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Twelve years from now, Italian coffee brand Illy will be celebrating its centenary, and it wants to do so by gaining the fully climate-neutral status. Because they can, but also because they have to.
Danger
“If we do nothing, our coffee production will be threatened”, chairman Andrea Illy said in an interview with Belgian newspaper De Tijd. He is referring to climate change, which – at the current rate – will destroy about half of the existing coffee plantations by 2050 through drought, heat or floods.
Illy sees several possibilities for tackling the climate crisis. First of all, he wants to adapt by producing more efficiently and focusing on new varieties. “We have mapped the genome of the Arabica coffee plant and made the knowledge available to the entire world. This information allows scientists to develop new varieties.”
Action will also have to be taken to combat climate change: after all, the food industry is responsible for almost a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. According to Illy, there is still a great deal of profit to be made through optimisation.
Agroforestry
Fertilisation is one of the crucial aspects, as it is responsible for a lot of carbon emissions. “We must avoid monoculture and ensure that soils are better fertilised naturally and better hydrated. We want to combat deforestation. If trees disappear, coffee plants will not get enough shade.” For this reason, the coffee company also sees a great future in ‘agroforestry’, the growing of crops in a shaded area of forest. Finally, Illy also wants to capture CO2 and inject it into the soil. That way, they can create a carbon cycle in the areas where coffee is grown.
Of course, it is not just the plantations that are responsible for the company’s carbon emissions. Illy owns three large factories in the Italian city Trieste. In recent years, the company has already made them more sustainable, resulting in a 66 % drop in greenhouse gases compared to ten years ago. The production sites now run entirely on renewable energy and recover generated heat to provide hot water.
