When TMZ spills the beans, we end up rolling our eyes and shaking our heads.

When Ethical Bean Coffee Co. spills the beans, we end up with richly roasted coffee and a clear conscience.

They’re the real deal.

Vancouverites Lloyd Bernhardt and his partner and wife Kim Schachte didn’t start out with a plan to roast and sell good-juju-java.  They started with a plan to build a family. That took them to Guatemala in 1999 where they adopted their daughter and developed an instant connection to the country and the people.

In 2003, they launched the Vancouver-based, Ethical Bean Coffee offering Fair Trade Organic Beans roasted in a carbon neutral facility. While their business started off as a commitment to Guatemala, they now get their green beans from 8 different countries and work with 20 coffee farming co-ops around the world.

Ethical Bean offers consumers two ways to get to know their coffee growers more intimately. Each bag has a QR code. Scan and tap into the Ethical Bean app to trace the origins of the bean or simply go online to input the 6-digit lot number on EB’s homepage. While your coffee is brewing, you’ll find out where the beans came from, meet the farmer who picked them, journey to the co-op that processed them, follow them to the roaster in Vancouver and even see how the brew did in a quality taste test.

And there’s one more sip of altruism left in the cup. Every December, Ethical Bean donates a portion of their profits to two charities close to their hearts – Compassion Fruit and Child Aid. Donations to Child Aid ensure that children in El Tejar, Guatemala have the supplies and support they need to attend school while the funds to Compassion Fruit are used to build a village to house abandoned and orphaned Guatemalan children. 

So how do you take your coffee? We suggest with a spoon of social responsibility, dash of global awareness and sprinkle of environmental accountability.

Café au guilt-free.

--

Get your EB coffee fix here.

By Valerie McTavish