Every morning over half of America wakes up to a cup of coffee. And most of us who drink coffee every day, we play it off like it’s no big deal. “I’m not addicted, I swear!” we claim very indignantly, offended at the thought of someone accusing us of such a thing. And yet every morning, without fail, we will stop at nothing until we get a cup of coffee into us. Which is fine by me—I love my daily cup of joe. But the decisions we make as consumers with regards to that cup of coffee can have large benefits or consequences to the environment.

Reusable Filters

I first started greening my coffee by addressing how I make it. I prefer to use a coffee maker, which generates a small amount of trash daily—coffee filters. First, a few years ago, I switched to unbleached filters. I thought that this was an important step forward. However just this year, I’ve switched to a permanent filter. Now I don’t produce garbage at all!

There are two types of permanent filters: Steel and Gold. The stainless steel type are less expensive, and are treated in such a way as to not transfer a metallic taste. What exactly this treatment is, I could not find out, so I decided to go with Gold. Gold filters are made from 23-karat gold plated stainless steel. The gold keeps the filter from transferring a metallic taste, and they are made with an extra fine mesh to keep grounds out of your coffee. I’ve been using mine for 3 months now—that’s 90 fewer disposable coffee filters in the garbage!

Selecting the Bean

The more obvious way to limit one’s environmental impact with coffee is in selecting your beans. Coffee production in our modern world has spawned a variety of environmental problems: clear-cutting the rain forest; polluting the areas near plantations due to waste products; habitat loss of birds and other fauna due to increase production; not to mention incredible amounts of pesticides used in production.

Proposed solutions for the aforementioned problems abound. It’s common to hear phrases like Fair Trade and Shade Grown tossed around. Organic coffee eliminates the pesticide problem. My local coffee shop imports Fair Trade, Shade Grown, Organic coffees which they then roast themselves.

While I’ve increased the amount that I spend on coffee exponentially (a pound of Folger’s costs a couple of bucks, a pound of the good stuff is more like $12), I feel good taking that first sip of the day: because of the rush of caffeine to my brain but also because I know I’m reducing my footprint each and every morning.