Coffee Roasting Recipes Food Cooking International Guide
Coffee Roasting Increases Your Carbon Footprint
By John Cranby
How can a certified fair trade and organic cup of coffee still
be a source of major environmental and social problems? After
all, the social issues are dealt with through fair trade, by paying
coffee growers a decent, higher-than-subsistence price for their
crops.
The environmental problems should have been handled through the
growers learning to farm with organic methods. Yet it’s during
all the steps afterwards of hulling, coffee roasting and so on
that the problems appear.
While fair trade and certified organic coffee is frequently handled
conscientiously at the level of cultivation and harvest, you may
be surprised to learn that there can then be problems at different
processing levels.
Hulling With Wet And Dry Methods
Before roasting even takes place, the pulp of the fruit needs
to be removed to reveal the seed, what we know as the coffee bean.
When hulling is done via wet methods, massive amounts of water
are used, and waterways can be contaminated with organic pollutants.
Yet dry hulling methods produce a lower quality product.
Then think of the heat involved in coffee roasting. There’s an
awful lot of energy being used for that process; much of it lost
as air is vented to the outside after roasting.
Pollutants Produced From The Coffee Beans
That air itself has had to be cleaned of the pollutants that
come from the beans themselves as they roast, such as nitrogen
and sulfur compounds, organic acids and so on.
Add to this the fact that most roasting and cleaning ovens use
natural gas, and you’ve got CO2 emissions to deal with too. What
was that about certified organic coffee?
Coffee Industry Turning Green In The Future
Obviously, organic blend coffee still carries a lot of non-organic
baggage. In fact, many claim that the environmentally unfriendly
methods used for coffee roasting, hulling and all the other processes
completely wipe out whatever good was done at the organic farming
level.
Steps are slowly being taken to find better hulling methods for
the beans, and to create ovens that won’t use so much energy or
emit pollutants. But changing the coffee industry into a completely
green industry is clearly going to take some time.
About The Author:
John Cranby is a popular author on cooking. His other articles
include Books
for Cooks, Cake
Decorating Supplies, Anniversary
Gift Baskets, Virginia
Peanuts, Herbal
Teas, Coffee
Houses, Peanuts,
Salt
Water Taffy, Pumpkin
Seeds, Casserole
Recipes, Milk
Chocolate Candy, Make
Chocolate Truffles.
Keep a lookout for more of his articles on this site.
Did You Know?
Fair trade coffee is a growing topic among traders and would-be
investors and it is with good reason. Coffee is one of the world’s
most popular beverages behind water and tea. People drink it daily
by the cup, carafe, or pot.
So why not take advantage of that demand and get into trading
coffee. It is going to take some education though and it is going
to take some guidance but with the right advisor you can make
money and educate yourself on what the coffee trade is all about.
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