Host Keith Anderson is joined by Jaxie Friedman, Sustainability Manager for Atomo Coffee.

Together, they discuss the innovative approach Atomo takes towards creating sustainable coffee. Jaxie delves into the environmental challenges facing the coffee industry, including emissions and deforestation, and how Atomo's upcycled ingredients contribute to reducing their carbon footprint. The conversation also explores the complexities of measuring and managing these impacts, emphasizing the importance of maintaining product quality while making sustainable choices.

Learn more about Decarbonizing Commerce at decarbonize.co

TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Keith Anderson: Welcome to Decarbonizing Commerce, where we explore what's new, interesting, and actionable at the intersection of climate innovation and commerce. I'm your host, Keith Anderson, and together we'll meet entrepreneurs and innovators reinventing retail, e-commerce, and consumer products through the lenses of low carbon and commercial viability.

I'm Keith Anderson. This is the Decarbonizing Commerce Podcast. And my guest today is Jaxie Friedman, Sustainability Manager for Atomo Coffee, which is a producer of both beanless and hybrid, some bean, some no bean, coffee. Which is, you know, one of the most interesting categories that I think is exposed to climate as a business impact, and their approach to it is really worth being aware of and studying.

And so I'll tell you a bit about why, and then we'll meet Jaxie. You know, firstly, coffee is one of these categories that is not among the highest emission categories you'll find in the supermarket, but it is you know, not at the low end. And so on the mitigation side of things, that is, you know, what can we do, what do we need to do to lower the emissions profile at a category level? Coffee and, cocoa are categories that are pretty interesting to look at.

On the flip side though, as you've heard in other conversations in, you know, the case of olive oil is one example, it's one of the categories that is exposed to some of the disruption and risk of more extreme weather and higher temperatures. And so, you know, starting with targeting coffee as a category to go innovate in and innovating through a lens of both you know, producing a product that people want to drink, and choose to drink that also has a lower environmental footprint and is less exposed to the disruption of more extreme weather is a pretty interesting case study.

And Jaxie has played a big role in a lot of the decisions that the company has made from a sustainability perspective. She's got a really deep understanding of everything that I've sort of set up here, and, I really enjoyed meeting and speaking with her, and I think you will too. So, let's meet Jaxi Friedman of Atomo Coffee.

Jaxie, great to see you. Thanks so much for joining us for the Decarbonizing Commerce Podcast.

Jaxie Friedman: So great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Keith Anderson: So I think for those that maybe are less familiar with Atomo, maybe we could start with just, in your words, what is Atomo and what do you do?

Jaxie Friedman: Yeah. so, Atomo is all about redefining the coffee landscape with beanless coffee. We make a coffee that's crafted out of high quality superfoods and upcycled ingredients to make coffee, something that tastes just like coffee, but without any green coffee beans. That's why we call ourself beanless coffee.

And a little bit more about me and what I do at Atomo. So I'm our sustainability manager here. So a big part of why Atomo exists is that coffee supply chains are threatened by climate change and coffee has a massive environmental footprint. It's one of the kind of plant-based commodities that is most directly tied to deforestation and other major things that are, you know, influencing, changing climate and all of the negative effects that come with that.

So, sustainability is kind of really core to why Atomo exists. And so, as a sustainability manager here, I help us to kind of quantify our impact and think about, how we can incorporate sustainability into different components of our business. We just recently released, our environmental footprint of our espresso grounds, and when you compare beanless coffee to conventional coffee, our espresso grounds uses 70 percent less farmland, which means, more forest and grasslands that are able to be preserved, and that we cause 83 percent fewer carbon emissions. Yeah, so I'm really excited that we've been able to kind of put some proof out there that our beanless coffee, Does some good stuff for the planet.

Keith Anderson: Well, I mean, those are some just incredible data points. Maybe we can talk for a minute about how you arrive at those kinds of, estimates. You know, I know that, there's a lot of moving pieces and a lot of variables and there are some standards, but not everything is standardized. So how do you arrive at those kinds of estimates?

Jaxie Friedman: Yeah, that's a great question. So, we did the calculations in partnership with a company called HowGood. They are a, they provide a data platform that allows folks to calculate their, environmental impact in a variety of different areas, and we've really focused on kind of the carbon component of it, and how good works with a lot of the globally established methodologies that allow you to kind of analyze the footprint of a product from the raw materials through to end of life.

