Stepping Up Carbon Reduction Strategies

Both the coffee and the tea industry have been implementing initiatives to reduce carbon emissions for many years. But now, companies are expanding their efforts, shifting from carbon offsets to insetting, investing directly in farmers and supply chains to lower their footprint. By Anne-Marie Hardie.

Climate change initiatives have been adopted across the tea and coffee industries for decades. The carbon conversation is not new, but there is increased recognition of the necessity of accelerating these initiatives to preserve the future of coffee and tea. Implementing carbon reduction strategies are expensive, with the economic benefits not being seen for several years. “The industry has set aside, some explicitly, some implicitly, clear commitments to cut on their emission,” said Noura Hanna, head of payment for ecosystem services at Solidaridad, Netherlands. “Farmers are key to reaching these targets; if you are to cut emissions in your supply chain, you must invest in the farms.”

In response to this demand, key players in the industry are making significant shifts to help ensure that these carbon initiatives are sustained and expanded.

Actions with Powerful Impacts

When it comes to reducing carbon, Level Ground Coffee Roasters in Victoria, Canada, has adopted a comprehensive approach, including providing less carbon-intensive options to their customers. The company partners with smallholder coffee farmers who have integrated environmentally sustainable solutions into their production. “These smallholders tend to be far more likely to grow a variety of crops, intercrop their coffee and often will also grow vegetables and fruit to supplement their diet and income,” said Stacey Toews, co-founder and sales manager. “The goal is to strengthen diverse growing rather than monoculture.”

One of the challenges with microlots, shared Toews, is that they are much less efficient to move around and demand more energy. To reduce this impact, Level Ground Coffee Roasters’ imports whole shipping containers, 42,000 lbs of green coffee, via sea freight for the most efficient transit. The company uses roasting technology that reuses the heat generated in the process, reducing their natural gas needs by 43 percent, packaging that is free from labels and adhesives, and 13 streams of recycling and composting, including offering coffee sacks and coffee chaff to local farms and gardens, to ensure that their facility operates landfill free. They also incentivise their staff to adopt eco-friendly modes of commuting, such as paying them to cycle, carpool, and take transit.

Responsive Certification Programs

For nearly 40 years, the Rainforest Alliance has invested in developing and implementing sustainability certification programs worldwide. Today, more than 7.5 million farmers and farmworkers are part of the alliance, alongside 7,600 company partners. On 3 March 2025, the Rainforest Alliance released the updated version of its Sustainable Agricultural Standard. There were several drivers behind the update, but the core ones included creating a user-friendly certification program, enabling more farming communities and companies to participate while ensuring the program is adaptive to the evolving regulatoryenvironment.

Global initiatives like the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) legislation, the United Nation’s Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, and the Global Biodiversity Framework have driven changes in food systems, agriculture, forestry, and business. The Rainforest Alliance certification program evolved to respond to these expectations, so farmers and companies retain market access.

“In recent years, the coffee industry has moved beyond surface-level sustainability efforts to meaningful carbon reduction,” said Francisco González, senior media relations associate, North America, Rainforest Alliance. “Regenerative agriculture, renewable energy in processing, and emissions reductions in logistics have become key priorities. Companies are shifting from carbon offsets to insetting, investing directly in farmers and supply chains to lower their footprint.”

In addition to the updated Sustainable Agriculture Standard, the Rainforest Alliance has developed specialised certification solutions for three critical impact areas: regenerative agriculture, climate, and livelihoods, explained González. These specialised solutions, which are available as optional add-ons for current certificate holders or standalone solutions for newcomers, provide farmers with increased market access and the opportunity to validate their specialist sustainability practices. The first standard to be introduced will be the Regenerative Agriculture Standard, which is launching later this year.

“Stricter regulations and consumer pressure are forcing coffee brands to substantiate their claims with real data,” said González. “The challenge isn’t just setting goals; it’s making carbon reduction financially viable for producers, ensuring compliance with environmental legislation (eg, EUDR), and keeping products competitive in the market.”

In 2024, the Rainforest Alliance began working with natural capital project developer Cultivo, tea producers, and small tea growers in Assam to increase the biodiversity across tea landscapes to contribute to ecosystem health. “Tea estates receive a combination of revenue in the form of a cash payment from the sales of carbon credits, in addition to support in the form of the provision of saplings for planting and reimbursement of planting costs,” said González. This project has several objectives, including retaining 21.2 million cubic metres of water per year to help sustain tea plants during dry spells, a projected  0.327 gain in biodiversity mean species abundance, and carbon sequestering 7.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide over 30 years.

