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Tag: sustainabilityinbusiness
The Journey Behind Our Coffees
Since our involvement in the coffee business in Ireland since the mid 2000’s coffee consumption has been steadily rising along with the number of outlets selling coffee. The variety of coffee styles is very apparent now too. No longer is coffee just good or bad; it’s an opinions business, where different origins and roasting techniques give huge variation to the flavour.
Coffee in the global village
Soaring global coffee consumption is good news for the economies of the countries reliant on the trade, also known as origins. In a growing market where there is huge demand for new flavours. Coffee origins are key to flavour profiles and have become distinct in their own right, similar to that of wine producing regions. This has allowed many smaller producers, like Charles Mutwiri, who produces the single origin beans for our Green Ocean Dorinish coffee, gain an international foothold enabling them to sell direct to businesses like ourselves. Selling directly allows producers to bypass the commodification of their harvest in the futures markets and coffee bean dealers of the stock exchange. We have labelled this process ‘Direct from Farm’. There is a clear line from the farm to the cup which improves transparency and providence as well as giving farmers like Charles Mutwiri visibility on future orders which is key for him in making investment decisions. Our focus with ‘Direct from Farm’ is to support developing communities by proving opportunity for them to grow and prosper.
What is coffee?
A coffee bean comes from inside a coffee cherry, which grow on coffee trees from a region of the world known as the coffee belt (between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn). We use Arabica coffee beans in all of our Woodland Coffee and Green Ocean Coffee brands. Arabica coffee beans originate from Ethiopia and accounts for over 60% of the world’s coffee. Usually grown at higher altitudes and in mountainous areas under a variety of different conditions like shade / partial sunlight etc which impact the flavour of the coffee. Much like wine, coffee flavours reflect their ‘terroir’ of climate, soil type and geomorphology.
What makes some coffee stand out?
Once the coffee cherries are harvested (when they turn bright red) they are dried and graded. As you would expect, grading is critical to the blending and roasting process and is carried out with reference to the SCA (Specialty Coffee Association) rules. Once a coffee achieves a grade of 80 or above, it is categorised as speciality grade arabica. Both Green Ocean and Woodland Coffee are all specialty grade, and this has been a key reason why we won 3 out of the 6 prizes in the two coffee categories at last year’s Blas na hEireann Irish Food Awards.
Woodland and Green Ocean Coffee
Each of the coffees in the Woodland and Green Ocean ranges offers difference, the flavours are contemporary, balanced and nuanced. Roasted in Ireland, all of our coffees proudly carry the ‘Guaranteed Irish’ logo and both Woodland and Green Ocean fund real environmental projects here in Ireland which deliver long term measurable benefits in terms of carbon sequestration and biodiversity improvement on land and in our coastal seas.
If you fancy finding out a bit more about our award-winning coffee that makes the world we live in a better place, then please get in touch!
More about Woodland Coffee here
More about Green Ocean Coffee here
Green Ocean Coffee – Become a volunteer
We are overwhelmed by the response that our Green Ocean Coffee projects are getting both from the media and the community. Philip Bromwell from RTE news, produced a really evocative piece on our project to re-introduce the native Irish oysters back into Dublin Bay; Philip captured the sentiment and intention of the project well. Have a look at the short video below.
Would you like to find out more or would like to get more involved? If so, we are running volunteer sessions (usually on a Friday afternoon at about 2:30 once a month). These sessions are being run with the Marine Ecology group which is part of the School of Biology & Environmental Science in UCD. Under the supervision of a Master’s student, we will be gathering data to evaluate the impact of the project and determining the health of the oysters. This involves measuring and weighing the oysters and inspecting them for overall health. We will also be examining the gardens to see if they have recruited any other marine ‘hitch hikers’ that like the company of our oysters. Before we return the gardens to the water, we will wipe any silt / bio film off the baskets to enable sea water to flow freely through the baskets. There will be no heavy lifting required and you will hopefully gain an appreciation of the potential that this project has in rebuilding nature and combating the negative impact of climate change.
To find out a bit more, please check out www.greenoceancoffee.ie or drop us a line on info@greenoceancoffee.ie
Launching Green Ocean Coffee
At Watermark, we are committed to running our business in a way that minimises our environmental impact. This is an unrelenting process that requires a lot of thought and vigilance but we’re up for the challenge!! As a person who has always been deeply interested in the natural world, I feel that our business has an opportunity to do more than just minimise our environmental impact in a way that is meaningful, transparent, and measurable.