So, it's called a product environmental footprint, but it's similar to what you'd think of as a life cycle analysis in that it's analyzing the footprint of various different components of the product's life cycle.

Keith Anderson: We know HowGood, they're going to be providing climate labels for the meals at our summit in September. 

Jaxie Friedman: And Ah, I love that! Yeah, they're doing some incredible work, and they've been a great partner for us.

Keith Anderson: how deep in the weeds do you personally get in understanding what drives emissions up or down, and to what extent does that then influence decisions that the company makes about future formulations and sourcing decisions, you know, any of those sort of commercial considerations?

Jaxie Friedman: Yeah, so for the first part of your question, how deep in the weeds, I go pretty deep in the weeds, partially because as I mentioned, we're not using green coffee beans. We use a variety of other plant-based ingredients to create something that tastes exactly identical to coffee, but it means we have a more diverse supply chain.

We use some ingredients that are readily available and others that are a little bit more niche and have less established supply chains. For ingredients that are, less commonly studied, you may need to incorporate in some proxies, understanding the footprint of one commodity and using that as a reference point for another because it hasn't been studied.

So I've had to go pretty deep into the weeds to make sure that, you know, we're using appropriate proxies in terms of understanding the impact of our ingredients. And also when we're thinking about, it's not just at the ingredient level, but also from a, region and kind of looking at the specifics and the comparison of, you know, if we were to source something from India versus Kenya versus wherever, the impacts of those growing practices are going to be really different.

And so, we've been excited to be able to use the Lattice platform that HowGood offers, to be able to take that kind of next step to thinking about how it influences our product development. So, because this was our first official product environmental footprint we launched with HowGood, we've really been able to now use the learnings coming off of that to start to implement some practices so we can think about how it influences product development down the line.

You kind of need to know your baseline to be able to make improvements for the future. And we've been using it to inform, when we're thinking about if we want to source a new ingredient from a different location, should, are there lower impact places that make sense to get certain things? We've also been using it as a reference point for when we're considering new ingredients within our formula, not necessarily in terms of saying like "it must hit this threshold to be in the formula," but thinking about, "okay, which are ingredients that are hot spots in our formula and what could be some alternatives?" and thinking about, kind of the bigger picture of with, sort of, some kind of guardrails of what the footprints could be.

It allows us to kind of make more strategic decisions about, you know, where we're able to improve our footprint and what are the levers that we can pull.

Keith Anderson: Well,

Jaxie Friedman: Happy to get into deeper questions parts of that, if you'd like.

Keith Anderson: I would love to, and you know, maybe we can weave into the discussion something that you also said, which was that from a taste and flavor perspective, it's functionally indistinguishable from conventional bean coffee, beaned coffee. I don't know how I would describe it, but, you know, that's something that I think is really important and something that we hear a lot of brand manufacturers discussing more and more, which is we're trying to balance these trade offs in essentially four areas, from what I can see. one is sort of quality, whether that's defined as taste, nutrition, you name it. Another is emissions profile. Another is how reliably can we get it, and the final is what's it cost.

So, you know, when you said it, it tastes the same, it immediately had me think about what's that dynamic look like inside the company when you're getting this new data and then meeting with the product development or innovation team and thinking about, okay, well, this might lower the footprint, but then we've got to consider the cost, and we've got to consider the taste, and we've, you know,

Jaxie Friedman: Yeah. so I'll just say outright from, like, kind of the broader CPG perspective and most of the sustainable food and beverage companies, like the even the sustainability people who are kind of owning the footprint part of things, I feel like most folks are aligned that ultimately the taste is the most important thing, right?

If, you know, even if a product is better for the planet, but it's not quite as good, it's just really hard for get to get folks to buy it and to get bought into it, right? And so there needs to be these fundamental benefits, whether it's flavor or health benefits that people are seeking out, that I think have to be, of the most importance to, when creating a new product, especially a product that's an alternative to something that people already know and love, right?

People are really passionate about their morning coffee. It's part of their habit, their routine, and they're not going to, at least most folks aren't going to just, you know, swap it out for a cup of tea or you know, some other alternative. And so. I think with that in mind, you know, we always discuss internally that like the flavor has to be right.

And so that I would say is the most important thing. And I think that we've been really successful with, because I think our products tastes really good. But with that in mind, I think, you know, as we're looking at new product development and also as we're looking at scaling, I think all of those things that you just mentioned are important, right?

