SCA Sustainability Award Winners

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Photo of Dr. Timothy Schilling at origin (second from right), courtesy of SCA

The Specialty Coffee Association announced this week the 2020 SCA Sustainability Award winners: Las Manos del Café for the Project award; Cooperative Coffees for the Business Model award; and Dr. Timothy Schilling, founder of World Coffee Research, for the Sustainability Champion award. 

All of the award winners will be recognized at the digital Re:co Symposium on Thursday, July 16. 

Winner of the Business Model award, Cooperative Coffees’ crew (above) at their annual meeting in 2019. Photo courtesy of SCA

“The growth in applications to the SCA’s sustainability awards—this year there were more than 70—reflects the specialty coffee community’s increasing engagement in sustainability,” says Kim Elena Ionescu, the SCA Chief Sustainability and Knowledge Development Officer. “This year’s winners have all demonstrated tenacity in the face of obstacles and doubts, and they are inspiring examples of what is possible with a powerful combination of vision, persistence, and collaboration.”

The Project and Business Model awards look for outstanding work in sustainability, while the Sustainability Champion award recognizes an individual working to change the specialty coffee sector with sustainability. 

Las Manos del Café farmer. Photo courtesy of SCA

The winner of the Project award, Las Manos del Café, is a project by RGC Coffee Inc., whose objective is “to meet the needs of farmworkers, producers, and local organizations, while identifying alternatives to make employment within the coffee industry more socially viable.”

Las Manos del Café won the Project award. Photo courtesy of SCA

Recipient of the Business Model award, Cooperative Coffees is a Fair Trade and organic coffee importer working to improve the quality of life for small-scale farmers. It currently has 23 members in North America and 54 producer organizations in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

Cooperative Coffees 2019 Cool Farm Tool Learning Exchange in Guatemala. Photo courtesy of SCA

Dr. Timothy Schilling, the Sustainability Champion winner, is also the president of World Coffee Research Europe. His long career in coffee has brought him to work extensively in food security for coffee-producing countries, and has “formed technological, human, and institutional capital that will serve coffee producers worldwide for decades to come,” says the SCA. 

Sustainability Champion winner Tim Schilling examines a plant at Key Coffee. Photo courtesy of SCA

Congratulations to the winners! See how the SCA continuously adds to its sustainability work here.

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