According to the environmental site TREEHUGGER, coffee is the world’s most commonly traded commodity after crude oil, and tea is the world’s most consumed beverage after water. I find this fact fascinating. Treehugger has many suggestions as to how to take action in being more efficient and cutting on waste in many aspects of daily life. Going to a café is a pleasurable thing and that is good but recently, something that bothers me is that at one of my favorite cafés they have started using those plastic stirrers instead of spoons for the sake of convenience. I share Luís´ but I realize that I have to insist on a spoon. Also, there is the question of the sugar packets. I save mine if I don´t use all of it. Really, I think there is no need for sugar packets. A more viable and hygenic dispenser could be used.
One suggestion made on the Treehugger list is to use your coffee mug (these are nice too) (and these) at work instead of a paper (even worst a styrofoam) cup. Fortunately, our cafés in Portugal do not use plastic, paper, or styrofoam for takeaway so it is not a problem, but that gets me thinking about fast food packaging....
With all this money being made there is the question of fair trade. I checked three national coffee websites Delta, Nicola and and Sical which belongs to Nestlé and none of them address the issue. But I did find that Nespresso also from Nestlé, has begun a sustainable program for farmers for their more sophisticated brands. Starbucks the famous and outrageously priced American coffeemaker (which does not exist in Portugal, yet) does practice fair trade. To their credit, Delta Cafés has started a campaign of distributing economic lightbulbs in supermarkets when you buy certain brands of their coffee. Also, on their sugar packets they have started to print ways to be more eco-friendly. They claim that it is an effort to offset their contribution to global warming. The other two brands do not address any environmental issues. In the larger supermarkets here in Portugal, I have not noticed organic coffees for sale. (?)
And as for tea, I think a good tip was instead of using tea bags, invest in a good tea infuser. And if you brew your own coffee at home you can use the coffee grinds as fertilizer for your garden.
