How Much Rainforest Fits in a Coffee Cup?

Arbor Day Specialty Coffee

The following is excerpted from our guest article on The Daily Green. You can read the full article about it on their site.

One cup of shade-grown coffee will preserve more than two square feet of rainforest—and the birds that inhabit the trees.

How much rainforest can one cup of coffee help preserve? For those who buy coffee grown in the traditional manner, under the shade of rainforest trees, the answer is roughly 2.3 square feet per cup.

It would be zero for many coffee drinkers because much of the coffee that people drink is not shade-grown coffee; most plantation owners remove native trees and forest to grow coffee.