the problem with “Coffeewashing” - why vague sustainability claims hurt everyone

At Think Coffee, we talk a lot about how tough it is to compete with coffee companies that make big, feel-good claims about sustainability and ethics—without ever explaining how they’re sustainable or ethical. We’ve tried on a few terms for this—greenwashing, social-washing, and so on—but none of them ever felt quite right for coffee.

Then I came across an article in The Pourover that labels this fuzzy practice “coffeewashing.” It’s not a perfect term (there is such a thing as literally washing coffee, after all), but it’s close enough. We’ll roll with it.

Now, how do companies (big and small) manage to make these vague claims and skate by unquestioned? In coffee, words like sustainable, ethical, and transparent have no legal definition whatsoever. Anyone can use them. And because coffee is grown far from where it’s consumed, customers have almost no way to verify what’s actually happening at the farm level. That distance gives those feel-good claims plenty of room to hide.

You might wonder, “Who’s really getting hurt if a roaster says it’s ethical?” Unfortunately, the answer is pretty much everyone. Consumers get misled—they spend money believing it’s helping farmers, when it often isn’t. And farmers lose out, because if a company can get the same marketing boost by saying it’s doing the right thing, there isn’t much financial incentive to actually do it.

Enrique Hernandez - Chef impact Officer/Green Coffee Buyer with coffee farmer Jorge Lagos in Nicaragua.

As an owner of a coffee company, I have to think about return on investment like anyone else. Should I spend money on great-looking packaging and marketing materials that brag about “sustainability” and “responsibility,” or should I put those dollars toward the programs and relationships that actually make us responsible and ethical? I’ll let you run the numbers. You’ll quickly see why any profit-focused company will favor marketing over meaningful action—at least as long as coffeewashing keeps working.

If you want proof that Think Coffee does what it says, here it is:
https://thinkcoffee.com/pages/direct-relationship

We can’t speak for anyone else.

– Jason Scherr, Founder & CEO