Green brands: Cafedirect

Cafedirect is a coffee brand with a long history of engagement with ethical issues. It was the first coffee company to sell Fairtrade coffee in the UK. 

But how sustainable is the brand? 82% of people who had recently bought from Cafedirect viewed it as sustainable, when we surveyed them about brands' green credentials.

Which? carried out a survey in February 2023 into our members' perceptions of brands and their sustainability. We asked Which? members about brands they had shopped with and got them to rate how sustainable they thought those companies were – and to give us their reasons why. We then took a further look at some of the brands that scored highest, to see whether the reality lives up to the high expectations.

The top reasons people gave us for thinking of Cafedirect as sustainable are because it carries sustainable certification (72%), believing it uses sustainable farming practices (47%) and because the brand contributes to sustainability initiatives/projects using its profits (37%).

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What environmental issues are associated with coffee?

The coffee industry has long been associated with ethical issues relating to human rights abuses, including forced and child labour and poor treatment of smallholders. Coffee producers are mainly smallholders – around 80% of the world’s coffee is produced by 25 million smallholders, according to the Fairtrade Foundation.

Buying Fairtrade (as well as Rainforest Alliance or Fair for Life) certified coffee goes some way towards protecting the rights and working conditions of coffee farmers. Fairtrade is the only scheme that sets a minimum price that farmers must get for their coffee, even if market prices fall beneath it.

But alongside its ethical concerns, coffee production can also have negative environmental consequences.

Historically, coffee was a plant that was grown in shade.  Shade-grown coffee is made by growing coffee plants among trees. This creates biodiversity, helps sequester carbon and minimises the need for extra water.

Increased global demand for coffee has led to ‘sun-grown’ coffee plantations, in which trees are cleared to create more space for coffee plants. These are grown in direct sunlight and have been adapted to suit this environment. Sun-grown coffee can be grown more efficiently and has a higher caffeine content. 

But this method of growing can come with all the negatives of any monocultural crop – biodiversity loss, soil erosion and depleted soil, a need for irrigation and pesticides and often heavy fertiliser use. The extent of these issues will vary significantly between farms and the methods that they use.

Some coffee brands label their products as ‘shade-grown’. ‘Bird-friendly’ is another good certification to look for; it means coffee will be both shade-grown and organic.

Arabica and robusta coffee

The two most common types of coffee beans are arabica and robusta. Robusta is often used in espresso blends, as it helps produce the crema layer on the top, and is also commonly used in instant coffee. It's cheaper than Arabica. Arabica is usually regarded as having a superior taste.

Robusta beans are more likely to be sun-grown, although this isn't always the case. Choosing 100% Arabica coffee could be a first step in a more ecologically friendly direction, but it can still be grown in less sustainable ways,

Regardless of the bean, looking for organic certification will help mitigate against some of the damaging farming practices and mean that far less fertiliser and pesticides are involved in its production.

And a final thing to consider – the carbon impact of dairy milk is significant. You can easily make your coffee more sustainable by having it black or with a plant-based ‘milk’, or by reducing the amount of milk you drink – a latte has a bigger carbon impact than a coffee with a dash of milk.

Cafedirect: In summary

It's worth bearing in mind that despite all brands having some inevitable shortcomings, the companies featured in this green brands guide have been selected by members as being more sustainable within their markets. 

These are generally brands doing significantly better than average in their sector and should be recognised as such.

Who owns Cafedirect?

UK-based coffee brand Cafedirect launched in 1991 to sell the produce of three farmer co-operatives in Peru, Mexico and Costa Rica – a direct trade initiative.

Cafedirect and certification

72% of the coffee that Cafedirect sells is organic and certified by the Soil Association. According to Cafedirect, this reduces greenhouse gases through less chemical fertiliser use, improves biodiversity and soil health and reduces water pollution.

100% of its coffee is certified Fairtrade. This is a core value underpinning its ethos – Cafedirect was the UK’s first and largest Fairtrade coffee company.

Its website gives more information about the coffee blends and the producers behind them, including their sustainability initiatives.

Cafedirect is also B Corp Certified. B Corp is a good label to look for if you're seeking sustainable brands – it's an independent certification that looks at a business’s standards across key areas of environmental, social and governance and only certifies businesses that achieve above a certain score. It also requires that businesses have a governance structure that must take all stakeholders into account.

Cafedirect and sustainable farming practices

Cafedirect’s Gold Standard is a responsible growth framework that has the environment as one of its four pillars.

It’s committed to a target of 2030 by which all of its products will be grown to its Regenerative Agriculture Principles – farming practices that contribute to the health of ecosystems as well as human communities.

It does use some robusta coffee beans in some of its blends, but this comes from smallholders in East Africa where Cafedirect says it is mostly shade grown under native trees.

Cafedirect and sustainability initiatives

Cafedirect is a social enterprise, so every year it donates a portion of its profits to Producers Direct, an NGO that invests in small-scale farmers through training and support. This includes supporting farmers to adapt to climate-smart, regenerative practices.

It only buys from smallholder coffee producers.

It has near and long-term targets set according to the Science Based Targets initiative (a pathway to reducing emissions in line with the Paris Agreement – limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels).

It's committed to reducing its scope 1 and 2 emissions by 46% by 2030; by 2040 it says it will have reduced all of its emissions, including scope 3 (essentially those created by its supply chain), by 90%.

Cafedirect and packaging

The packaging that ground coffee or coffee beans come in must keep the coffee protected from sunlight, oxygen and moisture, so it's challenging to make it easily recyclable. Cafedirect has recently made its packaging fully recyclable but this doesn't mean that you can put it in with your household recycling. Most councils don't yet offer collection for flexible plastics, so it's likely you will have to take empty packets to a flexible plastics collection point – usually found at supermarkets.

Cafedirect has also recently replaced its instant coffee's glass jars with aluminium tins, citing a lower carbon footprint.

* In November 2022 we asked our full panel of members which brands they had bought from or planned to buy from because they believed they were more sustainable than others in the market. The list of brands our members could choose from in this survey was based on the findings from this.

Interested in sustainable choices? Find out more about supermarkets and the environment, how to buy second-hand online or what makes a green energy supplier.