Coffee

Sustainable coffee - enjoyment without regret!

Coffee: the elixir of life for millions of people. The wake-up hot drink is simply part of everyday life for many - some can hardly function without it. But not all coffee drinkers know what lies behind this popular drink.

Coffee: the elixir of life for millions of people. The wake-up hot drink is simply part of everyday life for many - some can hardly function without it. But not all coffee drinkers know what lies behind this popular drink.

Coffee

Coffee in all its forms is an integral part of our everyday lives - how would we get going in the morning without a pep talk? What seems so natural today has come to us from the Orient. It all started in Ethiopia.

The coffee plant

The coffee bush, an evergreen from the Rubiaceae family, grew - and still grows - there. The bush, which is a good man's height, bears white flowers that open during the rainy season. Since flowering is always triggered by rainfall, the coffee bush can bear flowers, ripe and unripe fruit at the same time. This makes harvesting the cherry-red coffee berries a matter that cannot be done by machine. Instead, pickers harvest the fruits, inside of which lies a core consisting of two "beans".

Coffee

From Ethiopia to the coffee houses of Europe

At some point, Ethiopian shepherds are said to have observed the stimulating effect of the fruit on their goats and dared to try it themselves. It can be assumed that it took several generations to refine the roasting process and the processing of the beans. From Ethiopia, coffee began its triumphal march around the world - first the Arabs discovered the invigorating drink. Coffee came just in time for them, as Islam forbids intoxicating drinks like wine. Consequently, our word "coffee" is one of the many Arabic words adopted in other languages and is derived from "qahwa".

And from the Orient, coffee consumption reached the Occident - where it quickly became a cult. In 1669, the Turkish ambassador is said to have served coffee to the courtly society in Versailles for the first time. Today, Germans, for example, drink around 164 litres of coffee per capita and year, and even in the home of tea drinkers, namely in Great Britain, coffee is gaining in popularity. The Italians drink even more coffee (no wonder, they invented espresso), the Austrians (where you can find a coffee house on every corner) and - the Scandinavians! Above all, the Finns are particularly in need of a wake-up call and consume almost twice as much coffee as the Germans.

Coffee farming: a global big business

This makes cultivation and processing an important sector. Ethiopia itself contributes only about 5% to the global coffee business, but this is because Ethiopians drink most of their coffee themselves. Around the world, coffee is grown in Brazil, Vietnam, Indonesia and Kenya, actually everywhere in the tropical belt where the plant finds warmth and rain. In addition to the well-known Arabica variety, the Robusta genus is also grown. At least 20-25 million families worldwide make their living from coffee cultivation, an estimated more than 100 million people. But do they make a good living from it? That is the question.

What are the working and living conditions in coffee farming?

In most cases, coffee is cultivated under less than humane conditions. The growing countries are all emerging or developing countries where human labour is cheap and even children have to pitch in. Families working on the plantations of the big producers have to take the conditions as they are offered - and this includes not only low wages but also high pesticide exposure. Self-employed smallholders who want to remain independent are their own masters, but they have to deal with poor harvests and the consequences of climate change.

Fairtrade and organic labels and what's behind them

Consumers have a significant influence on the living and working conditions of these people, because there are now some approaches to producing coffee fairly and growing it in sustainable quality.

People who buy coffee with a Fairtrade label know that their morning coffee has been bought from the producer at a fair and guaranteed price. This makes farmers less dependent on the fluctuations and vagaries of the market, promotes long-term business relationships and allows farmers to obtain upfront financing through a futures contract.

Organic labels and decent work labels tell us whether or not coffee plants have been sprayed with pesticides, and whether workers on coffee plantations are treated well and earn a decent wage.

Coffee

Our coffee should be worth a little more!

Of course, all this makes the coffee more expensive. A little. But hand on heart, isn't the brown delicacy worth the extra expense? We can make a contribution with our shopping trolley - and if we reach for a minimally packaged product and leave the coffee capsules to the left, we are also doing something good for the environment.

Although at NIKIN we are primarily concerned with sustainable materials in the fashion industry and fighting global deforestation, it is important to think sustainably in other areas of life as well. We want to motivate people to rethink their lifestyle and possibly make it more sustainable. Coffee is simply part of everyday life. The wake-up drink is particularly popular in offices - so we also drink coffee from sustainable organic production that is certified by Fairtrade or Rainforest Alliance. We don't want to advertise specific brands here, but simply point our readers to sustainable, fairly grown coffee and its benefits. Just join us and drink a coffee on it!

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