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 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 | ||
Seeds Update: Applications Accepted
3-16-13
As you may have read, we've been streamlining our Seeds program – originally created to structure and define monetary contributions to projects that are not coffee-quality-specific but still benefit our coffee-producing partners and their communities. We narrowed the scope of projects and made the application more detailed so that recipients know what is expected, and we get a better sense of what is possible.
For the first time, we instated a fixed application period – January 31 through March 1 – instead of accepting submissions on a rolling basis. The results were encouraging!
We chose one project to fund completely and one to partially fund. The fully-funded project will be with La Voz que Clama en el Desierto, the cooperative in Guatemala that brings us Farmhouse coffee during the spring and summer months. Their project will focus on organic methods to prevent leaf rust and stop its spread.
The partially-funded project will be with our long-term partners the Recinos brothers of Finca Nueva Armenia, also in Guatemala. They came to us with the idea to fund a small herd of milking goats for their village. The goats will provide better and more affordable nutrition, as well as a small number of jobs for locals.
There will be one more funding cycle this year, June 1-July 31. Moving forward, we hope to encourage more geographic diversity. The projects funded this cycle will be completed within 8 to 12 months, and we will continue to share results and impact of the projects with you!
Until next time,
Hannah
Hannah
