coffee’s a fruit and has two parts…
THE BEAN actually not a bean, but a 2-headed seed.
THE FRUIT a juicy pulp that surrounds the bean, called cascara, or as we call it, “coffee fruit.”
Coffee's kind of a big deal.
Coffee is a $48B industry. Each year, 25B lbs of dried green coffee is processed for export. 100B lbs of coffee fruit (cascara) is harvested as a byproduct, of which 70% is thrown to waste.
And it has a big waste problem.
Cascara waste is left to rot in landfills, generating methane gas equivalent to 31B lbs of CO2. Equivalent to the emissions from 3M passenger cars over the course of a year.
Things are only getting worse.
By 2050, 50% of the current usable land dedicated to coffee production will have vanished due to warming temperatures resulting from climate change. Ironically, wasting cascara is contributing to the most prominent threat to the future of the coffee industry.
So...now what?
At Riff we love coffee and we love our planet. But we don’t love coffee’s impact on our planet, so we’re doing something about it by creating possibilities out of coffee beans and the whole dang coffee plant.
We utilize 100% of the agricultural value of the coffee plant by using the coffee bean for our cold brew coffees, and cascara for our new line of plant-powered Energy+ beverages.
And that's what we call a win-win-win.
Upcycling cascara and avoiding food waste, Energy+ is carbon neutral, and party of 1% For The Planet—donating 1% of revenue to non profits in coffee growing regions.
Creating an opportunity to double income and employment for coffee farmers by generating demand for cascara.
Reducing the coffee industry's contribution to climate change by utilizing 100% of the coffee plant’s agricultural value.
