Reducing our footprint

Making positive changes

At Costa Coffee, we are always looking for ways to reduce our energy use and reliance on fossil fuels. Here's some of the progress we've made so far:

　
The Roastery

In early 2017, we opened our new state-of-the-art roastery in Basildon, Essex. As well as quadrupling Costa’s roasting capacity and being one of the largest roasteries in Europe, it is also one of the world’s most sustainable.

The Roastery itself was built with sustainability in mind. Its design includes:

• Facilities to make sure that zero waste is sent to landfill

• New and efficient processes that reduce the energy taken to roast each tonne of coffee by a huge 30%

• A rainwater harvesting system, which generates all the hot water used by the roastery

• Renewable energy generation, with 249kw of solar panels on the roof of the building providing its power

• Electric car charging spaces in the car park

• An energy efficient LED lighting system

Even the location of our roastery was especially chosen to improve efficiency. Being so close Tilbury Docks, our Rainforest Alliance certified green coffee beans only have to travel 14 miles to our roastery – halving the original journey distance they used to take to our previous roastery in Lambeth!

This huge investment in sustainability when building our roastery means that it is the first industrial process site to ever be awarded a BREEAM Outstanding accreditation. Click here to read our Roastery's Energy Management Policy.

Energy efficiency

We're proud to say that all our company-owned stores have been powered by 100% renewable energy since April 2017. In a growing number of our stores and our Roastery, we also have on-site energy generation such as solar panels.

We work closely with our suppliers to develop new energy efficient equipment that we can invest in for use in our stores. We also continue to look at ways of leading the retail industry towards a net zero future by continuing to develop net zero energy buildings, which we call ‘EcoPods’. In the meantime, we also constantly explore new ways to save energy in the way we work every day. For example, by replacing lighting with LED lamps and keeping our store doors closed, we have already reduced energy usage in store by 42%. Read more about our commitment to responsible energy use here.

Eco Pods

One of the ways that we have been able to test new efficiencies in our stores is through the construction of our two Eco Pod stores, located in Parc Tawe, Swansea and Wrekin Retail Park, Telford.

We developed the Eco Pod idea to explore ways to make building, operating and maintaining a coffee shop as sustainable and low-energy as possible and these two stores were especially constructed to meet those ambitions.

The design features of the two buildings are what allows us to make this happen – the equipment within the Eco Pod stores all operate in exactly the same way as the rest of our stores, but the following features are embedded in the structures themselves:

• A special frame made from sustainably sourced FSC timber, which replaces the typical steel frame and so reduces each building’s carbon footprint

• Super-insulation, which keeps the stores warm in winter and cool in summer

• Intelligent positioning of the buildings, designed to make the most of the sun’s heat and so reduce the amount of energy needed to keep them warm

• Rooftop solar panels

Everything we learn from our two Eco Pod stores is being carried into our conventional stores wherever possible, helping us further our efforts to drive down energy consumption and continuing to protect the environment in exciting and pioneering ways.

Driving change

In July 2020 we were delighted to be one of the 20 UK retailers to join the British Retail Consortium’s Climate Roadmap as a founding signatory. This roadmap includes a commitment to tackle climate change that will accelerate the UK’s progress to becoming Net Zero, ahead of the Government’s 2050 target.

Neil Lake, Managing Director of Costa Coffee, UK&I, said:

“Reducing our impact on the environment and setting carbon reduction commitments for our business is a core part of Costa Coffee’s Behind the Beans Sustainability Programme. Industry collaboration is key to driving meaningful change and we look forward to working with the BRC and the wider retail industry in developing an ambitious Climate Roadmap to accelerate progress to a Net Zero UK ahead of the Government’s 2050 target”.

As we make progress in this area, we are committed to working collaboratively with the BRC and other retailers to reduce our collective carbon footprint and play our part in building a more sustainable future.

Carbon mapping

In 2020, we kicked off a new programme of work to understand our carbon impact as a global business, from bean to cup. Our carbon map will enable us to set carbon reduction targets and measure our progress against them.