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Category Archives: Nespresso
The Secret to Enjoying a Greener Cup of Coffee
I once?asked a man which he would rather give up, coffee or alcohol. It was cocktail hour and he generally had two very large, very stiff drinks each?night without fail. But, when confronted with that seemingly impossible decision, he was quick to say, “I can never give up coffee.” A few weeks later, he gave up alcohol for good. Yep, coffee is that powerful.
We love our coffee, but our coffee addiction does not always love the planet. Coffee is generally a pesticide-ridden crop with a disproportionately large carbon footprint. It’s a major source of waste in our society. But it doesn’t have to be. The secret to a cleaner cup of coffee is a greener cup of coffee. Here are 6 ways to green up your favorite beverage of the day:
Use reusable pods.
If you?re a fan of Nespresso or Keurig, you are probably aware that your convenience comes at a high price for the environment. Think of how many of those plastic pods get tossed into the landfills each year. It is one of the most wasteful ways of brewing coffee. Plus, the pods themselves are expensive. Do yourself and the environment a favor, buy a reusable pod and fill it with coffee yourself each morning. It’s cheaper and way less wasteful. Disposable pods are a hugely unnecessary and harmful modern convenience.
(On that note, you can also replace paper filters with affordable and reusable metal ones it you brew drip-style. Reduce waste in any way you can!)
Opt for the Rainforest Alliance certification.
The coffee industry is responsible for a significant amount of rainforest destruction each year. Farmers find wild crops in the rainforest and take down surrounding trees to allow the cherries more sunlight, which hopefully?produces a greater yield. It seems logical from a farmer’s standpoint, but it’s incredibly destructive to our already weakened forest systems. The Rainforest Alliance certification ensures that your beans didn’t come at the cost of precious ecosystem loss. Look for it whenever possible.
Opt for organic, certified or not.
We all know organic crops tend to be cleaner than conventional. That being said, many coffee farmers are unable to afford the expensive organic certification, but have very stringent, clean practices. Learn more about the coffee you buy and see if you can find out what sorts of practices the farmers use (ask your local roaster). I know my local roaster only carries beans that are grown using?organic practices, whether they are certified or not, so I am less concerned about the organic seal. If you don?t have access to?in depth info about where your coffee comes from, then naturally your safest bet is to opt for the organic seal.
Measure your coffee before brewing.
Be sure to brew only what you’ll actually drink. Dumping coffee down the drain day after day is such a waste, especially because coffee requires such intensive effort to make its way to your cup. Measure your beans and water, weigh them if you have to, to be sure that not an ounce gets wasted.
Get to know your local roaster.
Buy coffee from a local roaster and get to know what they look for in their beans and the farmers/co-ops they source from. Not only will you be supporting your local economy, but you can learn a lot more about where your beans came from than you would at the supermarket. Maybe they’ll even give you a private tour of the roastery for expressing interest.
Ditch the to-go coffee.
If you follow my writing, you know I am not a fan of the single-use coffee cup. It’s an environmental disaster, but it also deprives the drinker of a mindful coffee experience. To-go cups encourage a stressful go-go atmosphere. But coffee is such a wonderful social experience, why not take the time to truly indulge rather than grab and go? Take the Swedish concept of fika to heart and sit down, grab a pastry and mindfully enjoy your daily coffee.
Coffee is a special gift. It is painstakingly laborious to grow and harvest, must be shipped great lengths across the globe, must be delicately roasted and expertly brewed, all before it reaches your humble cup. Sure, using a Hario v60 and a filter will give you a cleaner cup in terms of taste, but with a little bit of mindful effort you can make your cup cleaner for the entire planet.
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Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.
Excerpt from:
Coffee Pod Sales Will Soon Surpass Regular and Instant Coffee
Theyre calling it the Clooney effect. Single-use coffee pods are flying off supermarket shelves at a faster rate than ever before, possibly aided by actor George Clooneys persuasive good looks in European Nespresso advertisements since 2006 and, more recently, in the United States.
Kantar Worldpanelrecently announced that coffee pod sales of brands such as Nespresso, Tassimo, and Dolce Gusto (owned by Nescaf) willsoon overtake standard roast and ground coffee after an increase of 29.5 per cent over the last 12 months, bringing sales to 137.5 million. During the same period, sales of roast and ground varieties rose by only 2.5 per cent to 167 million.(The Telegraph) In its report, based on data from 986 million households across 35 countries, Kantar goes on to explain that the global market has expanded 16 percent in the past year, with particularly strong growth in France and Spain.
