Coffee demand is up, and by 2030, we’re going to need more… a lot more. According to a Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment study, 25% more. Seems we’re so thirsty for coffee as a species, that we’re expected to up our consumption to six billion cups a day by 2050. It may turn out to be a painful blessing, and we’re about to tell you why.

That’s because it’s happening just as we’re running out of suitable land to cultivate this delicious drink. It’s a painful blessing because, to meet demand, we’ll need to lean into what we should have been doing a long time ago: sustainable coffee practices. Right now, climate change is threatening our entire coffee supply chain model… that makes it the perfect time to adopt change.

Statements about what we should do are easy, follow-through is not… we realize that. So does Nestle, and they want to pay coffee farmers to grow sustainably to help lubricate that follow-through. This should help farmers to break into sustainable farming. The hoped-for outcome is win-win, with farmers getting good, solid yield, and the rest of us benefiting.

Nestle has committed to reducing their greenhouse gases significantly over the next couple of years, and will spend $1 billion doing it. Paying farmers is but a single page in their emissions reduction playbook. Practices they’ll be looking for are organic fertilizers, shade trees over coffee beans, and intercropping (where plants on a farm are grown closer together).

Coffee is integral to society… it keeps us going, unites us in the morning as we set out to tackle the elements. Maybe the time has come when sustainable coffee is more than just a slogan, and accessible to more than just boutique coffee shops dotted here and there. From what we’re seeing, sustainable coffee is growing integral to a way of living that folks are finding appealing: the simple life.

In Chicago, an old meatpacking plant has been converted by local businesses into a “living” sustainable food experiment. In stark contrast to its roots, the old plant is now glowing with life and is host to laboratories, a brewery, a coffee roaster, and other ventures… they share wastewater, waste heat, byproducts, and extras in an attempt at a “closed loop”.

To tackle the problem of packaging, coffee and tea company JDE Peet’s has decided to offer a paper pack for their soluble coffee ranges. Recyclable, of course. The idea is to incentivize the reuse of glass jars and tin formats, leading to a more sustainable ecosystem in the soluble coffee market. They see the move as a demonstration of their leadership in sustainability and innovation.

To tackle the problem of… well, lots of other problems, Heirloom Coffee has launched the world’s first regenerative coffee research lab. Basically, they’ve created a place where the only focus is to research and develop regenerative coffee practices. In this context, that means practices that improve soil health, water quality, biodiversity, and farmworker welfare. Traditional methods served us well, but it’s time for a change.

Last year, Heirloom was able to push out Regenerative Organic Certified™ (ROC) specialty coffee to the public… that certification is not an easy thing to get. Their coffee had to meet the absolute highest standards for soil health, animal welfare, and farmworker fairness. They are hoping the move can help solidify regenerative coffee as an industry norm.

Sometimes our woes require new thought processes, and this is certainly true with sustainable coffee. For instance, coffee plants that are more resistant to heat might be a better idea than just shading the plants from the sun alone. There’s a species that has been observed in the dense tropical forests in Sierra Leone, called Coffea stenophylla, that is well versed in heat tolerance, as an example.

However, we don’t have to limit ourselves to what nature has cooked up for us, and we’re not. Instead, scientists are creating coffee plants in the lab that have this same heat tolerance superpower. Not only that, they’re crossing varieties and experimenting with DNA to increase resilience to disease. All of this adds up to what looks like a new era in sustainable coffee. Come back next week for more from the green tech space.