We have to think about, what is our price gonna be on shelf? How does it affect our footprint, and how does that connect to kind of the sustainability story that is core to our brand? I think all of these things do kind of come into play. it's not necessarily my scope of work that is kind of owning that decision making framework, but I'd say all four of those components do come to the table when we're looking at the launch of a product.

I'd say The kind of root of our ideation is coming from that, like, let's nail down a great tasting product. It needs to taste good, have the right mouthfeel, all of these things. I'd say, like, that is the driver of our innovation. And then because we have a really passionate team that cares about environmental components, we weave it in at any stage of the process that we can so that as we're identifying flavor notes that are really good that we want in our product, we can think about how those individual components can be a little bit better, a slightly lower footprint. 

Keith Anderson: Makes a ton of sense. And you had mentioned you could go even deeper on some of the footprint analysis. You know, you mentioned the location that you're sourcing from as one variable. What, are some of the other factors?

Jaxie Friedman: We're really, I think this is really important among a lot of different kind of natural products. There's certain things that I think are foundational criteria. If you want to be in certain retail spaces, you know, being non-GMO among many kind of natural food products is important. We like to source organic ingredients when we can, but it's not, one of our kind of leading criteria.

I think there's some other components, 

I think the jury is up in terms of, you know, for instance, organic. We kind of were taking a look at our ingredient, one of our ingredients that is organic certified compared to normal ones. And we were like, why doesn't the footprint change that much? And what's interesting is certain things that we would expect to be better from a carbon footprint standpoint aren't always, right?

Because with an organic product, you may have slight decreases in yield, even if there's lower input of carbon fertilizers or whatever it is. So there's some interesting nuance there that I've been exploring as I kind of dig into specific ingredients. For us, I'd say one of the leading drivers around sustainability with our sourcing is upcycling.

So our foundational ingredient is date pits, which we rescue from farmers waste streams in the Coachella Valley in California. And food waste is just a huge problem in our country and it leads to, a much larger footprint because agriculture has tremendous ripples on our ecosystems. It has a huge carbon footprint and we grow a lot of stuff that just ends up in the trash, right?

And it's really unfortunate. And so by being a product that is certified upcycled, with the date bits being that core upcycled ingredient, we also see that being a huge lever in terms of understanding how we are doing good for the planet

 because it is improving, it is reducing the methane emissions that may come from some of those, those pits ending up in landfill, but it's also creating a new commodity out of something that wouldn't have been used in the past.

So you have the avoided emissions, and then you also have this new opportunity. Where if you're using less coffee that has a higher footprint and then you're also rescuing this waste stream to make that same cup of coffee, there's kind of dual benefit there. And I'd say in terms of upcycling, our core ingredient, the date pits is upcycled, but we're also looking to incorporate in as many upcycled ingredients into new formulations as possible.

So I think that's definitely something that is kind of core to our sourcing priorities. And we're continuing to develop our coffee to use more and more of those types of ingredients.

Keith Anderson: Yeah. I see, upcycling as a industry, you know, it's been a trend for a while, but it's actually really interesting to see how it's formalizing with the certification and associations and it's becoming a more prominent feature of a lot of brands and how they're coming to market.

Jaxie Friedman: Yeah, the Upcycled Food Association has done some amazing work with kind of rallying folks together around, I think, this kind of overarching, concept. And I think what's been really exciting is to see the ripples coming out of that. So, the Upcycled certification, the number of companies that are getting that certification, which is basically like a proof of that your product has a certain quantity of ways of, diverted waste streams going into that product.

The number of companies getting that certification is growing. I think we also see, you know, there's been ripples in terms of food waste policy. The EPA's food waste hierarchy now has upcycling as one of the kind of better ways in which you can mitigate food waste, which wasn't there before. So it's been really exciting to kind of be in the upcycled world, while this momentum is building.

Keith Anderson: You know, to take a bit of a step back, and I probably should have asked this question earlier in the conversation, but I think you've done a great job unpacking some of the ways that Atomo itself is producing products that are good for the planet. Maybe it would be helpful to listeners to spend a couple minutes just talking about the coffee business itself.

I mean, you mentioned, you know, clearing forests or using farmland are a couple of the, environmental impacts that the conventional approach to producing coffee has, but I think it would be interesting just to highlight why this is a category that was interesting to build a brand and a business like this in.

Jaxie Friedman: Yeah, that's a great question. And I'm happy to dig in deeper there. 

