Sustainability
Sustainable business practices are at the heart of our operations
One of the reasons we decided to launch our coffee roastery was the belief we could build sustainability into virtually every aspect of our business, and we’re doing just that. In what we consider the “coffee bean lifecycle” our team continually seeks ways to make sustainability the starting point of all our business decisions.
Here’s where we’re at so far.
Why we only roast organic beans, the majority of which are Fair Trade or Rainforest Alliance certified
You may not know a lot about coffee bean farming, but the people that produce the amazing beans you enjoy every day often are not fairly compensated for the commitment they make to the global supply of coffee. Fair Trade is one step in addressing that issue while also protecting our planet. Some coffee roasters selectively offer Fair Trade coffee as an option among many other beans they source that do not meet that same standard. At a minimum, we only organic beans, but the vast majority are Fair Trade and many are Rainforest certified. To learn a little more about Fair Trade click here
How we roast our coffee
Choosing our roaster was a no brainer.
Many of the coffee roasters in use are traditional drum roasters, using either gas or electricity to heat the beans. These systems are sometimes chosen because they look great in a shop and can make great coffee. While they can work well, they can also throw off a decent amount of smoke and CO2. We chose a natural gas powered coffee roaster, made in the USA, which uses about 80% less fuel and reduces our annual carbon footprint by up to 41,000 pounds of CO2 vs. a traditional drum roaster. It also roasts in a sealed low oxygen environment which helps to preserve the flavor of the coffee, enabling our team to produce coffee with a consistent and repeatable high flavor content bringing you the perfect coffee experience every time.
Why packaging matters to us
There’s a lot of coffee brands out there, and their packaging is often beautiful and creative. The issue we have with traditional packaging is most of it is made from plastic. While plastic can often be recycled, it’s still plastic…
Working in partnership with our suppliers, we identified a coffee bag that was compostable and met our needs for preservation of coffee freshness. Heck, even the valve on our whole bean bags is compostable! Yes, it’s more expensive, but it’s one less thing you have to think about when you’re enjoying your ACK Roasters coffee every day.
Not to mention, we think we created a coffee bag that looks good on the shelf too.
Local farmers
Within the roasting process one primary leftover is what’s called “chaff.” Simply put, it’s the thin shell that’s shed by the coffee bean during the roast process. The amount left over depends on the size of the roast batch, but we believe even leftovers deserve a second chance. That chaff is rich in nitrogen and is also great at making dense soils more porous. We collect our chaff and provide it to local farmers as a sustainable, nutrient rich addition to their farming process.
Our operations
While we don’t create a lot of waste from our operations, we want to ensure that we repurpose as much of the waste we create as possible. Aside from recycling the chaff from the roasting operation and the efficiency of our roaster, we also participate in single stream recycling of our office and operational waste.
