Sustainability & Sourcing

Traceable coffee, honest packaging, and a smaller roastery footprint.

Sustainability, for us, means three separate things: paying growers fairly and predictably, being honest about the packaging we use, and reducing the environmental impact of roasting itself. Here's where we've made progress, and where we haven't yet.

Direct and relationship trade

Four of our six current origins are bought directly from the growing cooperative or farm, with a price agreed a season in advance rather than set at auction on the day of shipment. The remaining two are bought through a UK importer who publishes the farm-gate price they paid, which we also publish on request.

This isn't formal Fairtrade certification — the certification fee is difficult for a roastery our size to justify — but in every case we can show the price the grower actually received, which is usually higher than the Fairtrade minimum for that origin and crop year.

What "direct trade" means here

  • A price agreed with the grower or cooperative before the harvest is picked
  • No more than one intermediary between farm and our roastery
  • A named contact at origin we can put customers in touch with
  • Publicly available farm-gate pricing on request

Packaging: what we've changed, and what we haven't

Home compostable bags

Retail bags switched to a certified home-compostable film in 2023. The one-way degassing valve is still plastic — we haven't found a compostable valve that reliably keeps coffee fresh, so this remains a compromise.

Reusable wholesale sacks

Wholesale customers within Whitcombe-on-Sea receive coffee in returnable canvas sacks, collected and refilled on our weekly delivery round rather than packed individually.

Shipping cartons

Outer cartons for postal orders are recycled cardboard, sized to the order rather than a single standard box, cutting the empty space we'd otherwise pad with more material.

Roasting energy and waste

Our roaster runs on mains gas with an afterburner that reduces smoke and odour rather than a fully electric system, which remains costly to retrofit into a roastery of our size. We do recover roasting chaff (the papery skin removed during roasting) and pass it to a local allotment association as a compost additive rather than sending it to landfill.

Delivery to our nine wholesale cafés is consolidated into two rounds a week on an electric van, replacing what was previously four separate car journeys.

“We'd rather publish the parts of this that are still imperfect than present a shorter list that looks tidier.” — Miriam Okafor, Founder

Questions welcome

Ask us anything about where your coffee comes from

We keep import paperwork and farm-gate pricing on file for every current lot and are happy to share it with any customer who asks.

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