CUPS
In 2009, our Sustainability Committee created a set of five-year goals as part of a new company-wide initiative we call CUPS: Coffee as an Unrelenting Pursuit of Sustainability
CUPS embodies the three elements of our sustainability vision and our goals encompass all areas of our business. They are:
| Environmental: | Carbon Neutrality by 2015 |
| Social: | 100% Supply-Chain Satisfaction by 2015 |
| Fiscal: | Profitability Every Quarter and Debt Reduction to 5% of Sales by 2015 |
Accomplishing our goals will require a combination of big-picture changes, like offsetting the emissions of our coffee roasting equipment, and changing behaviors such as unplugging unused computers and turning office lights off when we step away, even if only for a few minutes.
Success depends not only on our own employees but also on our entire supply chain, from our producer partners to our customers and communities. All of our stakeholders will see evidence of CUPS as we make progress—whether in changes to our packaging, surveys on our activities, or through our annual Sustainability Scorecard—and we encourage you to share your thoughts and ideas with us as we move forward together!
Carbon and Carbon Neutrality
Counter Culture Coffee set the goal of carbon neutrality by 2015 as a demonstration of our commitment to real environmental sustainability. We understand that the everyday activities of individuals and businesses all over the world depend on energy sources such as petroleum and coal, and we recognize that burning these materials causes the release of tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) gas into the earth’s atmosphere and accelerates climate change. This system is unsustainable. As individuals, as a business, as a nation, and as a planet, we must end our dependence on these fossil fuels and reduce our need for non-renewable energy, or our carbon footprint. Borrowing a definition from Big Sky Carbon, carbon footprint is “the impact of human activities on the environment, measured in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases produced through energy use, travel, food choices, etc.” Most people (including the whole scientific community) accept that the earth’s climate is changing as a result of human activities, in large part through the carbon dioxide (CO2) released by the burning of fossil fuels. Slowing, and maybe someday reversing, this process of climate change depends on figuring out ways to minimize the carbon footprints of individual people and the carbon footprints of the products we buy, use, and make. We have achieved carbon neutrality when our “product or process does not add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere over its lifecycle.”