Photo Credit: Daniel Lobo/Flickr
This is sad news for those of us who wish that more sustainable consumer practices would infiltrate the mainstream. There is nothing green about coffee pods, no matter what the manufacturers tell you. The recycling claims aremostly bogus, as the used pods are a mix of plastic, aluminum foil, and coffee grounds that must be separated by hand in order for recycling to occur. It remains, as Lloyd wrote earlier, design for unsustainability, regardless of how manufacturers want to spin it.
Shipping pods across the country to make the world’s most expensive compost out of the coffee and lawn chairs out of the plastic doesn’t make a lot of sense. As for the people who try to separate the components themselves, there are not that many of them; if they are willing to do that, they probably have the time and energy to make a real pot of coffee.
Change did seem imminent. Earlier this year thecity of Hamburg, Germany, banned the purchase of all coffee pods using council money in an attempt to reduce waste. A YouTube video called Kill the K-Cup got many others thinking about where their used pods end up long after the cup of coffee has been finished. Even the Keurig cup inventor hasexpressed regretat unleashing such an environmental nightmare into the world. And yet, Kantar reveals that sales continue to climb, likely due to the sheer convenience of having to do nothing but press a button.
Coffee capsules have helped create the holy grail of marketing: a new category combining the indulgence of caf culture with the convenience and speed of the capsules.
Nespresso advertises on a historic building in Turin, Italy. Photo Credit: Lloyd Alter
This, despite the fact that pods are ridiculously expensive compared to high quality beans. Pods can work out to cost between 30 and 50 dollars per pound, which is a vast difference from the $16 I shell out every couple weeks for a pound of fairtrade, shade-grown beans.The Telegraph citesKantar analyst Ed John: An average cup of regular instant coffee costs only 2 pence (3 U.S. cents). A caf-style instant is 17p (23) while the fastest growing sectorpodscost an average of 31p (41) per cup.
Pods makes no sense for any reason other than convenience, and even that could be argued: its not that difficult to boil water and push down a French press. But, like so many other environmentally destructive practices, people need to be willing to put in a tiny bit more effort in order to lessen their footprint significantly and yet, Kantars findings show that people really dont seem to care. How sad.
Written by Katherine Martinko.This post originally appeared onTreeHugger.
Photo Credit: Tim Lossen/Flickr
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.
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Coffee Pod Sales Will Soon Surpass Regular and Instant Coffee
Alaskan tribes given tiny amount of cash for climate change resilience
Alaskan tribes given tiny amount of cash for climate change resilience
By Liz Coreon 19 Feb 2015commentsShare
Alaskan Native American communities are soon to be the happy(ish?) recipients of $8 million from the U.S. Department of the Interior in order to encourage climate resilience. If you think that $8 million sounds like chump change when it comes to federal disaster relief funds, and particularly piddling when you consider that the money will go to an area deeply in need of repair and protection in the midst of a climate-induced crisis — well, you are right!
The Office of the Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs issued a press release on Tuesday announcing that U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell plans to make the money available for promoting “climate change adaptation and ocean and coastal management planning.” The press release also states that the Interior “must act to protect these communities” — because, we assume, Alaskan tribal communities are losing access to basic needs like food, water, and adequate shelter due to the effects of climate change.
That money isn’t, however, intended for rebuilding purposes. The Department of Interior notes that of these funds, $4 million will be available for “climate adaptation planning” and the other half for “ocean/coastal management planning” — essentially, it will all go to educate, train, and plan for climate adaptation. More funds could come from President Obama’s FY16 budget proposal, which included $50 million to support resilience projects in coastal areas.
A little background, now: Native American tribes occupy about 4 percent of U.S. land, and make up about 1 percent of the population — and for the part of that 1 percent living in Alaska, climate change is a significant health hazard. For the tribes that still practice traditional lifestyles, 80 percent of their diets are foods gathered from the immediate surrounding — but they can’t gather like they used to, because climate-change provoked coastal erosion is making food harder to come by. Other scary, climate-induced effects include aquatic changes, ecosystem shifts, and increased flooding due to melting ice shelves.
