Coffee and a Doughnut: Understanding “Circular Economy” Frameworks
The concept of pairing food with drink—or even coffee—is not new.
In the second in a series of features on sustainability frameworks and their relationship to the SCA’s sustainability agenda of equitable value distribution, SCA Sustainability Director ANDRÉS MONTENEGRO explains the concept of the circular economy through the use of a doughnut-and-coffee metaphor and highlights an upcoming seminar at Re:co Symposium in Portland designed to help participants apply its principles to their own work.
In my homeland, Colombia, coffee with bread (café con pan[1]) for breakfast is almost a must, ubiquitous from highlands to coastal regions. It’s also a way to identify yourself within the context of your community or geography: preferences vary and are as diverse as people, making nuances and technicalities abound even in this simple pairing!
The specific pairing I’m writing about today has been in the western consciousness for almost a century. “Pa said he guessed he hadn’t got much appetite,” wrote Goerge W. Peck in 1900, “and he would just drink a cup of coffee and a [doughnut].” The internet believes this is oldest reference to a well-known and loved pairing that nowadays is cliché in Hollywood representations of the US police force.[2] Taking inspiration from Anukampa Freedom Gupta-Fonner’s “evolution of innovation,”[3] let’s reimagine how the “coffee and a doughnut” pairing could be used to shape the mindsets and practices of the coffee industry in the 21st century, to make coffee better, for all.
Doughnut Economics, a specific understanding of the circular economy put forward by economist Kate Raworth, represents a fundamental shift in the functioning of markets and the economy, reveals old but entrenched ideas, and inspires us to propose an evolution of how “things” should work. It may help to think of the elements of “doughnut economics” as specific ingredients, each of which has a purpose beyond that of maximizing profits, helping those who apply it to lean towards equity and fairness in their business models.
The first ingredient of this “doughnut” is the shape of the circle itself: circularity is one of several similar concepts that envision the flow of material towards a net-zero or zero waste cycles (of materials and energy), and it is not new. The key concepts and principles behind it are the results of cumulative efforts from diverse communities and forward thinkers in at least the last five decades. To the best of my knowledge, the first instance of circularity highlighted in the specialty coffee industry dates back to 2009, when the Zero Emissions Research Initiative (ZERI) was awarded an SCA(A) Sustainability Award. A program begun in 1994, ZERI used waste from coffee farms as a substrate to grow edible mushrooms. By applying natural design principles—i.e., processes that operate at ambient temperature and pressure, as they would out in “nature”—ZERI created an ideal model for a close loop system in coffee production that doesn’t yield any waste.
It is one thing to have a natural “circular” cycle, but the second ingredient at play is “intentionality.” This moves circularity from a mere concept to a grounded, practicable approach developing tools to operate below the ceiling of the doughnut’s “outer crust” (more on that later). Chemist Michale Braungart and architect William McDonough have done this with their “circular” approach, known as “cradle to cradle design” (C2C),[4] which operates using three basic principles derived from nature: recognizing that everything is a resource for something else, using cleaning and renewable energy, and celebrating diversity.[5] Underpinning C2C, the Ellen McArtur Foundation has been championing the Circular Economy, which “decouples economic activity from the consumption of finite resources” by adapting a similar set of principles: the elimination of waste and pollution, the circulation of products and materials, and the regeneration of nature.[6] Both of these approaches provide the blueprints for creating circular production systems and processes, closed loops that eliminate waste by circulating products and materials, maximizing value and regenerating nature. All this, by design (intentionally).
The Circular Economy Butterfly Diagram.
Our third ingredient provides the ceiling, the upper limit of our framework, the crust of the doughnut. In 2009, scientist Johan Rockström and several collaborators published an article[7] identifying and quantifying planetary boundaries, or limits, that must not be transgressed if we want to prevent human activities from causing unacceptable environmental impacts. By tracking nine “earth-system processes,”[8] Rockström et al. outlined our ecological ceiling, defining our safe operating space.
This is the original graphic from the 2009 report representing the Planetary Boundaries. The green inner circle represent what autors define as the “safe operating space” for humanity, the ideal area were those key indicators should be limited. The red wedges represent the estimates on each variable.
But a key ingredient is still missing—one that is never written in recipe books, often because it’s an unspoken assumption that they’ll be there to facilitate the process. In order to create a doughnut, we must also have bakers—their hands, hearths, and wills to serve and nurture us. People provide the raw materials, machinery, and equipment; they coordinate all the effort and investment required to find coffee and doughnuts on our collective table, but they do not feature in any of the frameworks I’ve covered so far. A quick coffee reference for additional context: consider that a container with 250 bags from Colombia (70 kg or ~154 lb), arriving to US or EU ports, required the equivalent of 1,367 pickers (farmworkers’ labor days equivalent), or around 5.5 farmworkers per bag.[9] This doesn’t include the number of farms required to source that container (~around 15 smallholder coffee farms, families!), and the many additional hands in every additional activity in the supply chain, as described in the SCA Coffee Systems Map. These many hands are what make our daily coffee ritual possible, add enormous value to the industry, and contribute to outstanding coffee experiences worldwide.
