Tiny Footprint Coffee is the world’s first carbon-negative coffee. Roasted in Brooklyn Center, Tiny Footprint was founded by five individuals who worked in the Minneapolis coffee scene for years. They decided to create an entirely organic, carbon-negative line of coffee and have focused on wholesale accounts since 2010.
Some of their larger sales come from online outlets like Amazon, Abe’s Market and their own online store. Other big buyers are colleges such as Macalester, Northwestern and Gustavus.
Tiny Footprint Coffee has chosen to donate a portion of sales from each pound of coffee to the Mindo Cloud Forest Foundation, a foundation that plants trees on its 15,000-acre forest and pushes sustainability efforts in Ecuador. The planting offsets the carbon it takes to produce and distribute its coffee.
“Through [the foundation] we’ve had the opportunity to reforest parts of the Cloud Forest and fulfill our carbon-negative model. In addition, the foundation rebuilds habitat for endangered species and helps to maintain the biodiversity of Northern Ecuador,” says Laura Boyle of Tiny Footprint Coffee.
The basic idea, says Boyle, is that “almost everyone drinks coffee, so why not make it as sustainable and environmentally friendly as possible? For every pound of coffee that you buy, we remove 54 pounds of carbon from the atmosphere with our reforestation efforts. All in all, that’s 50 pounds more carbon removed than is created by our coffee production. Tiny Footprint also works hard to keep our roastery environmentally friendly. We’ve implemented efficient roasting techniques, a full composting program and, of course, biodegradable bags for our retail coffee.”
