Sustainability Guide

Great Coffee
Doing Better®

Ethical Trading
Preventing Pollution
Regenerative Farming
Grind People
Sustainable Materials

We take coffee seriously.

If you’re reading this, you probably do too. Better coffee is coffee that protects the planet instead of polluting it. That means ethically sourcing from growers who farm sustainably; making home-compostable coffee pods from plants; and creating a range of speciality blends for the many, many different ways people like their coffee so that there’s zero compromise when it comes to quality or flavour.

Sustainable Materials

Grind coffee pods were the first in the UK to be certified home-compostable. They’re 100% plastic- and aluminium-free, made only from organic matter (PHA), offering a sustainable alternative to the millions of plastic and aluminium pods that end up in landfills every day and take hundreds and hundreds of years to decompose.

Unlike other plant-based coffee pods, ours have an oxygen barrier that keeps your coffee fresh for months, without losing its fresh flavour. If you’re interested, you can see the full life cycle of a Grind pod here. We also avoid single-use plastic like it’s the plague (because, in many ways, it is), making sure our packaging is fully recyclable.

Grind coffee pods were the first in the UK to be certified home-compostable. They’re 100% plastic- and aluminium-free, made only from organic matter (PHA), offering a sustainable alternative to the millions of plastic and aluminium pods that end up in landfills every day and take hundreds and hundreds of years to decompose.

Unlike other plant-based coffee pods, ours have an oxygen barrier that keeps your coffee fresh for months, without losing its fresh flavour. If you’re interested, you can see the full life cycle of a Grind pod here. We also avoid single-use plastic like it’s the plague (because, in many ways, it is), making sure our packaging is fully recyclable.

Regenerative
Farming

The small-scale farms that we work with are,
by nature, sustainable: the growers
implement regenerative agricultural
practices, focusing on resource efficiency
and supporting biodiversity, because these
practices don’t just lower their carbon
footprint, but ensure the longevity and
resilience of the farms as well as the quality
of the coffee itself.

Regenerative
Farming

The reason our coffee isn't always
certified organic is that it's difficult and
costly to register for the certification,
and many of the farms we work with
are too small to afford it. Almost all of
these farms are family-run by people
who have been growing coffee for
decades, without using any harmful
chemicals. They know what they’re doing.

Ethical Trading

Click to find our farms

World map

Primavera

Elevation: 1035m

Los Naranjos

Elevation: 1445m

Noruega

Elevation: 1500m

Los Angeles

Elevation: 1450m

Tacuba Cooperative

Elevation: 1480m

Dota Cooperative

Elevation: 1500m

Santa Monica

Elevation: 1500m

Vale do Sol

Elevation: 950m

Santa Lucia

Elevation: 980m

Jaguara

Elevation: 1000m

Bukonzo Cooperative

Elevation: 1900m

Ishema Cooperative

Elevation: 1615m

Venkids Valley Estate

Elevation: 1000m

Kerehaklu Estate

Elevation: 600m

Working directly with the producers who grow our coffee beans enables us to establish and maintain long-term collaborative relationships that we wouldn’t have with a Fair Trade certification. The rigid certification requirements can lower the earning potential of some farmers—since the prices are set by a third party—and encourage the production of poor quality beans. It costs farmers to participate.

To us, it makes much more sense to work with the growers themselves. We pay them above the “Fair Trade” price, and they grow us some of the world’s best coffee.

Working directly with the producers who grow our coffee beans enables us to establish and maintain long-term collaborative relationships that we wouldn’t have with a Fair Trade certification. The rigid certification requirements can lower the earning potential of some farmers—since the prices are set by a third party—and encourage the production of poor quality beans. It costs farmers to participate.

Preventing Pollution

We set up our own charitable foundation, The Better Coffee Foundation ®, as a step towards undoing the plastic pollution caused by the global coffee industry. In partnership with Ocean Co., we're rescuing ocean-bound plastic with every pod, can, and cup we sell.

Find out more

In 2023, we recovered 42,800,000 pods worth of ocean-bound plastic
(that’s about 64,000 kg).

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Guess you could say we're...waving
goodbye to ocean plastic.

Learn more

Our People

Yes, that includes you.

Whether you’re just perusing our gorgeous website or having a scroll through our social media, grabbing a flat white on your way to work or popping a Grind pod into your machine, we want you to feel good about it.

The Grind team is exactly that—a team. From our production squad who roast our coffee beans every day at our London roastery (in 2023, they roasted hundreds of tonnes of coffee. That’s the weight of almost 40 elephants. Which is really heavy. They’re amazing.), to our brilliant baristas and head office crew, we strive to create a positive culture of belonging where everyone feels included, heard, and a vital part of our mission to drive positive change.

The Grind team is exactly that—a team. From our production squad who roast our coffee beans every day at our London roastery (in 2023, they roasted hundreds of tonnes of coffee. That’s the weight of almost 40 elephants. Which is really heavy. They’re amazing.), to our brilliant baristas and head office crew, we strive to create a positive culture of belonging where everyone feels included, heard, and a vital part of our mission to drive positive change.