Meet the Winners of the 2025 SCA Sustainability Awards
We’re delighted to introduce the winners of the 2025 Sustainability Award Winners. Each year since 2004, the Sustainability Awards have recognized excellence in sustainability across the industry. With each year there is greater diversity in the approaches of the organizations that are nominated, and this year was no exception.
This year a diverse panel of 12 external experts—alongside 2 from SCA—brought their deep knowledge of coffee and sustainability to evaluate an outstanding field of nominations. Expanding the diversity of our panel was a key goal, ensuring a nuanced and thoughtful assessment that reflects the complexity of our sector.
The 2025 Sustainability Award winners are:
Non-Profit: Fairtrade International
For-Profit: Black Baza Coffee Co.
Both winners are recognized for their significant contributions toward promoting sustainability in coffee and inspiring similar efforts across the industry. The winners will be formally recognized for their achievement at Specialty Coffee Expo in Houston, TX on April 25-27, 2025.
“The 2025 Sustainability Award winners are organizations driving real change in coffee sustainability,” says SCA Sustainability Director Andrés Montenegro, “Through social innovation and collaboration, they tackle social, economic, and environmental challenges, creating lasting impact and more value to our sector. Their work sets a new standard for a more equitable and regenerative coffee industry.”
“Their ability to embrace change, navigate complexity, and generate scalable solutions set them apart,” says Montenegro, “positioning them as catalysts for a more equitable coffee industry-helping to make coffee better, for all.”
Meet the Winners:
Fairtrade International is a global sustainability label that is aiming to lead the global movement to make trade fair by supporting and challenging businesses and governments while connecting producers more directly with their consumers.
For over 30 years, says Amanda Archila, Executive Director of Fairtrade America, Fairtrade has been building towards a vision in which “all farmers can enjoy secure and sustainable livelihoods, fulfill their potential and decide on their future.” Today Fairtrade operates in 25 countries: licensing brands, raising consumer awareness, and ensuring greater transparency and equity in trade.
A decade-long study from 2012 to 2022 found that farmers who are part of Fairtrade certified producer organizations “experience better economic resilience, social wellbeing, environmental sustainability, and governance of their cooperatives” than farmers not in Fairtrade-certified organizations, particularly in times of global crisis.
Fairtrade’s work is driven by informed consumer choices and producer leadership. For example, farmers hold 50% of the decision-making power in Fairtrade’s primary governing body, known as the General Assembly. "Farmers know what they need best,” says Archila, “That’s why farmers are essential in all of Fairtrade’s decision-making.”
By connecting actors in the global coffee value chain, Fairtrade is committed to creating “an alternative form of trade where equitable value distribution from farm to final consumer is the norm.”
Black Baza Coffee Co. is a self-described ‘activist company’ and coffee roaster. Founded by Dr. Arshiya Bose, this women-led enterprise seeks to reimagine the coffee value chain to ensure both people and nature can thrive.
The company, says Dr. Bose, “was born out of a deep commitment to building a radically fair and ecologically sustainable supply chain.” Over the past eight years, Black Baza has partnered with over 650 smallholder coffee producers across India, sourcing and roasting their coffee.
Black Baza’s approach is deeply relational. “We don’t just work with producers,” shares Dr. Bose, “we work for them.” Their approach is participatory by design, rooted in the principle that “those most affected by decisions should be the ones shaping them.” Through their Biodiversity-Friendly Label, for example, farmers play a key role in designing and monitoring sustainability standards. Bose acknowledges the leadership of Indigenous coffee producers such as Sannarangegowda and Kethegowda from the Soliga community, who “show us what’s possible when traditional wisdom and ecological stewardship converge.”
Black Baza aims to embed equitable value distribution at every level of their operation. Over 44% of the retail price of each coffee bag they sell goes back to producers and they have pioneered revenue-sharing models where a portion of sales directly supports biodiversity initiatives.
Join us at Specialty Coffee Expo to celebrate these achievements and learn more about sustainability in coffee. For more details and to register, visit coffeeexpo.org.