Sustainability
Our sustainability flex is growing, and we ain't even finished yet
Most sustainability pages are full of promises. This one is a progress report. Here's what we've actually changed, who we've chosen to work with, and what we're still working on. We may have a humble brag here and there, but we swear not to make it cringe, as this page is one of those that matters.
What we've changed
Starting with what we can control.
The first place we looked was our own operation, specifically what we were sending coffee out in and how we were getting it there. For wholesale clients that meant switching to clean, reusable coffee barrels delivered by our electric van, which in the past three years alone has saved over 750,000 bags from going to waste. And that’s a number that keeps climbing baby!
For orders that need bags, we offer fully compostable options alongside our newer yellow and black bags Level 4 and 5 PCR plastics made from post-consumer recycled material. Level 5 is kerbside recyclable in councils that accept them, and we're honest enough to acknowledge that not all of them do yet, Some may notice our 1kg bags however are not a Level 5 PCR, but a Level 4 PCR, the reason? The integrity of the bag unfortunately was not simply not strong enough for the weight, forcing us to use a level 4, what does this mean really? Well instead of being a kerbside recyclable, it’s still recyclable but at depot bins, such as at major supermarkets, so we're sitting at Level 4 there until that changes. When it does, we will.
Who we work with
Because who grows it matters as much as how we roast it.
Here's the honest tension sitting at the centre of any coffee business claiming to care about sustainability: the humble coffee bean braves the seas and travels thousands of miles to reach your cup. Acknowledging that openly feels more useful than dressing it up, so we will. The way we start to address it is by choosing producers who are genuinely working to make the growing side better, for the coffee, for the land, and for the people farming it, without sacrificing their local environment in the process.
And here's something worth knowing that most large coffee companies simply cannot say: we can trace every coffee we buy right back to the land it was grown on and the name of the farmer who grew it. Full transparency to the source. When big commercial roasters buy coffee on commodity markets, the beans from hundreds of different farms get blended anonymously before anyone puts them in a bag. That accountability disappears somewhere in the supply chain. Ours doesn't. That traceability is what gives us confidence in the quality in your cup, and it's what makes every producer relationship we build worth building properly.
The Reforest Project — Forest Coffee, Colombia
Forest Coffee are one of our producers in Tolima, and the clearest example we can point to of what a genuine producer relationship looks like when it goes beyond the transaction.
Their Reforest Project has a straightforward but serious objective: plant 5,000 native trees across the northern Tolima and southern Caldas regions of Colombia before 2030, with 500 trees across 60 local producers already targeted for this year alone. Beyond the reforestation work, Forest have built their own co-operative community, inviting local producers into their processing plant and rewarding them on the quality of what they grow rather than the volume they shift. Their graduation scheme gives proper credit to the farmers doing the hardest physical work, the ones hiking steep terrain with sacks on their backs in conditions most of us wouldn't last a morning in. Forest Coffee makes sure that work is seen and rewarded properly.
We loved what they were building so much that we sent our head of operations Jack over to Colombia to see it firsthand. His one complaint was the absence of a decent London chicken shop. Everything else, he said, was priceless. Seeing that level of commitment up close is why this partnership sits at the centre of what we do, and why buying a bag of Reforest means something beyond the coffee inside it.
Read more about the Reforest Project at coffeegreenbeans.com/pages/reforest-project
Or buy the coffee and the story goes with every bag. The Reforest.
Closer to home
The unglamorous stuff that matters just as much.
Roasting coffee produces two natural by-products that most roasteries bin without a second thought. The first is jute sacks, the heavy-duty bags green coffee arrives in. The second is chaff, the papery skin that peels off the bean during the roast itself. Rather than send both to landfill, we've partnered with a horticulture teacher from the London School of Horticulture, based at the Rosendale Allotments just down the road from us in Herne Hill, putting our would-be waste to work properly. The sacks become raised plant beds or weed blockers. The chaff goes in as fertiliser mulch. Unglamorous, practical, and the kind of thing that quietly adds up over time.
On the community side, showing up is the whole strategy. Whether that's supplying coffee for Clink events (who do genuinely remarkable work giving young offenders a second chance through hospitality- seriously, go and look them up), or turning up at the local school sports day with enough coffee to keep the parents standing through little Timmy's tenth lap of the long distance run. No grand campaign behind any of it. Just being a useful neighbour to the communities around us.
Our people
The unsung heros.
Everything on this page is built on the backs of the people who actually do the work, so making sure those people are paid properly for it has never been optional for us. Press Coffee has been a certified London Living Wage employer since we started, paying the real London rate rather than the legal minimum because those two numbers are not the same thing and everyone in this city knows it.
Beyond the payslip, we also officially employ Dustin as workplace morale support. His contract is informal. His impact is not.
What's next
We're off to get our B Corp gold star.
B Corp certification is the next significant step and we're beginning the formal application process this year. For anyone unfamiliar, B Corp assesses a business across governance, workers, community, environment and customers, the full picture of how a company actually operates, covering every corner of how decisions get made and who they affect. It's a rigorous process, the kind that puts everything under a magnifying glass, and in classic Press fashion we're going into it knowing it won't be quick or straightforward. Honestly, that's fine. Standards worth meeting are rarely either of those things.
This page will be updated as that process develops. A sustainability page that never changes is just a timestamp of good intentions, and that's not what this is meant to be.
Fancy a sustainable chin-wag?
Whether you're a wholesale partner, a producer, or just curious.
Sustainability in coffee is a conversation worth having openly, and we're always interested in having it. If you're a business looking for a supply partner who takes this seriously, a producer doing work worth knowing about, or someone who just wants to understand more about how we operate, get in touch.