Sustainability
Building a sustainable business is central to Counter Culture Coffee's mission. We strive to be leaders in sustainable coffee and combine our commitment to buying high-quality coffee with respect for the natural environment.
Since the beginning, we have sought coffee that not only tastes good but also does good—for our local community and for all of the communities around the world where our partners grow coffee—and we continue to raise our standards as we make progress. Whether through our 10-year partnership with the National Fish and Wildlife Fund, our Counter Culture Direct Trade Certification or our projects aimed at reducing our environmental footprint, our day-to-day decisions reflect our dedication to real environmental, social, and fiscal sustainability.
Our vision is to pursue coffee perfection by creating partnerships that ensure prosperity for all people, improving the natural environment and operating efficiently to minimize our environmental impact.
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| Sustainability News and Events | ||
Worm Compost Update from Colombia
In my Colombia trip report of (what seems like) many months ago, I mentioned a newly-begun project to supply the growers of La Golondrina with more organic material for their small, certified organic coffee farms. Almost a year ago, Virmax and Orgánica, the association of growers behind La Golondrina, decided to purchase worms and build a small composting operation together on land adjacent to Nelson and Liliana’s farm outside of Popayán. In August, I spent an afternoon driving around the city of Popayán with Nelson and Giancarlo Ghiretti of Virmax to buy construction materials for the first worm beds, and, since then, the project has come a long way: I am happy to report that the first batch of compost is ready to harvest and that the worms are doing great! Our partners have learned a lot through experimentation about how factors like humidity, food, and pH balance impact worm productivity. The next step is to send samples from the different worm beds to a lab for testing and for recommendations about the ideal amount of compost to apply to coffee plants, and once they have that information, Organica plans to start distributing their worm compost to farmers.
I feel like I have been excited about this project for nigh on forever because it is so easy to fit worm compost into a model for long-term farm sustainability: good compost leads to good soil, which leads to good-tasting coffee, (of course) but also a consistent supply of coffee, which is at least as important to a small-scale grower as a year of hitting the jackpot with microlot scores and prices. Counter Culture Coffee made a donation to this project in the name of our customers this past holiday season, and (spoiler alert!) we are already planning our 2010 holiday program with La Golondrina and this worm composting project in mind.
Root, root, root for the worms, I say!
Saludos,
Kim Elena
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