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Piero and his team have encountered this problem, and they rely on the relationships that develop between producers and green buyers to help navigate the sometimes murky waters of broken contracts and unproductive crops. "In Ecuador last year we bought from these producers for the first time, and this year they're telling us there isn't any coffee because they got hit by rust," Piero says. "The hard thing in that case was that last year is the first year we bought coffee from them, so there isn't a track record or relationship. They can't come to us and say, 'Is this something you can help us with?' But in Sulawesi a couple years ago, they had a very extreme case where the crops went down 70 percent because of rain, and basically they came to us and told us, 'We're very sorry, we can't offer you any coffee.' They didn't ask for anything, any additional support, but they could offer us coffee when it was available. We're still there: Last year and this year they've been able to offer coffee to us, so essentially the relationship continued." imal carbon footprint arise, especially as a company grows and requires more resources in order to serve its customers. Ritual Roasters cofounder Eileen Hassi Rinaldi has been mindful of waste from the start: "We were pretty committed to doing things the right way from the beginning," she says. "San Francisco has citywide composting, so any packaging that could be compostable we went for. That hasn't changed." While the cafés are able to internally manage things like separating recycling and compost material from landfill waste, Ritual has run into concerns of a different type as its scope has expanded outside the shops. "The biggest challenge right now is the packaging for coffee beans," Eileen says. "We used to use compostable bags, and we've recently switched back to the regular foil-lined ones because the 'compostable' options are mostly greenwashing, my sources have told me. I look forward to there being a better option someday." When trying to balance freshness, service, and quality with Earth-friendliness, it's hard to know what to choose: There are still "I think a lot of people have a misconception that in order for something to be green it needs to be expensive," says café owner Sanford Bledsoe. In addition to simply keeping coffee supplies up, there's also the question of packaging for shipment from origin (is jute, GrainPro, or vacuum packing the better option?) and the shipping options themselves (is air freight worse than barge transport?), not to mention storage concerns and even the mountains of paperwork that go along with negotiating any coffee deals—let alone ones that come with specific certification requirements. "I definitely think that we should strive to have a more sustainable coffee industry, especially on the farm level. Even though yes, we don't have a preference if a producer uses chemicals or doesn't use chemicals, it's not like we're going to buy coffee from a farmer who is irresponsible," Piero continues during a discussion of the increased demand for certified coffees. "For us, quality will always come first. Being certified or not being certified is basically a personal and business decision for the farmer, and they are the ones that need to decide if it's going to work for them. But the market is growing very rapidly. We have pretty high standards, and we've found the cooperatives being able to deliver, not only for certifications, but also quality." Roasting Adding value to green beans by roasting can also add to the environmental problem: The energy it takes to roast coffee might not be the biggest sap along the supply chain (believe it or not, the café is the worst offender on that tip), but between staffing, stocking, lighting, powering, and shipping all that finished coffee, the amount of consideration that needs go into the operation of a green-minded business can seem overwhelming. Even in the eco-mecca of San Francisco, challenges to maintain a min66 barista magazine many instances in which product versus preservation is the question, while in an ideal world product and preservation would be the answer. Should the delivery truck run on biofuel or electricity, or does traditional petrol make more fiscal sense? Should roastery employees be given incentives to bring lunch, carpool, and go paper-free in the office? Is buying carbon offsets a worthwhile investment, or does it fall under the "greenwashing" category? Tracking the impact of these different aspects of a roasting business can seem an insurmountable task, but it's not impossible. Books like Austen Schendler's Getting Green Done might not speak directly to the concerns facing coffee roasters, but they can be helpful when trying to put eco-logistics in place and weighing big-picture options (like going solar-powered) against small-scale changes (like working with the lights off until noon). Retailing Perhaps the last place many of us think as being directly affected by climate change is in the retail environment, but there really is more to being eco-responsible than simply selling organic coffee and encouraging customers to recycle (though both of those things are hugely important as well). For some retailers, an assumed economic burden can be the barrier between being green and simply sticking with the unsustainable status quo: Disposable cups, energy-inefficient equipment, and staff that's not trained to think big-picture about things like coffee or milk waste. "I think a lot of people have a misconception that in order for something to be green it needs to be expensive," says Sanford Bledsoe, cofounder (with Anna Foster) and owner of the (espresso) bar in Ann Ar-