Coffee drying in parchment in Tanzania. Volcafe Specialty photo gallery.
Swiss multinational coffee trading company Volcafe has enlisted the corporate sustainability consultancy DSS+ (styled as dss⁺) to help transition to operational carbon neutrality.
The green coffee company, owned by commodities corporation ED&F Man, said the carbon neutrality effort follows a sustainability strategy launched last year that includes the promotion of regenerative agriculture practices as one of three primary pillars to combat climate change.
According to Volcafe, whose subsidiaries in the specialty coffee industry include Volcafe Specialty and United States-based Genuine Origin, the partnership with DSS+ will involve a carbon accounting effort among all of the company’s 25 existing offices in coffee-producing countries and importing countries. After identifying volumes and types of greenhouse gas emissions, DSS+ will assist Volcafe in devising a carbon reduction and removal plan.
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An estimated timeline for carbon neutrality throughout Volcafe’s operations, which extend to every continent outside of Antarctica, have not yet been released.
“Taking stock of our current footprint will help us focus our efforts and reduce emissions more effectively, and also, we will be in a better position to support the climate commitments from our strategic roaster partners. We are all in this climate journey together,” Carlos Ortiz, sustainability manager and climate lead at Volcafe, said in an announcement of the partnership late last week.
Formerly known as DuPont Sustainable Solutions, DSS+ spun off of its parent company, the multinational chemical company DuPont, in 2019. Backed by numerous investors, the company acquired two additional corporate sustainability consulting firms — U.S.-based KSS Advisors and Switzerland-based Sofies Group — before rebranding to DSS+ earlier this year.
In the coffee sector — where a post-harvest-processed agricultural product often comes from deforested farmland before being loaded onto international shipping vessels prior to ground transportation to energy-consuming roasteries and cafes — carbon neutrality requires various forms of carbon offsetting.
Recent examples of some larger corporate efforts towards carbon neutrality have come from roasters such as Nespresso and Blue Bottle, as well as from green coffee companies Cafe Imports and Caravela Coffee.
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