Coffee: I went black and I’m not going back

Wherever you go, you see people drinking coffee. I can’t think of a typical outing that I go on where I don’t see people drinking it.

In efforts to simplify my life and follow the Zero Waste Living principles (Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Rot) I challenged myself to question my coffee drinking behaviours and looked for opportunities to make the choice to drink coffee more environmentally friendly. 

I enjoy coffee two, sometimes three, times a day. The afternoon one with a slice of a homemade goodie, thanks very much. My coffee habits started with a white coffee, one sugar. Over time, the volume of the coffees I made myself seemed to increase (cue searching for the largest mug in the kitchen cupboard and ordering a ‘Sunday latte’ while out with friends). What started as a once or twice a day small coffee had become two or three large ones. 

It was early 2019 when I officially decided that I would – never again – use a single-use, disposable coffee cup. I have a reusable cup to use if I order a takeaway, or I choose to sit in a cafe with a glass or ceramic mug, or I make one at home.

If I am out and feel like a coffee and don’t have my cup and don’t have time to sit in a cafe, I simply don’t have a coffee. 

After I ditched the disposable cup for good, I considered other ways I could reduce the impact on the environment with my coffee consumption (as I’m not quite ready to give it up for good). I switched back to a small size latte and stuck to two a day. Then there was the sugar. That was surprisingly easy to cut out of my coffee and I merrily made that switch cold turkey. That’s two teaspoons of sugar a day, or about 3.5kg of the stuff a year, that I have removed from my diet.

Next, and this took a bit longer, was challenging the cows milk in my coffee.

The damage the production of moo-milk does to the environment has long been known. Moo-milk requires a massive amount of land and water to grow the cows and their feed, which are burped out in the form of methane, a greenhouse gas. For this reason (not ignoring dairy allergies), plant mylks have really taken off. After sitting on this for a while and considering the negative environmental effects of a lot of plant mylks themselves, I decided to go cold turkey and simply made myself a black coffee and hoped for the best. Well, I can’t believe I had procrastinated with this change for so long as I was supremely surprised to find that black coffee is a lovely drink and I feel that I am missing out on nothing by cutting out the milk. I haven’t looked back! If you’re thinking about it, just do it! For what it’s worth – the feeling in my mouth after drinking a black coffee is much nicer than when I had it with moo-milk. It seems to sit in my body a bit better.

That’s around 100L of cows milk I have removed from my diet each year. And I’m just one person!

It is quite empowering to finally change a habit. There is an almost magical feeling that comes when you shift from repeatedly thinking about doing something to actually doing it. It’s quite liberating. I firmly believe that the more you change in your life to live by the zero waste principles, the more empowered you feel, the more you can uncover your true values and feel confident in the decisions you make. 

I hope I’ve inspired you to critically look at your coffee drinking habits and see where there may be some opportunity to be kinder on the environment. There is the receptacle you drink it in, the amount you’re drinking, the sugar, and the milk that you could consider making changes in. The next step is to consider where and how your beans are grown and that is a topic for another day!