Kickback Coffee: A Sustainable, Adventure Coffee Company

Have you ever seen coffee delivered on an electric bike? Kickback Coffee, a UK based coffee company, is on a mission to reduce their environmental impact without sacrificing quality. In partnership with CarbonBright, Kickback Coffee conducted a Life Cycle Assessment study focused on their coffee products to gain more insights and ensure they meet their sustainability goals.

COMPANY SIZE

<10 Employees

INDUSTRY
Speciality Coffee Roaster | Food & Beverage

GEOGRAPHIC FOOTPRINT
HQ in Cheshire, England

INTRODUCTION

Coffee is one of the most popular beverages in the world, whether for the taste or the caffeine boost. Nearly 176 million 60 kg bags of coffee were consumed worldwide in a one year period in 2021 and 2022. Now imagine all of the packaging waste associated with coffee consumption. Every bag or container of beans, whether you make it at home or buy it from a cafe, adds up. Transportation and disposal are often metrics consumers use to reduce their environmental impact, and Kickback Coffee Company aims to reduce the packaging waste from coffee without sacrificing quality or convenience.

CHALLENGE

Kickback Coffee’s primary goal was to understand the impact of the extra efforts they were already taking to avoid single use packaging and use electric transportation options. Their second goal was to identify opportunities to take further actions to reduce their environmental impact throughout the product life cycle.

Supplying coffee to cafes and shops allowed Kickback Coffee to find alternative solutions to traditional single use packaging and Royal Mail delivery. They provide coffee in reusable containers that are picked up and used again in another delivery. Additionally, delivering within a 100km radius allowed them to utilize electric bikes (for shorter distances) and electric vans (for longer distances) to reduce transportation related emissions. Kickback Coffee needed a solution that provided a quantifiable measurement of impact to understand the impact of these actions.

SOLUTION:

Using CarbonBright’s AI-driven platform, Kickback Coffee conducted a thorough Life Cycle Assessment on their wholesale delivery. This analysis examined the environmental impact of the product from agricultural production to end-of-life disposal of their current wholesale packaging and delivery solutions, compared to the traditional option of disposable packaging and Royal Mail services used for their retail product. Using science-backed data, Kickback Coffee was able to evaluate their product’s life cycle with precision and efficiency.

RESULTS

Leveraging CarbonBright’s platform, Kickback Coffee’s study identified the impacts of each category in a Life Cycle Assessment. Kickback Coffee was able to compare their wholesale reusable containers with their retail product’s disposable packaging and traditional delivery methods. This allowed them to understand the reduction in environmental impact of using reusable packaging and electric transportation for wholesale deliveries compared to what their environmental impact would be if they had used the same packaging and delivery solutions as their retail products.

The study found that their wholesale packaging resulted in 82% CO2e savings compared to what it would have been using traditional retail packaging methods. Furthermore, the study identified a 12% CO2e savings by delivering wholesale coffee products on an electric bike and electric vans compared to the traditional Royal Mail service. Overall, the difference in CO2e savings between the wholesale and traditional retail solutions in one year is equivalent to driving 17,479 mi in a gasoline car!

The analysis allows Kickback Coffee to effectively communicate sustainability claims with reliable, data-backed insights to stakeholders and identify areas of improvement across their supply chain including packaging, distribution, and end of life.

Kickback Coffee’s collaboration with CarbonBright underscores the importance of innovative solutions in the Consumer Packaged Goods Industry. By leveraging CarbonBright’s platform, Kickback Coffee’s streamlined their efforts to understand their products’ environmental footprint. Through real-time emissions calculation, effective communication facilitation, and identification of opportunities for emission reduction, Kickback Coffee is empowered to make informed decisions towards a more sustainable future.

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