Scope 3 and your coffee.
How the coffee your business buys shows up in your carbon footprint, and how to shrink it without changing anything about your morning.
~90%
cut in roasting emissions vs gas, per Bellwether’s published data for our all-electric roaster
20–47×
more CO₂e from air freight than sea, per tonne-km. We never fly coffee
0 g/km
tailpipe CO₂ on our EV deliveries across York & Yorkshire
The short version
If your business reports its carbon footprint, or expects to soon, the coffee in your kitchen, lobby or hospitality offer sits inside Scope 3, Category 1: Purchased Goods and Services. For most companies, Scope 3 is by far the largest slice of their footprint, and Category 1 is typically its biggest single category.
Coffee carries a heavier footprint than most office purchases — but the same coffee, sourced and processed differently, can carry less than a quarter of the emissions. You cannot cut Scope 3 by changing your own operations. You cut it by choosing better suppliers.
kWh Coffee is built to sit at the bottom of that range. We roast on an all-electric Bellwether, never air-freight our beans, deliver on EVs, and source through direct, traceable, ESG-led relationships. Then we hand you the data so your sustainability team can use it in your own reporting.
11 kg
of CO₂e per kg of green coffee on ICO estimates. Published life-cycle studies range from 3.5 to 15.3 kg depending on how it is grown, shipped and roasted.
What's Inside the Report
Eight pages your sustainability team can actually use, written for the people who fill in the spreadsheets.
Scope 3, in two minutes
Why coffee sits in Scope 3 Category 1 (Purchased Goods & Services), and why UK SRS, SECR, CSRD and customer net-zero commitments are making it harder to ignore.
Why coffee is worth fixing
Life-cycle emissions span ~3.5 to ~15.3 kg CO₂e per kg of coffee. Every stage in that range is a supplier decision — and every one of them is a decision we make well on your behalf.
What kWh does differently
All-electric Bellwether roasting timed to the greenest grid windows, sea freight only, zero-tailpipe EV delivery, and direct-trade traceable sourcing — stage by stage against a conventional supplier.
What your sustainability team gets
Supplier-specific per-kg emissions data ready for your Category 1 inventory, plus a drop-in disclosure paragraph you can copy straight into your reporting.
Conventional Supplier vs kWh
Every stage of your coffee's journey is a supplier decision. Here's how we make each one.
| Stage | Conventional supplier | kWh Coffee |
|---|---|---|
| Roasting | Gas roaster with afterburner; roasting is ~15% of the industry’s footprint | All-electric, ventless Bellwether: ~90% lower roasting emissions; under 0.1 kg CO₂ per roast cycle |
| When we roast | Whenever production demands | Batches timed to the greenest windows on the National Grid |
| Int’l freight | Mixed; air freight used for speed (500–1,000 g CO₂e per tonne-km) | Sea freight only (10–40 g CO₂e per tonne-km). A policy, not an accident |
| Local delivery | Diesel van, ~250 g CO₂/km | Electric vehicle, zero tailpipe emissions |
| Sourcing | Often opaque; blended lots | Direct-trade relationships, fully traceable. Lot-level records shared on request |
| Your reporting | Industry-average estimates only | Supplier-specific data for your Scope 3 Category 1 disclosure, prepared for you on request |
What Your Sustainability Team Gets
Supplier-specific data, not industry averages
GHG Protocol guidance ranks supplier-specific data as the gold standard for Category 1. We provide per-kg emissions figures for your coffee purchases, ready to drop into your inventory.
A reportable reduction
Switching to a lower-carbon coffee supplier is a genuine, defensible Scope 3 intervention: the kind supplier-engagement programmes exist to find.
Evidence for tenders and customers
Traceability, LCA-backed figures and a named UK supplier with a documented data trail: material you can cite in CDP responses, tender submissions and ESG reports.
A story people actually enjoy
Most Scope 3 work is invisible. This one is in the kitchen every morning, tastes better than what it replaced, and comes with a yellow EV.
Drop-In Disclosure
Copy, adapt, paste. A ready-made paragraph for your Scope 3 reporting.
“Coffee purchases (Scope 3, Category 1) are supplied by kWh Coffee Roasters, York, using supplier-specific emissions data: all-electric roasting (<0.1 kg CO₂e per roast cycle, per Bellwether’s published data), sea freight only, and zero-tailpipe-emission local delivery. Per-kg figures were provided by the supplier and cross-checked against supplier-provided records.”
Ready to shrink your Scope 3?
We supply wholesale roasted coffee, fully managed office and lobby espresso bars, mobile bars for events, and custom roasting with your branding. All from York, all on electric power.
Or just email hello@kwhcoffee.com and we'll bring samples in the EV.
Figures are drawn from published third-party sources current as of July 2026 and are provided in good faith to support, not replace, your own reporting. Full citations are included in the report and available on request.