I haven't seen it discussed yet. I'm a big coffee drinker, and I had a debate the other day about their environmental impact. But I don't believe that coffee is worse for the environment than tea. Both often come from far away, so what is the difference really. Do we have any figures?
Follow Us:
@laq
These are almost two different issues. For coffee, the environmental problem lies mainly in the use of nitrogenous fertilisers and machines to separate the flesh of the coffee tree fruits from their seeds. For tea, it is the processing that emits CO2 because the tea leaves have to be dried.
After all it is relative, we can estimate that drinking two cups of coffee is the same in terms of CO2 emissions as driving 1km by car. For tea, it takes three cups for the same emission. So from a global warming point of view, the two are almost identical and do not have much impact individually. It all depends on the quantities.
@Matt Interesting. But this is only regarding carbon emission. Beyond that, is there a way to say which one is less impactful (like on biodiversity, humans...)?
I guess if you compare comparable products like fair trade or organic coffee and tea, maybe not.