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Kaffeemacher:innen-Rösterei - Unser CO₂-Fussabdruck

Coffee Roastery - Our CO₂ Footprint

Last updated: Oct. 3, 2024

The focus of our study is measuring and determining our carbon footprint. We measured our roastery's emissions for the first time in 2022. The results for 2023 are now available.

Where do emissions come from?
Why do emissions occur?
What alternatives are there?
Where is it worth investing to bring about rapid change?

Our roasting volume in Basel increased to 67 tons of green coffee in 2023. This increased our absolute CO₂ footprint. However, because we have become more efficient in our processes, emissions per kilogram of green coffee are lower than in the previous year.

How did we measure?

We collected our relevant data, assigned it to CO₂ equivalents using the Ecoinvent database, and had the entire process verified by carbotech . We compiled the dataset into a CO₂ calculator for roasters. We're making this calculator available to you; please get in touch if you'd like to know more about your emissions.

In this article you will find more details about our calculator.

We have checked and verified our data together with carbotech .

INFO: Who is carbotech?

Since its founding in 1987, the company has specialized in environmental issues. It offers analysis and consulting services for companies and organizations, measures air pollutants, and supports the remediation of contaminated buildings. Furthermore, the company provides its clients with decision-making tools such as life cycle assessments and material flow analyses. It also supports international environmental projects and develops environmental and sustainability indicators for companies and government agencies.

Allocation of data

The data is collected and allocated according to the GHG Protocol . Since we also consider ourselves responsible for indirect emissions and all emissions along the value chain, the scope of emissions is of secondary importance to us. Because where we don't directly cause the emissions, we can influence them by choosing alternatives.

Scope 1 covers direct emissions. In our case, this is the combustion of gas during roasting and the combustion of diesel in our vehicle.
Scope 2 covers the indirect emissions we cause directly at our site, such as heating and electricity consumption.
Scope 3 covers emissions that are related to the company but not entirely within our control. A distinction is also made here between "upstream" and "downstream."

Upstream emissions occur during the production of goods or services that a company buys or uses.
Downstream emissions occur after the production of a company's products or services during use or disposal.

Calculation 2022

category	Scope 1	Scope 2	Scope 3
Area	Process gas Fleet	Electricity Heat	Coffee packaging Shipping packaging Business trips Commuting Garbage
CO2e emissions	5,281.40	1,107.51	15,733.09

Calculation 2023

Why we do not include green coffee

We deliberately do not include green coffee in our roastery's CO₂ calculations, but consider our coffees separately. Cultivation can account for up to 90% of emissions; for the 2022 harvest at our Finca Santa Rita, cultivation accounted for over 62% (including transport to our roastery, it was 84%). Therefore, we examine each of our coffees individually, year after year.

Not only is every coffee different, but so is every harvest. Varying weather conditions influence the need for fertilizers and pesticides, as well as the yield.

We want to take a closer look at where the most emissions occur and not communicate an average value for our coffees, but publish them annually, adjusted and recalculated, to make the differences transparent.

Because even though, apart from Santa Rita, the emissions are not in our hands, we buy and sell this coffee and therefore the responsibility for the emissions lies with us.

For our Finca Santa Rita, we calculated a footprint of 1.57 kg CO2e per kg of exportable green coffee for the 2022 harvest. A frequently cited study* shows 10.44 kg CO2e for 1 kg of conventional Brazilian green coffee. Another study**, comparing 116 farms with different cultivation methods ("traditional polyculture," "commercial polyculture," "shaded monoculture," and "unshaded monoculture"), averages 3.7 kg CO2e per kg of green coffee. Comparing the different values per farm, figures range from 3.3 kg to 18.8 kg CO2e per kg of green coffee are cited.

This range is far too wide, making a precise calculation impossible. Instead, we are in dialogue with farms, organizations, and companies that are involved in calculating carbon footprints.

We also notice fluctuations in our roastery emissions. Therefore, it's valuable to calculate and compare our emissions annually to ensure continuous improvement.

Our company is growing and our emissions are growing with it.

Now, in our second year, we're looking at emissions directly related to our roasting facility—everything relevant that happens between the delivery of the green coffee and the delivery of the roasted coffee.

Our CO₂ footprint 2023

You can find the detailed calculation here .

The carbon footprint of our coffee roastery in Basel totaled 27,673 tons of CO₂e in 2023, which is approximately 5.5 tons (8.3%) more than the previous year. This reflects an increase in production volume of 17.2 tons of green coffee. This results in 0.42 kg CO₂e per kg of green coffee. In 2022, it was 0.45 kg CO₂e per kg, which is primarily due to the increased production.

