A Shropshire-based coffee company is making a positive environmental impact not only with its packaging and ‘off-grid’ roastery but also a tree planting scheme.
When a chance encounter in London’s Hackney Wick turned into training with specialty coffee pioneers, The Roasting Shed, husband and wife team, Charlotte and Jon Stanford, realised that their passion for great coffee could fuel a specialty coffee company with a difference.
After quitting their jobs and moving to Middlehope in South Shropshire, where Jon’s family have been based for over twenty years, they converted an old stable into a contemporary roastery and began to develop Apostle Coffee, a company that could make a positive environmental impact.
Frustrated by the plastic, foil lined bags that other coffee companies use to keep their beans ‘fresh’, Apostle set out to ensure that their entire range could be home compostable at a time when few companies had committed to reducing their plastic and single use waste.
Now the company is one of only a handful of roasterys who are using compostable materials throughout their product line, ensuring that their customers and partners are sending zero waste to landfill.
The Apostle Coffee roastery is also ‘off-grid’ powered by wind, solar and natural gas, and any emissions created by the transportation of green beans are ‘inset’ by planting endangered black poplar trees on land surrounding the roastery.
Roasting all their coffee to order, Apostle sends out the freshest beans, whilst ensuring an energy efficiency throughout their roasting practices to further reduce their waste and emissions.
For each new purchase, Apostle plant a dedicated native broadleaf tree in their Shropshire forest, that will absorb around a ton of CO2 emissions, or about 10% of an individual’s annual carbon footprint over its lifetime.
Not only does this enable them to operate as a carbon negative business, but it also allows them to offer a carbon offsetting subscription to their regular customers, or ‘Coffee Apostles’ as they are lovingly referred.
Every Apostle Subscriber receives a starter pack, complete with Apostle Jar to refill with each fresh delivery, and a certificate detailing the endangered tree that has been planted just for them.
This commitment to a carbon negative business model is further assisted by their partnership with coffee farms who’s practices are regenerative and sustainable; working only with producers who are committed to organic, bio-diverse farming, who are actively educating and empowering their workforces and are continuing to reduce their own environmental impact through reforestation projects, improved irrigation and more efficient transportation.
Shropshire Live is regulated by 