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Header Caring for Climate Services ECOM AGROINDUSTRIAL CORP. LTD. HAS LONG BEEN A CHAMPION INTRO OF SUSTAINABILITY AND IS HELPING COFFEE BUSINESSES BECOME THE SAME AND ACHIEVE NET ZERO THROUGH ITS NEWLY LAUNCHED CARING FOR CLIMATE SERVICES PLATFORM. BUILDING ON ITS EXPERIENCE IN COFFEE, THIS PLATFORM AIMS TO HOST GREENHOUSE GAS REMOVAL AND REDUCTION INITIATIVES FOR ANY SUPPLY CHAIN.
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xx Xx G C R has become an ustainability important part of every coffee business, and could visit soon For more information, be required as a license to operate, but for coffee trader ECOM, it has been in the DNA of the company. “Sustainability has been core to ECOM in terms of values and even business strategies for a long time now,” says Benjamin Rimaud, Sustainable Management Services (SMS) Coffee Global Manager at ECOM SMS. “With many operations and businesses in producing countries, ECOM fostered close connection with the local coffee reality through its originintegrated approach. Because of these close connections, sustainability has also been an integral part of how we work.” ECOM founded ECOM Sustainable Management Services (SMS) in 2006 to build sustainable supply chains and oversee the many Benjamin Rimaud is the SMS Coffee projects that both coffee and cocoa operations Global Manager at ECOM. were implementing on the ground at origin. Today, ECOM SMS reaches more than 600,000 farmers with 1500 field technicians across 23 countries in coffee and cocoa, allowing it to act at scale. “A key element of sustainability in coffee is the prosperity of farmers. Without this, we cannot expect producers to act on social issues like child labour, minimum wage, nor on environmental concerns like deforestation,” Rimaud says. “Education, training, and technical assistance are big parts of what we do – whether it’s related to certifications, good agricultural and environmental practices, or assistance with financing – so farmers can be economically empowered and produce more with the same amount of land.” With climate change being an increasingly important part of sustainability, Rimaud says it is important that solutions don’t fix one problem at the expense of another. “We cannot have a tunnel vision on climate impacts, only focusing on greenhouse gas emissions. It’s a complex and interconnected dynamic between various environmental impacts, such as water scarcity, biodiversity, and climate change. A very practical example is the wet mill at a coffee farm, which
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Ana Nicod is Head of Climate Change Strategy at ECOM.
produces large volumes of wastewater,” Rimaud says. “If that mill keeps its water in a lagoon or pond and is left untreated, as it degrades, it will release large volumes of methane and biogas. ECOM, in partnership with the University of Notre Dame, is investigating a scalable pilot on wastewater treatment technology. “In addition, you cannot discharge that untreated wastewater into a river because that leads to another environmental and social issue of water contamination and loss, so we must find a way to collect the water and
