It's the simple things in life. For all their supposed sophistication, there's nothing Sydneysiders love more than getting back to basics: sitting in a wi-fi cafe, reading their Herald online while sipping a mochaccino witha splash of cold soy (hold the twist).
However, while feeding your psychoactive stimulant addiction may seem like healthy harmless fun, a caffeine fix comes at a price - and it is the environment that is getting the shakes.
Coffee is grown on 12million hectares worldwide - an area thesize of North Korea. About 99per cent of production is conventional, which destroys habitat and degrades soil and water, WWF says.
Coffee used to be grown under rainforest canopies. Since the 1970s, rainforests have been cleared to make way for dense rows of coffee plants grown in full sun, awash with substances that have skulls and crossbones on their labels (many of which have been banned in Australia) and harvested by workers, often children, who are barely better off than slaves.
Concerned coffee drinkers have long looked for the Fairtrade label, which indicates Third World farmers are getting better prices and working under better conditions.
The Rainforest Alliance also claims to look after workers, although critics say it does not go as far as Fairtrade. In addition, the alliance says coffee carrying its label is grown on forested farms using sustainable agriculture systems.
However, Rainforest Alliance coffee is not organic. Some chemical use is allowed.
An even better choice would be Australian-grown certified organic coffee, says Dave Forrest, a TAFE lecturer in organic farming and coffee production innorthern NSW.
"We're not destroying rainforests to plant coffee," says Forrest, who is also a small-scale producer and president of the Tweed Richmond Organic Producers Organisation. "Coffee in Australia is planted on pasture that was used for livestock. Any clearing that's done tends to be of lantana and camphors."
Organic producers enhance biodiversity and support the environment in the way they farm, Forrest says. Buying organic Australian coffee also reduces your food miles.
As for Third World farmers, Forrest says they would better off growing food for their own people. "That's more important than growing a cup of coffee for someone in Australia."
Whether your favourite cafe is serving ethical coffee is a question you will have to put to the barista.
When you make coffee at home you have much more control over what goes into it and how it's made.
A life cycle analysis conducted for Flexible Packaging Europe this year didn't consider organic versus conventional production but it did look at the process fromfarm to cup and found thatthe most environmentally important factor in making a cupof coffee was the method of brewing.
Boiling a kettle is so efficient that making a cup of instant coffee produced fewer greenhouse gases than making a cup of real coffee with a coffee machine, despite all the processing that went into manufacturing the instant.
The optimum method might be to boil a kettle and make real coffee in a plunger. Milk and sugar would be organic. Ideally the coffee would be black and unsweetened.
Research shows that the 10 per cent of Australians who buy espressos in cafes tend to be young men being macho, whichjust goes to show that testosterone is not all bad.
What we really need is for it to be considered macho to take your own mug when buying takeaway coffee at work. Imagine how much waste that would prevent.
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