Native Americans have been making their case for relocation money for years. One coastal Alaskan town, Shishmaref, has sought funding since 2002. Homes lack running water and plumbing, beaches are shrinking, and houses are literally falling into the sea. How much would it cost to save the town by moving it inland? That’s estimated at a cool $179 million.
So, you get it: $8 million isn’t nearly enough to prepare Alaskan villages for rising seas and a warmer climate. With this federal money, tribal members will be sitting in on technical workshops about “long-term climate resilience” while they watch their homes slowly tilt towards the shore.
Source:
Interior Department Will Provide Millions To Help Native Americans Adapt To Climate Change
, ThinkProgress.
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Alaskan tribes given tiny amount of cash for climate change resilience
Natural gas drilling is causing earthquakes in Europe too
Natural gas drilling is causing earthquakes in Europe too
By John Lighton 19 Feb 2015commentsShare
Shell and ExxonMobil, as well as the Dutch government, ignored for decades that drilling in Europe’s largest gas field was causing earthquakes that put human lives and property at risk. That’s the takeaway of a new report out this week from an independent group advising the Dutch government.
As the natural gas beneath the Netherlands has dwindled in recent years, residents of Groningen County have experienced an increasing number of earthquakes. Last year, the area was hit with 84. The New York Times summarized what’s going on in a feature last summer:
A half-century of extraction has reduced the field’s natural pressure in recent years, and seismic shifts from geological settling have set off increasingly frequent earthquakes — more than 120 last year, and at least 40 this year. Though most of the tremors have been small, and resulted in no reported deaths or serious injuries, they have caused widespread damage to buildings, endangered nearby dikes and frightened and angered local residents.
Though the quakes started in the 1990s, the strongest came in 2012 when a 3.6 magnitude quake caused widespread damage to buildings in a region where structures were not designed to withstand seismic activity.
It was only after that quake that the government and the drilling company started taking the welfare of residents into account, according to the recently released findings of a year-long inquiry by the Dutch Safety Board, a government-funded but non-governmental organization.
“The Dutch Safety Board concludes that the safety of citizens in Groningen with regard to induced earthquakes had no influence on decision-making on the exploitation of the Groningen gas field until 2013. Until that time, the parties viewed the impact of earthquakes as limited: a risk of damage that could be compensated,” the report concluded.
Residents have been putting pressure on the Dutch government to force production cuts at the gas field, and it has responded; most recently, the government ordered a 16 percent cut for the first half of 2015 on top of cuts already in place. The field is a major source of revenue for the Dutch government, bringing in billions of euros each year. It also accounts for one third of the natural gas produced by the European Union.
The government and the joint venture between Shell and Exxon (NAM, short for Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij, of course) are also trying to win over Groningen residents by paying for damages. From the Times:
The company and various government authorities have also agreed on a five-year, €1.2 billion package to repair and reinforce homes and other buildings, including more than 20 of the medieval churches in the region that have sustained substantial damage.
This all raises questions about U.S. natural gas production and earthquakes. In recent years, wastewater disposal from fracking has caused a dramatic uptick in earthquakes in a number of states; Oklahoma has been hit particularly hard. Though the geological processes involved with the Dutch quakes are different — and Groningen was developed using traditional drilling, not fracking — some of the policy questions are the same. Namely: How bad do earthquakes have to get before the state or federal government considers limiting production?
At the moment, the more business-friendly U.S. government isn’t looking at curtailing fracking. In fact, one state hit by a recent spate of earthquakes, Ohio, is making sure that local authorities don’t interfere with state decisions about when and where drilling is allowed.
In Groningen, the relationship between the gas company and local residents got quite bad before things started to turn around. And at this point it might be too late. “NAM has spoiled trust over the last 20 to 30 years,” Jacques Wallage, a former member of the Dutch cabinet and a former mayor of Groningen, told the Times last summer. “The main question is, Can you rebuild trust?”
Oil and gas drillers across America may someday be forced to cough up an answer to the same question. But for now, fracking in the U.S. just continues — and Americans can only dream of getting more than a billion bucks to compensate for quake damage.
Source:
Earthquake Dangers in Dutch Gas Field Were Ignored for Years, Safety Board Says
, The New York Times.
