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There’s No Coffee without Water -
1/10/2011
Posted By:
Steve Hawthorne
Tomorrow morning I will be speaking briefly to the Southeast Wisconsin Chapter of the International Facility Management Association (IFMA). IFMA holds monthly events and tomorrow’s event is entitled “Milwaukee’s Growing Water Industry.” Some may be surprised to learn that the Milwaukee region is actually a hotbed of activity in the field of fresh water research and technology. Within Milwaukee county and the six counties that surround it, there are more than 120 water-oriented companies, the largest academic freshwater facility on the Great Lakes and a university school of Freshwater Sciences. I was asked to speak to the IFMA chapter about how water impacts our business and the coffee industry in general.
The obvious connection between coffee and water is in the brewing process – without water, we can’t create the brewed beverage that we know and love. This is an important connection – so much so that the Specialty Coffee Association of America actually has documented standards for the quality of water used to brew coffee. All of our retail stores and equipment that we provide to our wholesale customers are outfitted with water filtration systems to ensure the highest quality water is used to brew our coffees.
There is another connection between coffee and water – one that most consumers don’t get a chance to see. To understand this connection, you have to go back to the producing country. As you may or may now know, coffee beans are actually the pit of a cherry that grows on trees. The cherries are picked and taken to processing stations where the skin is removed and the beans processed for export. This processing uses significant amount of water. The beans are sorted and soaked in water in order to clean them before being exported. If good, clean water is not used, it will impact the final quality of the coffee. This becomes challenging in many developing countries as access to clean water is limited.
Yet another connection between coffee and water has to do with the people that actually pick the coffee. Countries where coffee is grown are by and large considered to be developing countries. Things that we can take for granted in this country (like ready access to water) are not common in these countries. If you want to read some scary statistics, have a look at water.org. Here are a few highlights:
- Worldwide, 884 million people lack access to safe water
- 3.6 million people die each year from water-related disease
- More than 50% of all water projects fail within the first few years
I have visited coffee farms where the closest water access was a barrel used to catch rain water (this is a country that only sees rain six months out of the year in totals of less than 60 inches).
While these statistics can be scary and depressing, it is exciting to know that research and technology that can help to address these problems is happening right in our backyard. New technologies could be in development as I type this that will make bringing fresh water into the mountains of Guatemala easy and cost effective. Tools and filtration systems could be developed and improved so that processing stations can lower water consumption through recycling.
It’s easy to take water for granted – we just have to walk over to our faucet, turn it on and, voila…water. This isn’t the case for 1 in every 8 people worldwide…many of them coffee producers. Hopefully the work happening in Milwaukee and throughout the world will help to change this.
You can learn more about the developing water industry in Milwaukee from The Milwaukee Water Council. Water.org is a great nonprofit organization working to provide safe drinking water and sanitation to people in developing countries.
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