expense of farmers and the environment could and should easily be funding and executing these efforts in totality*. Once again, the responsibility for ensuring environmental ethics and sustainability is fobbed off on a third party. There is no mention in the article on the importance of the “demand” side of the equation, although the author provides this brilliant and not-so-subtle hint:

The reality is that such beans are sold into the anonymity of a commodity market designed to make uniform products for placeless destinations. The point of this coffee was to forget that it had ever come from anywhere at all.

A company can decide to sacrifice profit for ethical responsibility, but only to the degree that shareholders allow them to. And it is the people who buy the products that influence the bottom line which pushes the shareholders to make a company change policies. The article, while illuminating, leaves the average reader feeling rather helpless, or at least with the impression that some organization out there is working to solve the problem.

The average reader is you, and there is something you can do to move the needle in this complex situation. It’s simple and elegant: Remember that your coffee does come from somewhere, and make the choice not to buy and support cheap, anonymized, corporate coffee.

My posts — tons of background:

*And indeed some of them are partnering with WCS to tackle this problem, such as Olam International and JDE. If you believe that corporate giants are sincere or effective in their efforts, consider Nestlé’s “zero deforestation” claim. Despite the fact that Nestlé purchases more coffee than three of the five raw products included in the plan (soy, meat, or palm oil), it was not a commodity Nestlé chose to include in this plan.

Certifications

Birders still in the dark about shaded Bird-Friendly coffee

A group of authors have an open-access paper in the journal People and Nature, a publication of the British Ecological Society: Tapping birdwatchers to promote bird-friendly coffee consumption and conserve birds. The authors noted there are 45 million birdwatchers in the U.S. alone, and they are considered the primary target of coffee certification schemes.

They surveyed birders who were members of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and subscribers to the Lab’s magazine; thus, a relatively well-off* demographic that was also highly educated, with 55% having a graduate degree or higher. They found (quoting the abstract, my emphasis added):

Nearly half (49%) of respondents reported considering bird habitat when purchasing coffee. However, only 38% of respondents were familiar with the Smithsonian Bird Friendly certification and only 9% reported purchasing it. … The highest rated constraints on buying bird-friendly coffee were lack of awareness, cost, and lack of availability.

I don’t have a lot to say about this. Over a decade ago (!) right here on this site I expressed my frustration at the resistance of birders at changing their coffee buying habitats, and made a pointed plea to birders and conservationists, as knowledgeable consumers, to set an example and drink coffee that was grown in a sustainable manner, and spread the word to others. Several months later, I again lamented the lack of action (or hypocritical behavior) on the part of this generally affluent group.

Considering the demographic of the survey respondents in this study, lack of awareness and cost are excuses, in my opinion. The very magazine these respondents subscribe to has had at least two articles about shade coffee and birds, as well as additional articles on their website. Other major birdwatching magazines have also published similar articles, including this one by yours truly.

Lack of availability, however, is a legitimate reason why more birders (and others) don’t drink Smithsonian Bird-Friendly coffee. As of 2018, less than 0.1% of world coffee production was grown on Bird-Friendly certified farms, and only 9% of that was sold as Bird-Friendly certified**. Despite improved efforts to promote this coffee and make it easier to find and purchase, this is indeed a niche product. Lack of demand and lack of availability create a destructive feedback loop.

There is more to mull over in this paper, but we might bear in mind that it focuses specifically on certified coffee. The trend over the last decade of a proliferation of coffee certifications with a vast array of different standards (and in particular the effort to dilute ecological criteria to make certification more accessible) has created a complex, confusing, and opaque landscape for consumers.

Certified coffees are only part of the solution to ecologically-sustainable coffee production and sustainable livelihoods for farmers. While the market works itself out, I think it’s worthwhile to not only encourage the purchase of Smithsonian Bird-Friendly certified coffee, but also stress the importance of what coffee not to buy — cheap, corporate coffee with mystery origins. Boycotting Folgers and Maxwell House, two brands that represent nearly 30% of the retail volume of coffee sold in the United States, is the least we can do given their unimpressive efforts at sustainability.

More on this study:

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*The study did not ask about income, but noted that the participants had either paid a $44/yr membership fee and/or made a $100 donation to the Lab, indicating some level of disposable income.
**For various reasons, growers may not sell all of their certified crop to buyers who will sell it as such. For example, Smithsonian Bird-Friendly certified coffee cannot be mixed in with other beans and sold as certified.

Market data in last paragraph via Euromonitor Passport.