Another project launched in 2024 was a partnership between Rainforest Alliance, Rabobank Acorn and two Rainforest Alliance Certified coffee businesses, Vĩnh Hiệp and Tín Thành Đạt, and 1,500 farmers to implement regenerative coffee farming practices that can increase their plots’ resilience, biodiversity, and carbon sequestration capabilities. “The project objectives are to optimise farm resilience to climate change through agroforestry (while simultaneously maximising the carbon sequestration capability) and to improve farmers’ livelihoods by giving them access to the carbon market,” said González. “When Carbon Removal Units (CRUs) are generated through a farmer’simplementation of regenerative agroforestry techniques, 80 percent of the revenue from those CRUs flows directly back to the farmer.”

Solidaridad also advocates using the carbon market to provide short-term incentives to farmers for their work in reducing carbon. “Farmers need to be rewarded sufficiently to have both a good project and a trusted outcome, which is not feasible if there is little investment or low prices,” said Hanna.

Solidaridad works with millions of farmers worldwide in several supply chains, including tea and coffee. The organisation assists with several sustainability programs, including smart agricultural practices, particularly agroforestry and biochar. “We have been implementing these practices that either reduce or remove carbon with farmers for years,” said Hanna. “What we haven’t been doing well is making visible the positive impact these actions are doing for our planet.”  This failure to measure the impact of these actions, she stressed, has made it challenging to place a monetary value on them so that the farmer can be adequately rewarded.

Both the coffee and the tea industry have made major strides in reducing carbon emissions throughout their supply chains but more work needs to be done to ensure the initiatives are sustainable. Image credit: Vanessa L Facenda.

Solidaridad is committed to changing this narrative by helping connect farmers and the industry to the carbon market. They partner with several credible companies, including the Acorn Platform and Rabobank, to help connect farmers and the industry to the carbon market. “Our role is to implement these practices with farmers and allow them to benefit from the carbon market so that there is a cash benefit towards the practices they’ve implemented,” said Hanna. This provides them with a concrete short-term benefit for implementing the changes and the long-term benefit of increasing resiliency to the impacts of climate change. It is about determining a fair carbon price and fair practices for this sector.

Striving Towards Net Zero

The Nescafé Plan 2030 is focused on accelerating action to support a more inclusive and sustainable future for the coffee sector. Nestlé’s goal is for 20 percent of their key ingredients to be sourced from farmers adopting regenerative agriculture practices by 2025 and 50 percent by 2030.

“Globally, we are working with farmers to help them adopt regenerative agriculture practices that aim to contribute simultaneously to reducing carbon emissions, improving farmers’ income and creating better social conditions,” said Catherine O’Brien, senior vice president, corporate affairs, regulatory, government relations, andsustainability, Nestlé, Canada.

Currently, the plan has trained 148,000 coffee farmers in 16 countries in regenerative agriculture, distributed 21 million coffee plantlets to farmers, established pilot programs with financial support schemes for approximately 3,000 smallholder farmers, and planted more than three million trees in and around coffee farms as part of Nestlé’s Global Reforestation Program.

“By the end of last year, Nestlé globally achieved a 20.38 percent net reduction of GHG emissions versus our 2018 baseline,” stated O’Brien. “We are proud of the progress made so far while also recognising that there is much work to be done.” Nestlé aims to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 20  percent in 2025 and 50 percent by 2030, aiming to reach net zero by 2050,atthe latest. “We’ve set an ambitious target to source 100 percent renewable electricity across all our owned sites globally by the end of 2025 this is inclusive of Canada,” she said. “This is a key part of our Net Zero Roadmap, ensuring we’re reducing our carbon footprint across our operations.”

There have been significant strides, across both the tea and coffee industries, on implementing solutions that reduce the amount of carbon throughout the supply chain. Increased transparency and data tracking has helped raise awareness of the economic and environmental value of implementing these solutions. However, significant work remains to ensure that the initiatives adopted can be sustained. This includes choosing the least carbon-intensive solutions across all levels of production, seeking out partners who share similar values, and recognising the necessity of continued investment at the producer level.

Marie Hardie is a freelance writer, professor and speaker based in Barrie, Ontario. She may be reached at: [email protected].