The fourth ingredient is everywhere: the handprint. In Doughnut Economics, economist Kate Raworth proposed the doughnut’s inner ring, providing a social foundation in her framework to create the doughnut's final shape. Described as a “radically new compass for guiding humanity this century,” I see it as a way of thinking and doing, an approach in which we can provide decent livelihoods, for all, nurturing our (coffee) landscapes and producing communities, while supporting a thriving coffee sector, sustainably. The goal is to help create a coffee industry that is regenerative and distributive by design, a transformative action to build systemic change in our sector. By incorporating the human element, visible and “invisible,” Raworth balances the technical details of circularity and planetary boundaries—and this, for me, changes everything.
The circular economy and planetary boundaries lacked the human element—if they were (or are) ever to succeed, circular designs and healthy ecosystems must guarantee also that no one should be left behind. This inner circle of the doughnut incorporates twelve basic elements: sufficient food; clean water and decent sanitation; access to energy and clean cooking facilities; access to education and to healthcare; decent housing; a minimum (living, prosperous?) income and decent working conditions; and access to networks of information (education) and to networks of social support. Furthermore, Raworth’s model is clear that these basic elements should be achieved under conditions of gender equality, social equity, political voice, and peace and justice. Doughnut Economics reminds us that sustainability is not just about planetary boundaries and ecological ceilings; it is first and foremost, for us, and those that will follow our path in the future. A truly sustainable economy, argues Raworth, is only possible if—in addition to not overshooting those ecological ceilings (the top ring of the doughnut)—we also don’t find ourselves falling short of the social foundation (the inner ring of the doughnut).
Coffee’s doughnut, then, suggests we need a new way of thinking about sustainability within our industry. A sustainable coffee industry not only needs to regenerate coffee’s ecosystems to address the overshooting of ecological ceilings, it also needs to redistribute value equitably within the coffee sourcing network to ensure a solid social foundation. In this way, Raworth’s doughnut visual offers us a beacon to help us solve our sector’s challenges—like price crises—and even evolve to prevent them.
As we expressed in our SCA Sustainability Agenda, we need to move from red lines to cross and boxes to check when talking about (let alone working on!) sustainability. Sustainability is not a goal, but a pathway that we need to continuously create to make coffee better, for all. As trailblazers, we need to shape and build new pathways for the development of the specialty coffee sector, embracing economic models and sourcing approaches that generate and distribute value equitably, fostering a global coffee community to make specialty coffee a thriving, equitable, and sustainable endeavor for the entire value chain. We also need innovative tools and the proper mindset to dynamically improve and adapt business models and sourcing practices towards this emerging future.
The doughnut, a model of the doughnut economics approach, a way of thinking and doing. Sustainability is an exploratory journey, a way of using our ingenuity as a driving force for creating a profitable business because of our purpose for doing good. Through the aggregated efforts of individuals and companies thinking and applying these ideas, we can tilt our industry towards a sustainable path, within the doughnut, without overshooting our ecological ceiling and closing any shortfall in our social foundations.
During this year’s Re:co Symposium, we are offering a two-part seminar, “Designing Coffee Sustainability: Leadership for a Regenerative and Distributive Coffee Value Chain,” using a tool developed by the Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL) and leveraging other elements from the Theory U developed at the MIT’s Presencing Institute, to take a deep dive into the design of the coffee business(es) of the future. The seminar will facilitate participants’ journeys within the coffee industry to explore possible innovations and ideas for boldly redesigning coffee products and services in a safe-dialogue-space for risk-taking. An atmosphere that supports learning and the nurturing of ideas. The session will help us explore the limits and bring transformative ideas on the sustainable future of the specialty coffee industry—and I hope to see you there.
ANDRÉS MONTENEGRO is the SCA’s Sustainability Director. Learn more about the SCA’s Sustainability Agenda here.
[1] In Colombia, asking for a coffee (un café) without careful attention to the context, would automatically be translated to coffee with milk. If you want a black coffee, you probably should ask specifically for a “tinto” or “tintico”.
[2] Olivia B. Waxman. “This is why doughnuts are associated with police officers.” Time Magazine, 2 June 2017. Accessed February 22, 2023.
[3] Specialty Coffee Association. “The evolution of innovation.” Anukampa Freedom Gupta-Fonner. Re:co Symposium 2018 Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXH_5E0byw8
[4] Michael Braungart, William McDonough. Cradle to Cradle (Patterns of the Planet): Remaking the way we make things. Vintage (2009)
[5] “Cradle to Cradle,” William McDonagh, https://mcdonough.com/cradle-to-cradle/, accessed March 21, 2023.
[6] “Circular Economy Introduction,” Ellen MacArthur Foundation, https://ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/topics/circular-economy-introduction/overview, accessed March 21, 2023.
[7] Climate change, novel entities, stratospheric ozone depletion, atmospheric aerosol loading, ocean acidification, biogeochemical flows, freshwater use, land-system change, biosphere integrity.
[8] Johan Rockström, et al. A safe operating space for humanity. Nature 141, 472-275 (2009)
[9] The following conversions & standards were used: 250 bags x 70 kg/bag = 17,500 kg OR 38,581 lb-green coffee. 1 lb-green coffee » 1.25 lb-coffee parchment. 1 lb-coffee parchment » 5 lb-coffee cherry/fruit. Avg farmworker harvest » 80 kg/day OR ~176 lb/day.