I spent almost every single weekend senior year at a local coffee shop exactly eight minutes from my house. Despite the fact that I’m about as far from your average hipster café-goer as you can get, I passed countless hours there, bent over a corner table with art history notes or English papers or physics problem sets spread over the two-foot-by-three-foot space. I learned quickly how to distribute my computer, homework, and nonfat vanilla latte in such a way to maximize efficiency while minimizing possible spill damage.
Thus, my senior year passed. Anyone who knows me has heard me reference this coffee shop at least once—I seem to be drawn to it subconsciously, my writing always drifting to allude to its fairly standard atmosphere or its exceedingly good musical selection. This coffee shop holds more of my words than any other place—except maybe my own head—I have written countless college applications, essays, and personal vignettes within its walls. Being there activates some weird prolific switch inside of me. Added on to the external pressure to be productive felt when surrounded by complete strangers who all seem to be working harder than you are—well, it provided the perfect environment to write.
I’ve recently started wondering exactly what it is about the concept of the coffee shop that so draws people—me included—through its doors. The fantasy of meeting the eyes of a beautiful, artistic, alternative stranger across the room while lifting your latte to your lips and instantly falling head-over-heels in love is so overused that it’s funny—but isn’t it also a little true for everyone? Coffee shops seem to hold some sort of romance lacking in every other locale; there’s something extremely personal, for example, in the barista remembering your order for the first time; something almost too rom-com-esque in nearly being knocked over by a college-age guy in his haste to grab two Splendas and a dash of half-and-half on the way out the door—even sans the meaningful eye contact. My recent motivation to become a barista is not only monetary; it stems from a preconceived notion of the coffee shop as one of the best ways to learn about people—to, by learning their drink orders, form with them some strange spiritual connection that can’t be found anywhere else. I find that the allure of the coffee shop is almost too tempting.
That aside, coffee shops also figure prominently in many daily routines. The Harvard School of Public Health reports than 54 percent of American adults drink coffee every day. (Considering the fact that most of my coffee consumption occurred in high school before the age of 18, I would assume that number is a lot higher with teenagers factored in.) The U.S. spends $40 billion on coffee per year. I’ve probably purchased at least 50 vanilla lattes in the past twelve months—multiply that by $4 per drink, and you now understand why I need a job. Beyond the facts, coffee shops—and their main consumer item, coffee—fuel not only the daydreams of YA-romance-novel aficionados but also the economies of entire countries, making the institution of the coffee shop vitally important to the global population.
Obviously, this constant demand for coffee necessitates more efficient means of production. And when it comes to the earth, humans have a track record of not being nice when looking for a way to maximize profit while minimizing effort. In the 1970s, traditional shade-grown coffee (which preserved both trees and topsoil) was first replaced by the allegedly more efficient method of “sun cultivation,” which, according to a 2011 article in The Guardian, has cleared more than 2.5 million acres of trees in Central America alone. Sun cultivation is plantation-style, requiring fertilizers, and thus further contributing to the destruction of animal and plant populations alike. The World Wildlife Fund reported recently that, out of the 50 countries with the highest deforestation rates, 37 are major coffee producers. Combine sun cultivation with the fact that 14.4 billion cups of coffee per year are served in disposable paper cups, and it’s clear—our desire for caffeine is detrimental.
I confess that I’ve never considered whether or not my nonfat vanilla lattes were shade-grown, and have always dropped my empty cup in the trash on the way out the door. Despite my obsession with the cultural significance of the coffee shop, I have never dwelt extensively on its environmental effects. But while conducting research for this article, I stumbled across this eye-opener: Americans will throw away almost 31 billion disposable coffee cups in 2016. The chemical within the paper lining—which makes these cups non-biodegradable—contains enough energy to heat 8,300 homes for an entire year.
Fifty of those disposable cups, tossed aside without a second glance, are mine.
The choice to switch to a reusable mug goes beyond personal convenience, then. It’s quickly becoming necessary. Even then, websites and blogs more ecologically responsible than I am urge me to make sure my cute new thermos is also “eco-friendly, long-lasting, and BPA free.” And although it’s been a couple weeks since I last stepped foot into that coffee shop of mine—and I recently switched to chai tea in an attempt to curb my caffeine addiction—I’m beginning to care less and less about which of my fellow mysterious café dwellers could become a story worthy of a teen novel and focusing more, instead, on how the drinks passed over the counter, so innocuous in their summer-themed, disposable paper disguises, have made their way into my hands.
Of course, I won’t be busting sun cultivation rings anytime soon. But my awareness is a start.
Written by Veronica Kim, Journalist for 9th Annual Boston GreenFest
