University coffees are heating the planet - despite what suppliers claim.

Many if not all universities prioritise sustainability to attract more students, with green university rankings growing in prominence as both students and universities place more importance on environmental responsibility. Universities worldwide serve hundreds of thousands, if not millions of tonnes of coffee to their student body, and yet these coffees are initially shipped in a far heavier state than they need be and undergo many unnecessary journeys before reaching campus - often needlessly re-crossing oceans. https://youtu.be/0rnioVmFO60 Given the size of the coffee sector and the incredible amount of climate damage caused as these huge cargos criss-cross our oceans and road networks, we ask that these practices be brought to the attention of the heads of universities and that the misleading of university procurement departments by coffee suppliers is brought to an end once and for all. Coffee should be roasted before being transported, ( coffee reduces in weight by up to 20% as it is roasted) and up to 20% of the weight of the world's coffee being taken off the seas could have a colossal positive effect on shipping emissions. Then of course shipping directly to the retailer or end consumer, instead of the current practice of re-exporting heavier green unprocessed coffees to maximise profits for intermediaries, is unarguably the only way coffee can be considered climate friendly. Further unnecessary journeys after roasting, as middlemen seek to maximise profits by sending the final product out yet again to pollute and warm an already endangered planet is simply unacceptable to anyone concerned that climate change is the global emergency it undoubtably is. Individual countries openly boast of the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of coffee they re-export simply to maximise profits, a small country like Belgium re-exports over 75% of it's coffee imports amounting to over 232,000 tonnes annually https://www.cbi.eu/market-information/coffee/trade-statistics and Belgium is not even the worst offender in Europe, the same link explains how Germany re-exported over 50% of Europe's coffee imports amounting to 356,000 tonnes in 2019 alone! In the United States many companies openly advertise green unprocessed coffees for re-export across the world, some with upwards of a million tons ready for re-shipping https://ictcoffee.com/our-coffees/ and perversely huge amounts of these coffees end up on supermarket shelves and university campuses labelled as both sustainable and climate friendly. We've spoken at length with major UK universities such as King's College London who were previously unaware of this globally warming madness, as were numerous universities throughout the UK, all believing that environmental watchdogs took these unnecessary journeys into account when supplying coffees, when in actual fact their members are often the very distributors and roasters maximising their profits from these extra sea and continent crossings. These suppliers cannot be designated as climate friendly as they send out scores if not hundreds of unnecessary cargo ships, and thousands of trucks after roasting in order to realise huge profits at the expense of our ever more rapidly heating planet. Stockholm University claim that sustainability and the environmental are central issues for their university, their students believing that the coffees they are served are purchased after assessing the climate impact they bring to campus - as with King's College London, and every other university worldwide, we ask that they make available to their student bodies coffees roasted before shipping, then shipped once and once only. If university coffees are not roasted first and shipped once then unfortunately the university in question is part of the problem - we don't have time for these gross practices to be inflicted on students any longer. Not 1 Bean of our coffee is roasted outside of the farming community in which it was grown, the extra roasting revenue often being the difference between a living wage for hundreds of thousands of farming families and the abject poverty, modern - day slavery, and child labour than haunts the industry. Our coffees are of course delivered directly from the farm to the retailer, university, or consumer, the net result being a huge positive impact on the world's climate as well as a cheaper product for shoppers as we remove middlemen from the supply chain whose only consideration is the maximisation of profit regardless of the massive damage to the planet as cargo ships recross the same oceans and trucks deliver falsely labelled climate friendly coffees to unwitting students. Doing the right thing can be the best business in the world - at NOT1BEAN we've proven just that.