Carbonfree® certification means award-winning coffee roaster stands in true alignment with its commitment to building a healthy, sustainable industry.

Albuquerque, New Mexico:Sustainable coffee is a multi-billion-dollar segment of the coffee market, with more roasters popping up every year to sell coffee with claims of environmental and/or social ethicism.

Red Rock Roasters has decided to walk the sustainability walk. With a 20-year history of ethical buying, roasting and selling of organic, conventional and fair-trade coffees, this was the right next-tier opportunity that came about at the right time.

"We've always taken our responsibility to coffee producers seriously," says managing co-owner Nancy Langer. "The Carbonfree® certification is a logical addition to our Organic and Fair Trade offerings—it's another way to reduce our impact and promote stability for the people who grow the coffee we roast."

Red Rock Roasters’ existing reduction efforts include hot-air roasting technology that is 80% more efficient than conventional drum roasters, reusable delivery totes instead of cardboard boxes, an efficient delivery van to replacing an old box truck, an internal recycling program, and partnering with community gardens to compost and mulch burlap bags and chaff.

"We wanted to offset what we couldn't reduce anymore," says Langer.

Red Rock's Carbonfree® Business Partnership offsets travel to coffee origin countries and conferences, product shipping and delivery, paper use, the gas and electricity that run the whole operation, and employee commutes.

Carbonfund.org Foundation uses the Red Rock Roasters donation to purchase and retire carbon offsets from third-party verified and validated carbon offset projects in the same quantity as Red Rock’s operational emissions: over 117,200 pounds of greenhouse gases. These projects are reducing carbon emissions through development of energy efficiency technologies, renewable energy sources, and forest conservation.

"Climate change is already causing serious problems for coffee producers, who are often among the most vulnerable people in the world," says Langer. "Apart from social responsibility, it just makes good business sense to operate as efficiently as possible and mitigate our impact if we want to have quality green coffee available to us in future."