The Importance of Coffee - Essay Example

Coffee will be the focus of this assignment.  Coffee is a product that I, myself, enjoy and it is one of the most popular drinks in the world today. Coffee first originated or was identified in Ethiopia, where the beverage was prepared from the dried fruit of an unknown tree. After its origin, Arabians transplanted this tree and used the seeds to prepare the beverage. From then, the popularity of the drink started to spread and soon the Americans also became part of this group that preferred this drink, especially tea, which was initially related to Britain, the country America had rebelled against for her independence.

Coffee today is one of the most popular beverages in the world. The coffee beans are ground to form a powder from which the beverage is prepared. It is one of the most popular beverages consumed by more than one-third of the world’s total population. One major difference found in its consumption is in the way the drink is consumed around the world. (Kolecki, n.d). People, in general, prefer to consume coffee according to their taste and liking. This includes adding items like milk, creamer, and sugar to the actual coffee to create a particular individualized taste. Therefore, part of the attraction of coffee as a drink is the fact that one can personalize the drink to one’s individual liking.

Coffee’s popularity has resulted in wide demand and increased production throughout the world. The raw materials for coffee are obtained from a fruit’s seed, which is known as the coffee bean. (As You Sow, 2010). These beans are collected from the coffee trees that contain aromatic substances which add up to the taste of the beverage. When the berries are ripened, the beans provide a better taste for the beverage. The coffee trees themselves grow well in a climate of moderate temperature. Apart from the conditions of the climate, the soil too plays a vital role in cultivating coffee beans.  Fertile soil enables better cultivation and production of coffee beans. A well-maintained volcanic soil also helps in the cultivation, as it improves the flavor of the beans.

            The manufacturing process of coffee does not end up impacting the environment as severely as the manufacturing of other beverages. (Wintgens, 2009). The environmental consequence is certainly varied as the tree is grown in places where the natural soil is at its best. The cultivation does not include any artificial plantation or pesticides and hence it does not create chemical harm to the environment. Another aspect is the social consequences of the object, coffee. Due to the increased production of coffee beans, countries like Brazil and Africa have extensively benefited. Since the country’s economic stability grows through the plantation of coffee beans, the social consequence is obviously beneficial (Wintgens, 2009).

            However, this does not mean that there are not any environmental consequences within the production of coffee. The actual use of the land to produce coffee is cause for some concern.  Coffee is a cash crop, meaning that land is often cleared to grow it, and this can take away from even more sustainable resources.  Some type of monitoring program can be implemented to ensure that other resources are not being stripped, or at least stripped beyond their capacity to reproduce themselves.  Where the rainforest is involved, this has caused growing concern for many environmentalists, since much of the time the rainforest will be destroyed if profit is involved, and the rainforest is not something humans can recreate.  Since many of the countries producing coffee are economically poor, they are willing to destroy natural resources in order to take advantage of greater economical gain (Wintgens, 2009).

            Coffee production can be made more sustainable through the monitoring of the land used in its development.  If legislative rules are enacted to regulate the planting of coffee and the way coffee is grown, in order to ensure certain resources are not stripped or large amounts of rainforests are not wiped out, the environmental problem could be controlled within the concept of coffee production itself.  Other sustainability solutions can also be found within the actual wrapping of coffee’s packaging. The need for this object could be made more sustainable through the use of different casings to hold the packaged coffee.  Most producers of the coffee package the item in aluminum cans, and aluminum cans are extremely difficult to recycle.  Some producers, like Starbucks, for example, have started to produce coffee in sealed paper bags, because sealed paper bags are much easier to recycle.  Read More