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All the best science experiments involve dynamite
All the best science experiments involve dynamite
By Suzanne Jacobson 18 Feb 2015commentsShare
Picture a scientist. Good. Now make that scientist a geologist who studies tectonic plate movement. Are you picturing a total badass? Well, you should be, because from 20th century Arctic expeditions to modern day explosives, badassery abounds in the study of plate tectonics.
Let’s start with Alfred Wegener, the German scientist who first proposed the concept of continental drift way back at the start of the 20th century. Yesterday, the New York Times published this beautiful cartoon about Wegener’s work:
To recap: Wegener flew around in hot air balloons to study the atmosphere, hunted seals, fended off polar bears, traveled around on dogsleds, rigged up scientific equipment to box kites, and — perhaps most impressively — endured wicked backlash from the scientific community for what was then a radical new concept. (Lest you forget, this all happened in the early 1900s, which makes these expeditions about a thousand times more impressive.)
Okay. I promised you explosives.
While continental drift is now common knowledge, scientists still don’t entirely understand how the continents move, which is why some of them recently decided to detonate a bunch of dynamite 50 m below the ocean floor off the coast of New Zealand.
No, this was not the move of a bunch of mad scientists, but an attempt to create some harmless seismic waves. Seismic waves like those generated by earthquakes have long been a useful tool for geologists to explore the earth’s underbelly because they pass through (or bounce off of) different surfaces differently. By measuring how these waves travel, scientists can effectively see the different layers of whatever the waves are moving through.
The problem is, seismic waves from earthquakes are too big to get a very precise picture. Seismic waves generated with carefully placed explosives, on the other hand, provide a much more fine-grained view of whatever they’re traveling through.
And so, equipped with plenty of dynamite and hundreds of seismometers, this international crew of researchers continued the tradition of badassery in their field and blew up the ocean (they didn’t really, but it sounds cool when I say it like that). More importantly, the team came away with some valuable new information about how the plate under New Zealand moves around. Turns out, there’s a thin, lubricating layer of rock between the plate and the mantle that allows for some slippage. Scientists have suspected layers like this to exist under other plates, so this is further evidence that this may be a common feature of tectonic plates around the world.
Our big takeaway? Scientists should probably use dynamite more often.
Source:
Geophysicists blast their way to the bottom of tectonic plates
, Physics World.
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Mounties claim anti-oil activists are a threat to Canada
Mounties claim anti-oil activists are a threat to Canada
By John Lighton 18 Feb 2015commentsShare
If you consider yourself part of the “anti-petroleum movement,” you’ve joined ranks with violent individuals who pose a threat to Canadian security, and who warrant close scrutiny from the intelligence wing of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
That’s the main thrust of a “protected/Canadian eyes only” document from January 2014. It was obtained by the French-language Canadian newspaper La Presse. Shawn McCarthy reports, in English, for the Canadian Globe and Mail:
In highly charged language that reflects the government’s hostility toward environmental activists, an RCMP intelligence assessment warns that foreign-funded groups are bent on blocking oil sands expansion and pipeline construction, and that the extremists in the movement are willing to resort to violence.
“There is a growing, highly organized and well-financed anti-Canada petroleum movement that consists of peaceful activists, militants and violent extremists who are opposed to society’s reliance on fossil fuels,” concludes the report which … was obtained by Greenpeace.
“If violent environmental extremists engage in unlawful activity, it jeopardizes the health and safety of its participants, the general public and the natural environment.”
While painting environmental activists as a violent threat — referring specifically to Greenpeace, Tides Canada, and Sierra Club Canada — the report also casts doubt on their motivations. More from The Globe and Mail:
The report extolls the value of the oil and gas sector to the Canadian economy, and adds that many environmentalists “claim” that climate change is the most serious global environmental threat, and “claim” it is a direct consequence of human activity and is “reportedly” linked to the use of fossil fuels.
Never mind that the vast majority of scientists make the same wacky claims.
The report also suggests that the anti-petroleum crowd is doing the bidding of foreign funders, a claim also made recently by Canadian politicians. (Governments in countries with murkier records on freedom of speech than Canada sometimes use similar logic to stymie their own domestic environmental activists. See: Russia, India.)
