Planet Bean is our main coffee stockist (they've been with us since the beginning) for both bulk bean retail and in-house brewing. We LOVE their coffee and the hard work they put into some seriously admirable business practices.
Based out of Guelph, Ontario, Planet Bean roasts only the best Certified Fair Trade and Certified Organic coffee! We've pulled the following information directly from their website (also linked below) to give you a little glimpse into some of their stellar values, their sustainability efforts and their Fair Trade partnerships.
Thank you, Planet Bean!
SUSTAINABILITY
Planet Bean Coffee is certified organic. This means that the organic integrity can be authenticated from the plant to the cup. The Canadian organization that ensures this authentication for Planet Bean is Ecocert Canada.
Growing organic coffee is very labour intensive. Farmers work to develop soil biodiversity and combat erosion. They use machetes to keep the weeds down and create organic mulch and manure. They use mechanical insect traps and have developed natural fungus based sprays to tackle the nasty broca beetle.
Recent research shows that organic and shade grown coffee growing practices buffer climate change impacts through the forests that sequester carbon and the moisture cycling services these forests also provide. The shade trees help dampen the effects of drought and heat waves by maintaining a cool microclimate beneath the canopy.
Our coffee is grown in the shade of tropical forests which protects habitat for a myriad of creatures including songbirds. In her book, Silence of the Songbirds, Bridget Stutchbury makes a strong case for the importance of shade grown coffee in the protection of habitat for many of north America’s migratory as well as many other species.
Coffee farmers also take the knowledge and skills they learn from growing organic coffee and use them for growing other things including food. So organic coffee also supports the development of organic agriculture around the world.
We carry the organic certification from our farmers right through to our coffee bars. We have taken the extra step to have our warehousing, roasterie, packaging area and our retail operations certified organic. We believe this is a way for us to respect the efforts and extra labour put into growing organic coffee by our producer partners. It also ensure organic integrity for our consumers right up to the point they enjoy our coffee.
We believe that our coffee bars should be places where our neighbours can learn about environmental problems and how fix them. In the past we have hosted a variety of workshops including household energy efficiency, water conservation and alternative gardening.
Planet Bean provides certified organic milk in our coffee bars from local dairy farmers. We know they look after their animals in a humane and healthy way. Supporting local organic farmers also helps us to challenge the problems of industrial agriculture.
Planet Bean is a member of the a car share which is an organization dedicated to transportation alternatives that are more ecologically appropriate.
Our entire team is made up of avid cyclists for whom bikes provide both a clean transportation option and a fun ride.
We are always looking for ways to reduce our ecological footprint and environmental considerations are taken into account when we make decisions.
Things like:
- The kind of take-out cup we use.
- We encourage travel mug use with a price incentive.
- We have hosted a volunteer rain barrel build for a local non-profit to make roof top water harvesting more accessible to our neighbours.
- When we decided to put a deck in front of our Grange Coffee Bar we made it our of locally sourced white cedar to keep the impact of the logging in our watershed.
- When we filled our planters with plants we made sure they we from local stock and were pollinator friendly.
- When we ship our beans to our own coffee bars they are shipped in reusable containers which keeps thousands of non-recyclable foil bags out of landfill.
- You can drop by our roasterie for chaff or our coffee bars for used grinds – both excellent additions to your compost pile.
We are also open to suggestions to help us reduce our negative impact on the earth.
CO-OPERATIVE
SUMAC COMMUNITY WORKER CO-OPERATIVE
Planet Bean Coffee is a division of the Sumac Community Worker Co-operative. People start working at Planet Bean and after a period of time are able to join the worker co-operative and become a member of Sumac. Their employment is then seconded to Planet Bean.
WHY A WORKER CO-OPERATIVE?
At Planet Bean we believe a democratic workplace based on the international principals of co-operation is the way to create a model for a people centred economy. The purpose of a worker co-operative is to create meaningful and life sustaining employment for its members. Our project is very much in development and we embrace that old adage of “we are building the road as we travel”.
WHY A “COMMUNITY” WORKER CO-OPERATIVE?
Sumac consciously put the word community into its name to reflect the its broader structural goals. Our organization is being built for growth. We take inspiration from larger integrated worker co-operative structures like the Mondragon Co-operative Corporation of the Basque region. Our organization is a social economy enterprise that incorporates the needs of workers, community and ecosystems into its overall operations and philosophies.
WORKER CO-OPS AND FAIR TRADE
As a business owned and operated by a worker co-operative operating in north America our primary business is the promotion and sale of excellent Fair Trade coffee. We believe that as a worker co-operative focused on economic democracy, social justice, ecological sustainability and building alternative economic structures in our community, we are ethically consistent with our Fair Trade producer organizations in the south. We are committed to the principles of co-operation and Fair Trade. We also seek to differentiate our democratic co-op structure from conventional business structures involved in Fair Trade.
FOR MORE PLANET BEAN
We encourage you to head over to the pages linked below to learn more about Planet Bean, and interact with their social media! They post regularly with updates on partnerships, employee efforts, reports and business endeavours, and their website is absolutely full of links and information on every aspect of their business.
https://www.planetbeancoffee.com/
https://www.instagram.com/planetbeancoffeeco/
https://www.facebook.com/planetbeancoffee/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYhYWyZZQ264NGcaQbC0zGw