So coffee, I'll say kind of the foundational thing around it is that the coffee market is growing and simultaneously the amount of land that is suitable to grow coffee is shifting and shrinking due to climate change.

So I'd say there's this broader issue, where by 2050, 50 percent of the land currently suitable to grow coffee will be able to grow coffee. And so then there's these ripples of, issues for coffee supply chains where, the growing locations are going to need to change, which often means that farms are going to have to move to higher altitudes, there's going to, in association with those increased altitudes, there also happens to be a lot more forests in those landscapes, which means there's likely to be a lot more deforestation.

And so that's a huge issue, and coffee companies, I think, are starting to pay a little more attention to the fact that, regardless of coffee's footprint, which I can talk about in a second, just thinking about, you know, being able to have a cup of coffee is going to be harder and harder, especially because coffee demand is increasing, right?

So if we have more coffee that needs to be consumed and a shrinking space to grow it, that's a huge issue. 

In terms of the coffee footprint, I think the deforestation is one of the biggest drivers of coffee's footprint. When we did our calculations with HowGood, we also created a benchmark competitor, which was supposed to be representing global Arabica coffee production, which include 13 of the top coffee producing countries as those source regions and their kind of estimated impact. And what we found with this conventional coffee benchmark was that 58 percent of those emissions were coming from some of that, deforestation component. And, that's a huge portion of the coffee life cycle.

Of course, there's other things that are contributing to that other remaining percentage, right? That's fossil fuel usage on farms to be able to grow the green coffee beans. It's the processing to roast the coffee beans. It's the transportation to bring coffee from, you know, different regions where it's grown, like Brazil or, or different parts of Africa over to the places where it's most often consumed, right? In Europe or the United States. So there's so many different components that are contributing to the high carbon footprint, but I'd say the most critical one is deforestation. And it's actually driven a lot of attention.

Coffee is one of seven commodities that recently has, been looped in, the, to a recent study that was basically looking at how these were the main drivers of agricultural deforestation, these 7 commodities. It was coffee as well as a few other products. I don't know all of them off the top of my head, but cocoa, paper pulp products, beef, of course, various different things.

And these commodities are the key drivers around cutting forests in places like the Amazon. And so that's a huge problem. It's also driven a lot of change. There's recent regulation in Europe. It's called the EUDR, which is around deforestation regulation and forcing certain supply chains, such as coffee, to now show traceability, that their coffee is not being sourced from places tied to deforestation.

There's increasing attention to companies that are setting science-based targets, for instance, to also pay attention to, you know, they have to, if you're setting a science-based target in partnership with, or with like the new FLAG, which is like a forest, land, and agricultural, might not have the acronym exactly right, 

You 

Keith Anderson: nailed it.

Jaxie Friedman: Footprint.

Okay.

Keith Anderson: my screen. You got it. You got

Jaxie Friedman: yeah, so the. FLAG footprint is now being, it's starting to be required among, companies that have a heavy agricultural footprint and within that flag requirement is, preventing deforestation. I think it's beginning in 2025. It's like a commitment to have no deforestation in their supply chains.

And this is really hard to execute because coffee. It's mostly grown by lots of smallholder farmers who don't have access to certain technology and ways of tracking these things. So the coffee supply chain is really complicated and, I think climate change is threatening coffee, and simultaneously because of coffee's footprint.

I think it's created additional pressure at the legislative level, which I think is exciting but also going to be a huge challenge for coffee companies to meet to be able to prevent, to, prevent the deforestation that is so tightly connected to coffee supply chains. Those are just a few of the ways that I think coffee influences, supply chains, but

happy to, dig into some other areas too, if you want, but I could go on and on about this.

No, that 

Keith Anderson: was exactly what I was hoping to cover there. 

Hey folks, this is the part of the show where we say thank you and see you soon to the general audience, plus and higher tier members of decarbonize.co, stay tuned for the rest of the episode. 

Keith Anderson: Well, I really appreciate you joining me, Jaxie. It was super interesting. Thanks so much for joining the show.

Jaxie Friedman: You're so welcome. 

Keith Anderson: Thanks for listening. I'm Keith Anderson, the executive producer and host of Decarbonizing Commerce. Sonic Futures handles audio, music, and video production. If you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it if you took a moment to subscribe and leave a review or share it with a colleague. For the full episode and more member exclusive insight and analysis, join the decarbonizing commerce community at decarbonize.co. Thanks for listening and we'll see you on the next episode of decarbonizing commerce.