Activists in the U.S. are under increased scrutiny too. As Grist’s Heather Smith wrote last week, the FBI has been contacting American anti–tar sands activists at home, at work, and at their parents’ houses. Many of the activists had blocked roads in the U.S. while trying to prevent the movement of oil-extraction equipment headed for the Canadian tar sands. Larry Hildes, a lawyer representing a number of these activists, told Smith that it was unclear what the agency was up to.
Conservatives in the Canadian parliament have, meanwhile, been pushing a bill that would expand the country’s intelligence agency’s ability to investigate “activity that undermines the security of Canada,” potentially through “interference with critical infrastructure.” Though the bill is ostensibly aimed at targeting Islamic fundamentalists, it could also allow the government to keep closer tabs on environmental groups. And now this leaked document may be an indication of an intelligence community that is gearing up to get more aggressive.
“What is genuinely alarming about the RCMP document is that, when combined with the proposed terrorism bill, it lays the groundwork for all kinds of state-sanctioned surveillance and ‘dirty tricks,’” Keith Stewart, a climate campaigner for Greenpeace, wrote in a blog post. Considering that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a climate denier known for muzzling scientists in his own government, we wouldn’t put any dirty tricks past him.
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Watch the oceans acidify in real time
Watch the oceans acidify in real time
By Amelia Urryon 18 Feb 2015commentsShare
We have a new way to measure ocean acidification … from space! Just as it did for the rotary phone and the which-way-is-my-weathervane-pointing meteorology, satellite technology will give a big boost to the tech available to monitor ocean chemistry, according to new research. Scientists previously relied on a patchy network of buoys, ships, and lab tests to monitor acidification. By combining satellite measurements of salinity and other ocean variables, scientists can now paint a near-instantaneous picture of the ocean’s acid baseline at any one time.
And, bonus points: It turns out that five years of disastrous ocean acidification is pretty mesmerizing:
Here’s more from Climate Central:
The new monitoring techniques can help monitor hot spots such as the Bay of Bengal, the Arctic Ocean, and the Caribbean, three places where ocean acidification could have major economic impacts but where little research has been done.
New monitoring efforts may come in particularly useful in the coming months, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says there is a risk of major coral bleaching in the tropical Pacific and Indian Oceans through May, an event that may rival severe bleaching that occurred in 1998 and 2010. Some island nations in the tropical Pacific including Kiribati, Nauru and the Solomon Islands are already seeing ocean conditions that can cause bleaching.
Source:
Ocean Acidification, Now Watchable in Real Time
, Climate Central.
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Now we can watch the oceans acidify in real time
Now we can watch the oceans acidify in real time
By Amelia Urryon 18 Feb 2015commentsShare
We have a new way to measure ocean acidification … from space! Just as it did for the rotary phone and the which-way-is-my-weathervane-pointing meteorology, satellite technology will give a big boost to the tech available to monitor ocean chemistry, according to new research. Scientists previously relied on a patchy network of buoys, ships, and lab tests to monitor acidification. By combining satellite measurements of salinity and other ocean variables, scientists can now paint a near-instantaneous picture of the ocean’s acid baseline at any one time.
And, bonus points: It turns out that five years of changing ocean chemistry is pretty mesmerizing:
Here’s more from Climate Central:
The new monitoring techniques can help monitor hot spots such as the Bay of Bengal, the Arctic Ocean, and the Caribbean, three places where ocean acidification could have major economic impacts but where little research has been done.
New monitoring efforts may come in particularly useful in the coming months, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says there is a risk of major coral bleaching in the tropical Pacific and Indian Oceans through May, an event that may rival severe bleaching that occurred in 1998 and 2010. Some island nations in the tropical Pacific including Kiribati, Nauru and the Solomon Islands are already seeing ocean conditions that can cause bleaching.
Source:
Ocean Acidification, Now Watchable in Real Time
, Climate Central.
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Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LG, Mop, Nespresso, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized
Tagged anthropocene, arctic, bengal, carbon emissions, climate, climate-change, data visualization, Mop, Nespresso, oceans, Ona, source
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Nespresso 3194-Us-Bk Aeroccino and Milk Frother, Black
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Tagged 3194-Us-Bk, Aeroccino, and, black, Frother, Green Home Appliances, Milk, Nespresso
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