Red Rock Roasters Goes Carbon-Neutral

More roasters pop up every year to sell coffee with claims of environmental and/or social ethicism. And now, Red Rock Roasters has decided to “walk the sustainability walk” and has achieved carbon-free certification.

“We’ve always taken our responsibility to coffee producers seriously,” says Nancy Langer, managing co-owner of the family-owned, multi-generational specialty coffee roaster. “The Carbonfree certification is a logical addition to our organic- and Fair Trade-certified offerings — it’s another way to reduce our impact and promote stability for the people who grow the coffee we roast.”

Red Rock Roasters’ existing reduction efforts include hot-air roasting technology that is 80% more efficient than conventional drum roasters, reusable delivery totes instead of cardboard boxes, an efficient delivery van to replace an old box truck, an internal recycling program, and partnering with community gardens to compost and mulch burlap bags and chaff.

“We wanted to offset what we couldn’t reduce anymore,” says Langer.

In addition to the carbon-free certification, Red Rock is partnering with the Carbonfund.org Foundation. The foundation uses the Red Rock Roasters donation to purchase and retire carbon offsets from third-party verified and validated carbon offset projects in the same quantity as Red Rock’s operational emissions: over 117,200 pounds of greenhouse gases. These projects are reducing carbon emissions through development of energy efficiency technologies, renewable energy sources, and forest conservation.

Red Rock’s Carbonfree Business Partnership offsets travel to coffee origin countries and conferences, product shipping and delivery, paper use, the gas and electricity that run the whole operation, and employee commutes.

“Climate change is already causing serious problems for coffee producers, who are often among the most vulnerable people in the world,” says Langer. “Apart from social responsibility, it just makes good business sense to operate as efficiently as possible and mitigate our impact if we want to have quality green coffee available to us in future.”

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