The Coffee Carbon Footprint: What’s in Your Cup?
- Anantha Peramuna, PhD
- May 28
- 7 min read
Updated: Jun 3
For millions around the world, coffee is more than a beverage—it’s a ritual.
The scent. The steam. The silence before the first sip. It’s how mornings begin and conversations unfold. Coffee is culture. Comfort. Energy. Identity.
But what’s hidden in that cup is a story that few want to talk about. One that starts in tropical soils, snakes through energy-intensive processing, and ends with emissions that rival some of the world’s dirtiest supply chains.
If your coffee could talk, it wouldn’t just tell you where it was grown. It would tell you how it was grown. What was used. What was lost. What was emitted. And maybe most importantly, what could be different.
Coffee cherry to cup conversion showing weight loss from cherries to green beans, roasted beans, and brewed coffee with leftover grounds.
From deforested hillsides to fertilizer-saturated soils to energy-intensive brewing, coffee’s impact is global and growing. And as demand rises, so does the urgency to rethink how it’s grown, traded, and consumed.
In this article, we unpack the true climate cost of coffee, tracing its journey from tropical farms to your kitchen counter, and explore why changing how it’s made matters more than most people realize.
How the Coffee Carbon Footprint Builds from Farm to Cup
One life cycle assessment found the carbon footprint of an espresso beverage to be 0.28 kilograms of CO₂ equivalent (kgCO2eq) for conventional coffee, compared to just 0.06 kgCO2eq for sustainably produced coffee.
That’s per cup. But zoom out, and the scale becomes harder to ignore.
One study estimates that global coffee production is responsible for an estimated 33 to 125 billion kgCO2eq emissions per year, roughly equal to the entire annual carbon footprint of Denmark.
And that footprint begins in ecosystems already on edge. Coffee is grown in tropical regions where deforestation, biodiversity loss, and water stress are accelerating. These aren’t just production zones; they’re ecological pressure points, shaped by the choices behind every cup.
Why the Footprint Varies and Why That Matters
The carbon intensity of coffee can vary 50-fold from one system to another. Same drink. Radically different impact. That difference isn’t about the bean—it’s about how, where, and under what pressures it was grown.
Farming systems
Coffee was originally a forest plant, grown under canopies, surrounded by biodiversity. But in the push for short-term yield and mechanization, many major producing regions have shifted toward full-sun systems.
That shift comes at a cost: removing shade trees reduces carbon storage, worsens water stress, and leaves farms more dependent on fertilizers and pesticides.
Shade-grown systems, by contrast, support pollinators, store more carbon above and below ground, and provide natural buffers against rising temperatures. They don’t always deliver the highest yields, but they offer something monocultures can’t: resilience.
That said, yield still matters—not just for economics, but for emissions. Low-output systems, even when low-input, can have a high carbon footprint per kilogram if productivity is too low. But piling on fertilizer doesn't solve that either.
In Vietnam, most farmers apply around 0.6 kg of fertilizer per plant per year, aiming to boost yield. Yet agronomic data shows the optimal rate is just 0.24 kg. The excess isn’t used by the plant; it leaches into waterways, releases nitrous oxide, and wastes money. Reducing that excess could cut emissions by 12%, while saving €20 per hectare in fertilizer costs.
The path forward isn’t maximal or minimal. It’s intentional: using just enough, in the right systems, to produce coffee that’s both profitable and climate-smart.
Here’s the catch: Coffee demand is set to double by 2050, but climate change could reduce suitable farmland by 50%. More demand, less land. The future of coffee depends on how we grow it, starting now.
How Processing Contributes to the Coffee Carbon Footprint
Once harvested, coffee cherries undergo a transformation that shapes both flavor and emissions.
Pulping and fermentation: This process remove the fruit from the bean. This process, especially in washed systems, requires water and generates organic-rich wastewater. If untreated, it emits methane and pollutes waterways.
Drying: Drying comes next. Sun drying is low-emission but climate-dependent. In places like coastal Colombia or central Vietnam, where rains come unannounced, beans are fed into diesel-powered drum dryers that rumble for hours—a process as carbon-intensive as it is essential.
Dehulling: Dried parchment coffee is milled to produce the green beans ready for export. This mechanical process consumes electricity and adds emissions where energy grids rely on fossil fuels.
Carbon emissions associated with green coffee beans produced under sustainable versus conventional farming practices. Figure includes all emissions from cultivation through post-harvest processing, up to the point where green beans are ready for transport to roasters. (Adapted from Nab et al., 2020) Transport: Moving coffee from farms to mills, mills to ports, and ports to roasters can account for a significant share of coffee’s total carbon footprint, depending on distance and transportation method.
