Salt Spring Coffee

Salt Spring Coffee is a business that produces roasted coffee beans and operates several cafés. The company was founded in 1996 by Mickey McLeod and his wife Robbyn Scott who operated an organic market garden on the island. They had been roasting coffee beans for their own consumption but eventually added their coffee to their product line. Headquartered on Saltspring Island in British Columbia, the company differentiates itself in the market by following sustainability values in their corporate vision statement. The Salt Spring Coffee Company operates two cafés: one located at the Tsawwassen Ferry Terminal, and one in Ganges on Salt Spring Island. Their coffees are marketed as by being Fair to Farmer Direct, certified organic, fair trade, shade grown, and carbon neutral. They maintain organic certification through the Pacific Agricultural Certification Society.

To become carbon neutral they audited their energy consumption, took measures to reduce their emissions, and purchased carbon offsets. Their audit found they produce 263 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2007, half of which came from roasting their beans. The measures they took to reduce their emissions included having the green beans shipped directly to Vancouver rather than unloading in San Francisco and trucking the rest of the way, using bio-diesel fuel in delivery trucks, and upgrading to energy efficient equipment. They purchase their offsets from the Carbonfund Foundation and Offsetters. The company claims to the first carbon neutral coffee sold in Canada. Salt Spring Coffee was recognized by the David Suzuki Foundation in their 2010 report Doing Business in a New Climate. The report outlines Salt Springs Coffee's Carbon Cool initiative, which set out in 2007 with the goal of offering one of the world’s first carbon neutral cups of coffee.

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