What’s in Your Coffee?

We recently chose coffeemakers for use in our ecotourism spaces. For many of us, the first thing we do in the morning is switch on the coffeemaker and wait for those first restorative sips of caffeine, so it was an important choice. We want our coffee quickly, and we want it to taste good. But in furnishing an ecotourism kitchen, we also must consider the bigger picture. Is a coffeemaker a healthy addition to our kitchens? Many coffeemakers include plastic parts, which may contain BPA (Byphenol A), which can lead to reproductive issues such as infertility and even some types of cancers. Is it energy efficient? An average full-sized automatic drip filter coffee maker will use about 730 kWh annually, costing (assuming a rate of 12¢/kWh) $87.60, or $7.30 per month. And how will that one coffeemaker—multiplied by approximately 19 million US households a day, all year long—impact our fragile environment, both in terms of energy consumption and the inevitable journey that old coffeemakers make to the landfill?

Here is what we finally chose.