Roasting: This step typically happens in consuming countries, using natural gas or electricity. While it contributes a smaller share of emissions, it’s still significant, especially at industrial scale.
Brewing: Depending on the brewing method, this stage can account for up to 30% of total emissions. That number surprises many. At scale, consumer habits add up.
By the time your beans are brewed, most emissions are already baked in. But each step along the chain offers opportunities to do better.
More than 95% of the coffee plant’s biomass is discarded during processing, from harvest to final consumption.
The Hidden Costs Beyond Carbon
Carbon accounting tells part of the story. Coffee’s impact ripples through water, biodiversity, and lives.
The hidden role of water
Coffee is often rainfed, but not always. In Vietnam, over-irrigation of Robusta plantations is depleting aquifers faster than they can recharge. In parts of Brazil, water scarcity is already limiting production.
At washing stations in Ethiopia or Guatemala, streams of pulpy wastewater spill into nearby rivers, staining the rivers brown and draining them of oxygen—making survival harder for fish, insects, and everything downstream. For nearby families, that same river is used to cook dinner, clean clothes, and water crops.
A single cup of coffee requires about 140 liters of water to grow, process, and transport the beans. Water use isn’t a technical detail. It’s a survival issue for people and landscapes alike.
Biodiversity and what we lose when we simplify
The shift from shade-grown systems to full-sun monocultures has flattened ecosystems. Where there were once thousands of species such as birds, insects, and soil microbes, there are now rows of identical trees under chemical regimes.
Shade trees don’t just sequester carbon. They cool the microclimate. They feed pollinators. They stabilize soil. In a climate-stressed world, they are not nice-to-haves—they are climate infrastructure.
Farmers stuck between risk and responsibility
Around 44% of coffee farming families live below the poverty line.
Many farmers work plots smaller than two hectares. And yet they’re expected to adapt to climate change, reduce emissions, and comply with environmental standards, often without the capital, infrastructure, or market power to do so.
True sustainability doesn’t come from issuing demands to farmers. It comes from redesigning supply chains that enable better practices economically and ecologically.
Anything less shifts the burden onto those least equipped to carry it.
What a Better Brew Could Look Like
There’s no silver bullet. But there is a playbook and many farmers are already using it.
We’ll explore these strategies in detail in future articles. They include regenerative agroforestry, precision fertilizer management, solar drying, efficient irrigation, and better data systems.
These aren’t theoretical. They’re already being adopted. The question is: will the rest of the value chain catch up?
Better systems already exist. What’s missing is alignment and the will to invest.
What You Can Do
For roasters and traders
Start with data. If you don’t measure emissions, you can’t manage them. Begin with LCAs across your key origins, then dig deeper into the high-variability points: fertilizer use, drying methods, and yields.
But don’t stop at measurement. If you buy from large, industrial monocultures, use your influence to shift them toward regeneration. If you buy from smallholders, invest in support. Partnerships reduce emissions. Demands just externalize risk.
Some roasters are already leading the way by prioritizing transparency, partnering directly with agroforestry-based producers, and working upstream to lower emissions. One example is Ønsk, a roaster I’ve worked with that sources mainly from agroforestry systems and shares detailed farm-level data with its customers.
As I argued in The Moral Responsibility of Supporting Agricultural Emissions Reduction, this is not just about emissions—it’s about fairness. Sustainability without support to farmers is a form of structural neglect.
For the rest of us
We need to ask better questions. Who grew this? Was it shade-grown? What kind of farming system supported it?
If your favorite roaster can’t tell you where their beans were grown or how they were farmed, it’s time to ask why.
Buy from those who can answer transparently and who direct resources back to growers.
Studies show that 50% of emissions come from cultivation and on-farm processing. Another 30% comes from consumption. The rest is spread across transport, processing, and waste.
You can’t fix it alone. But your choices shape what the system prioritizes.
And maybe, just occasionally, drink less but drink better.
Final Sip
Coffee is comfort. But it doesn’t have to come at the planet’s expense.
What’s in your cup isn’t just flavor or a cafeine kick. It’s the hum of a diesel dryer, the fertilizer bleeding into a riverbed, the hands of a farmer balancing yields with survival.
It touches ecosystems and livelihoods—a web of decisions made long before your first sip.
The question isn’t whether we should stop drinking coffee.
The real question is: Can we look honestly at the system behind it and still feel good about what’s in our cup?
Let’s Talk
If you’re part of the coffee supply chain and ready to rethink how sustainability is done—let’s talk! We work with farmers, roasters, and traders to turn emissions data into practical decisions that benefit both people and planet.
Feel free to book a meeting if you're curious about how we can support your work.