From Woodland Coffee (and 27,000 trees later)
Buoyed on by the success and response to our Woodland Coffee initiative, launched in 2020, I felt that I wanted to do a project that involves my love of coffee and the sea. After 3 years, which involved a lot of research, planning, scrapping plans, starting over, more research, negotiating, refinement of ideas, the output of this process is a new coffee brand called Green Ocean Coffee.
Making Green Ocean Coffee a reality!
While getting to this stage has not been straightforward; the idea behind Green Ocean Coffee is simple; for each bag of Green Ocean Coffee purchased, 1 square metre of seabed will be restored to promote the development of oyster and sea grass reefs in Clew Bay Co Mayo, Ireland. We have partnered with Clew Bay Oyster Co-Op to restore 180 hectares of ancient fishing grounds in Clew Bay which are now closed to fishing and are designated as special areas of conservation (SAC). The restoration involves creating a habitat that allows for oysters, and in turn seagrass to re-establish. This habitat is wonderful for expanding biodiversity as oyster reefs and seagrass beds provide excellent nursery grounds for juvenile fish and marine invertebrates. Below is a video introduction on Green Ocean Coffee. There is a lot more information on the website www.greenoceancoffee.ie (Click here to link)
The Coffee itself
We have selected a different style of coffee for our Green Ocean blends favouring more medium and lighter roasts that are a combination of single origin and multi farm blends. The coffee is sourced directly from the coffee farmer, and we have chosen these based on quality but also for the progressive production and sustainability values that the farmers represent. I invite you to read about these farmers like Charles Mutwiri in Kenya who is a changemaker in terms of developing a profitable business that provide opportunities for his community while also championing female participation in the coffee industry.
Apart from amazing coffee, this is a truly wonderful project on so many levels. The oceans play such an important role in regulating the earth’s temperature and in absorbing atmospheric carbon. Sea grass and shellfish play a pivotal role in sequestering carbon at a speed which is unrivalled by the rainforest or anywhere else in the natural world. A healthy coastal habitat is critical in decarbonising food production and provides a focal point for tourism that benefits everyone.
We have had tremendous help from our friends in Ocean Divers, namely Monica Schaefer, Willie Siddel and Brian Murphy, Geoff Robinson in Bord Iascaigh Mhara and of course Alex Blackwell and Michael Mulloy of Clew Bay Oyster Co-Op. Their enthusiasm and knowledge have helped make Green Ocean Coffee a reality.
Green Ocean Coffee is a positive environmental action initiative aimed at ‘changemaker’ businesses that want amazing speciality grade coffee but also want to make a meaningful and measurable difference. If you think Green Ocean Coffee would suit you and your office or cafe, then we would love to hear from you so we can arrange a coffee tasting and you can find out more about us and Green Ocean Coffee. If you just want a bag to try at home then click here for the shop. I really hope that you can get behind this super project and be apart of this exciting journey.
David Lawlor, CEO
Like to get involved? This is why you should!
How we reduced our electricity usage by over 50%
With 47% of Ireland’s electricity generation in October 2022 coming from wind generation (as reported by the Irish Times) it does seem as if we’re getting somewhere in moving away from our reliance on fossil fuels. This is truly fantastic news and hopefully we can improve on this in the months and years ahead.
At Watermark we believe that individual action is also essential in playing our part in tackling climate change and we are ardent advocates that every action makes a difference, no matter how small.
We installed solar panels on our warehouse roof in July 2021, the motivation for making this investment at the time was not to lower our reported carbon footprint, as we were already using green electricity from Airtricity. Nor was it financial, as the payback at the time was 8 years. The motivating rationale was to do with the sustainable concept of ‘additionality’. By installing solar panels, we are reducing our reliance on the national electricity grid allowing this green electricity to be used elsewhere in the economy reducing the requirement for fossil fuel to power electricity generation.
On our most recent Airtricity bill, we have reduced the electricity we used from the grid by 50.3% over the 6 months from April to October 2022 when compared to April to October 2021. This gives us great satisfaction. While this single reduction is insignificant in the overall scheme of COP and the Paris Agreement, imagine if most businesses in Ireland were able to achieve a similar reduction? It doesn’t take a great deal of imagination!
