Product carbon footprint and energy analysis of alternative coffee products in Japan

Abstract

Coffee is an important global beverage, and has received significant attention especially in terms of the social and environmental sustainability of its production. This paper calculates the product carbon footprint (PCF) and conducts an analysis of energy usage for six alternative coffee products. The analysis shows that espresso coffee had the lowest impact (0.13 kWh and 49 g CO2 per serve), while canned coffee provided the highest impact (0.76 kWh and 223 g CO2 per serve). The latte had the second highest embodied energy impact, with 0.54 kWh and the highest PCF of 224 g CO2 per serve. On a per millilitre basis however, espresso coffee provided the highest impact (0.0048 kWh/mL and 0.8 g CO2-eq/mL), followed by canned coffee and the latte. This indicates that care must be used in the selection of an appropriate functional unit, as the ranking of PCF can be overturned according to the basis of comparison. The highest contributing factors were the emissions from milk, packaging (for the can) and the production stages of the green coffee beans. Despite only holding around 17% of the market share of consumed coffee, the canned coffee product contributes around half of the national carbon footprint from coffee consumption. Current commercial incentives for consumers to use their own cups were compared to carbon taxation and found to value carbon approximately three orders of magnitude higher than carbon market rates.