86% of the roastery’s emissions fall into 3 categories:

Business trips (41.7%)
Coffee packaging (23% - with shipping packaging it would be 28.1%)
Process gas (21.3%)

Business trips

In 2023, air travel and related business travel continued to be the largest emissions factor for our roastery. Two flights to Brazil, including domestic flights, were used to expand our partnership with APAS, familiarize ourselves with Farmers Coffee, and visit IFES University and the Lucas Lousada Research Center. In addition, one person traveled to Nicaragua to taste our farm's new harvest and visit other farms.

Building and maintaining relationships is an important aspect of our work. Good things can flourish from healthy relationships. We are in regular contact with our partners, but to build and maintain long-term partnerships, align values, and strengthen trust, face-to-face meetings are necessary. Our partners visit us, or we visit them on-site – these encounters generate many ideas and we develop shared visions. Therefore, we will undertake further business trips, but limit them as much as possible.

Coffee and shipping packaging

Coffee packaging is the second-highest emitter when considering roastery emissions. If we include shipping packaging, packaging will account for more than a quarter of the roastery's footprint by 2023.

We switched to mono-PE bags in 2022 ( read the article here ), but had to return to the previous bags due to quality issues. This increases the attributed emissions both overall and proportionally.

However, these figures are misleading, because if you consider the entire lifespan of a coffee bag, an additional approximately 2.7 kg CO2e/kg packaging*** must be taken into account for thermal recycling. This nearly doubles emissions.

It's also important to note that the underlying data refers to the emissions from the production of the film for our bags. While adhesives, inks, zippers, and valves are included in the mass, the production of the bags with these extras is not included.

The production of block-bottom bags, in particular, requires high energy consumption and very large production facilities. Depending on the production location, printing, and color choice, the value can be understated by up to 1 kg CO2e/kg of packaging.

In addition, there are the boxes we ship the coffee bags in. This does not include the boxes we use to ship the coffees to your home. (These boxes are generated in our shop and are therefore not included.)

Process gas

This refers to the gas we need for roasting and operating the roaster. This consumption is, of course, linked to the roasting volume. If we roast more, consumption increases. We roast with 100% biogas. Even though we pay for biogas and include biogas in our emissions calculations, we know that we are not burning biogas. Because your contribution ensures that the amount consumed is fed into the grid.

What do we do with the result?

Compared to the entire chain, the roastery's carbon footprint is minimal. If we compare the roastery's carbon footprint with the cultivation, the share is approximately 15% of Santa Rita's harvest (calculated per kilogram of roasted coffee). However, our research also showed us how much we can improve here as well.

It should be emphasized that only 30% of this is attributable to Scope 1 & 2. Too often, companies focus on communicating Scope 1 and 2 emissions – but these are "low-hanging fruit" compared to Scope 3: emissions that can be quickly changed through a conscious decision.

Since 2023, EU companies with more than 250 employees have been required to record and report their emissions. This does not apply to us and likely only applies to very few nano- to meso-roasteries.

But that's not our driving force. We want to learn as a company and prepare ourselves for the future. Together with other socially and ecologically responsible and future-oriented companies, we want to demonstrate how the coffee industry itself can drive carbon footprint reduction.

From the results, we derive action targets. We identify simple, achievable goals and initiate projects to address the larger challenges facing our industry. This includes, for example, emissions-reduced coffee packaging.

Small improvements from 2022

We now give the coffee grounds and silverskin to the Ratschaft , a non-profit animal welfare organization, which uses them to make compost.
We use more stable shipping boxes that we can ship and reuse between our German and Swiss locations.
Shipping boxes that are no longer needed are given away
Coffee sacks are offered for upcycling projects

Efforts on a Large Scale (Notes 2023)

One major project is making coffee packaging as sustainable as possible. We will publish further articles on this topic.

We are currently examining the possibility of installing a solar system on the roof of our roastery with structural engineers and the city.

Note 2023

The "Major Project: The Best of All Coffee Packaging" is in its final stages. We will have new packaging in 2025. It's not sustainable packaging, but it's more sustainable. We've tested, measured, tasted, and reduced as best we can. And we know this is just one step among many. We need to keep looking around, critically questioning, and trying to understand. Only then can we improve quality and sustainability.

As announced in 2022, our roof has been adorned with a solar panel system since January 2024, which can cover our electricity consumption in good weather while still feeding into the grid. Once we have more data, we can estimate how much of our electricity needs can be covered.

Criticism of the CO₂ approach

The focus on CO₂ emissions can be criticized because it ignores other environmental impacts. For example, high CO₂ emissions can also lead to water and soil pollution. And other environmental impacts, such as the reduction of biodiversity or the emission of other pollutants, are not taken into account in the CO₂ analysis.

A comprehensive environmental assessment should therefore consider various environmental categories and the entire life cycle of a product. Only in this way can a well-founded statement be made about the actual environmental impact. We will therefore continue to use the method of ecological scarcity**** in the future to draw attention to areas that are not apparent from a pure CO₂ analysis.