ECOM introduces its Green Meter tool and discusses how the new carbon emissions calculator can help its team design feasible and applicable interventions for coffee farmers.
Coffee companies share a common challenge: accurately calculating the carbon footprint of their products and decarbonising their supply chains.
Effective selection and planning of impactful carbon reduction and resilience interventions require data-driven decisions based on a deep understanding of farmers’ current practices and the reasons behind them.
Governments worldwide are introducing legislation that will require some companies to report their carbon emissions, increasing the demand for accurate primary data. For example, under the upcoming Corporate Reporting Sustainability Direction (CSRD) regulation, some businesses operating in the European Union will be required to report their greenhouse gas emissions, including Scope 3 value chain emissions.
At the same time, as consumer awareness of sustainability grows, the need for reliable data on coffee’s carbon footprint becomes even more critical. The complex coffee supply chain, which often involves collecting data from smallholder farmers in remote parts of the world, makes assessments of carbon emissions challenging and highly context dependent.
To produce accurate emissions reports, roasters often rely on their green coffee merchants to provide data on the carbon footprint of the beans before they reach the roastery. Many merchants have traditionally relied on secondary data – information collected or published by others, including industry averages and databases, used to provide estimates – to determine emissions.
As part of its commitment to sustainable practices and improving farmer livelihoods, international trading company ECOM has developed a new tool that calculates the carbon footprint of the coffee it sources. Green Meter is a tool based on primary data collection and is aligned with the new GHG-Protocol Draft Land Sector and Removals Guidance, the new standard for quantifying all FLAG (Forest, Land and Agriculture) emissions.
“The majority of the carbon footprint of coffee is generated at the cultivation phase at farm level. The drivers of emissions are practices such as land use change, fertiliser usage, and lack of residue management, among other factors,” says Ana Nicod, Head of Climate Change Strategy at ECOM.
“After calculating our own carbon footprint in alignment with our net zero commitment, we quickly realised relying on secondary databases does not accurately reflect the realities of our supply chain or the differences between producing countries. The available emission factors are limited and often fail to capture the true variations on the ground as well as measure any improvement on practices for specific supply chains.”
“Since 2022, we have produced a sustainability report detailing our carbon footprint, reinforcing the need for more precise, primary data to drive meaningful action. For instance, in Ethiopia, we used Green Meter and the results showed a decrease of emission factor by more than 90 per cent compared to secondary emission factors.”
Nicod says ECOM had tried other tools on the market, but that they were not fit for purpose with regard to reporting or usability, and general structure and inputs did not reflect and capture all the practices at farm level.
Therefore, the team saw a gap for a bespoke tool and built their own from the bottom up, designed in collaboration with their field technicians and agronomists across its coffee producing origins.
“We started by asking ourselves the following questions: What are the farming practices that occur in our different supply chains? What are the inputs being used? What are all the possible tree species identified as shade trees in the coffee landscapes? What types of products do we buy, from coffee parchment to green bean? Once we understood these complexities, we developed models to calculate a product carbon footprint, broken down by farm, with the ability to extrapolate to a supply chain,” says Yazmin Leon, Global Carbon Manager at ECOM.
“Creating the tool was just the beginning: even after its development, we needed to understand how to use it effectively and ensure it was fit for purpose. Over the past year since its official launch, we have worked a lot in the field – refining processes, validating data, conducting in-depth training, and continuously improving the tool. Now, we can confidently say our efforts have paid off.”
The ECOM team work mostly with data traceable to farm, but the tool can also work with cooperative or processing unit data. In August 2024, Green Meter was third-party reviewed by SustainCERT and confirmed to align with the GHG Protocol’s Land Sector and Removals draft guidance.
Green Meter uses data from surveys – translated into local languages – carried out by ECOM’s field technicians and agronomists stationed across the world. The data obtained from the surveys undergoes quality checks before being analysed to produce an accurate carbon footprint for the coffee from that farm.
“Once the report has been produced, the climate department analyses the results, highlighting the main emission contributors, and creates a roadmap of interventions for the specific supply chain that can be used to reduce its carbon impact. The selected interventions are proposed based on agronomic expertise from the field teams, considering appropriate and feasible interventions. We want to support farmers to tackle the challenges they face and incentivise climate resilience,” says Leon.
When ECOM’s climate department was established in 2021, the team didn’t set out to reinvent the wheel but to look at the work that was already being done and build on that to quantify and, in turn, further reduce and remove carbon from the coffee supply chain.
“Coffee is a commodity with many opportunities because there is a lot of willingness from our partners to implement carbon projects. In many projects there are existing sustainability programs, therefore our job is to see what we can introduce or scale up to the work that’s already being done,” says Nicod.
“These programs can focus on a wide range of priorities, from achieving certification premiums to planting new trees to ensuring a living income.”
One of the team’s priorities is introducing programs designed to increase resilience to climate change while also improving productivity. Nicod says this is key to reducing the carbon footprint of coffee by producing more on the same land. What’s more, each of these programs is tailored to the specific origin.
“A project in Colombia is going to look very different to one in Brazil. For example, coffee farms in Colombia often have more shade trees, which can impact carbon sequestration, whereas farms in Brazil typically operate in full sun, requiring different sustainability approaches. Our field technicians and agronomists are essential to this tailored programming and work closely with the farmers to decide what will be feasible and benefit the individual farm,” says Leon.
“Many of our farmers are interested in adopting regenerative farming practices with the right incentives and safeguards. Farmers have shared how these practices are helping their coffee thrive, with improved resilience to pests, diseases, and climate shifts. Their feedback and adaptation of these methods are just as valuable as the knowledge being shared, and we’re grateful for this joint effort.”
Leon says, despite many farmers being engaged with sustainability projects, an important factor of introducing these regenerative projects is providing incentives and financial support through the transition.
“We want farmers to feel part of the strategy, and that’s why the data collection through Green Meter and the feasibility analysis really make sense for us,” she says.
“Now Green Meter is up and running, we continue to focus on using it to assess emissions and obtain data that can support us in assessing the climate resiliency of farmers. Climate resilience and supporting farmers to create a higher value for their products through carbon is a common goal that we share, which inspires us every day to keep pushing forward.”
For more information, visit ecomtrading.com
This article was first published in the May/June 2025 edition of Global Coffee Report. Read more HERE.
