From Tropical Plantations to K-Cups: A Socio-Environmental Analysis of the Global Journey of Coffee

This is a case study of the social, environmental, and economic impacts of coffee production and consumption worldwide. Coffee, as a globally traded commodity, has a large and growing ecological footprint, from land and water resources dedicated to growing it in developing countries, often displacing biodiverse forest ecosystems, through its transport to markets worldwide, the energy and materials used to package it for the market, to the landfills where the waste eventually ends up, especially from new technologies of consumption such as Keurig cups. Coffee consumption also has significant social and cultural dimensions, adding to the economic value of the trade. There is also growing concern about the sustainability of coffee due to the threats of global warming, which is shifting the optimal growing regions, and prevalent monoculture of a narrow genetic pool which leaves coffee crops vulnerable to disease and other stressors. The global coffee system therefore exemplifies a “wicked problem” in sustainability: a complex Socio-Environmental System (SES) with many stakeholders dispersed across socioeconomically disparate and culturally diverse nation-states, with significant ecological impacts and an uncertain future. The case study is motivated by conflicting reports about the sustainability of Keurig coffee cups, and builds on students’ own experiences with coffee consumption to engage them in a conceptual analysis of the global coffee SES. Students will work in small groups (3-4) to synthesize information about different aspects of the coffee SES, discuss impacts from different stakeholder perspectives, collaborate to develop a conceptual model to analyze the coffee SES and find sustainable solutions. Summative activities engage students to construct tools that show the interconnections between all parts of the SES, leading to a final signature assignment where students make recommendations for the most socially responsible and environmentally sustainable ways to consume coffee on campus.