Coffees with conscience: choices for the caffeinated environmentalist.

Ahhh, waking up to java nirvana, jolting your eyes open and revving up your mind. Besides being a morning habit for 130 million Americans, coffee has become hip to sip day or night, cold or hot. As one connoisseur rhapsodizes, "It's always time for coffee."

Yes, coffee is hot these days - and iced, roasted, filtered, dripped, organic, blended, flavored and vacuum-packed . while traditional tinned ground and instant coffee sales have slumped, coffee bars and specialty beans have become the fastest-growing trend in the food industry over the last two years, according to Ted Lingle, executive director of the Specialty Coffee Association of America. Supermarkets, health food stores and mail order houses are offering bulk beans, coffee grinders and an array of filters as an increasing number of consumers open up their tastebuds and wallets to the specialty coffee industry. Even 7-Eleven is experimenting with self-serve espresso machines. Lingle estimates $3 billion in specialty coffee will be sold for home consumption by 1999, double the figure for 1989.

At an average of 3.4 cups per day, Americans are the world's top coffee drinkers, but that doesn't mean beans if you don't know what you're buying. And, with the growing demand for greener, healthier products, how does that cup of joe stack up?

For one thing, coffee trees, which thrive on plantations mainly in Mexico, Central and South America, Indonesia, and Africa, are the third most heavily sprayed crop in the world, next to cotton and tobacco. "More than 70 percent of the world's coffee is sprayed with synthetic chemicals." - including malathion and DDT, long banned in the U.S., says Karen Cebreros of Elan International, a San Diego, California-based coffee importer and exporter. However, coffee beans are protectively isolated inside a cherry-like fruit, and the 400-degree coffee roasting process effectively breaks down the toxic chemicals.

So, although the sprays don't directly affect consumer health, they do "pose a threat to grower's health, besides being an overall hazard to the ecosystem," notes Paul Katzeff, CEO of Fort Bragg, California's Thanksgiving Coffee Company, whose motto is: "Not just a cup, but a just cup."

Is there an alternative to (gasp!) giving up coffee? "Organic farming not only helps replenish and rebuild our world's topsoil, but also protects human and animal health," says Katzeff. "A Just cup' does not mean sending money to countries to buy more herbicides and pesticides. A |just cup' has to be organic."

Companies like Thanksgiving are certifying their organic coffee crops to ensure that the beans come from plantations where no pesticides were used. "Organic" also extends to worker treatment and to the processing, warehousing and shipping of the organically grown beans.

Betty Kananen, administrative director of the Organic Crop Improvement Association (OCIA), the world's largest independent certification organization, says that although certification setup costs are high - $30,000 or more, including an annual fee and the hiring of an inspector once a year - "40 percent more companies are getting certified than in past years, in an effort to build environmental stewardship."

But to some, organic certification is unnecessary and costly. "Countries like Indonesia and Ethiopia use traditional organic methods by default; they've never heard of chemical alteration," contends Scott Price, coffee specialist at the Seattle-based Starbucks coffee retail chain. The largest such chain in the U.S., Starbucks is not planning to go organic. "Farmers there don't have the money to pay for certification, plus, they don't see any benefit," explains Price.

Organic or not, growing and harvesting coffee is a complex process. "Contrary to popular belief, coffee beans are not picked by a smiling Juan Valdez and his mule from a beautiful mountainside," says Richard Stewart, CEO of the Norway, Iowa-based Frontier Coffee, the largest supplier of organic coffee in the U.S. "Entire families harvest the beans under sweltering conditions. It's backbreaking labor, 12 to 14 hours a day for pay that wouldn't buy a cup of coffee." It takes 2,000 beans to make nearly four pounds of coffee - the average yield of each tree.

Organically grown coffee is more labor intensive because everything is done manually. Farmers must "use ground covers and plant deep-rooted bananas, oranges and avocados for shade and as secondary crops," maintains Patty Vincent, coffee educator for the Waterbury, Vermont-based Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. "They also have to cut down weeds with machetes, fertilize with compost and, because coffee is naturally susceptible to insects and disease, they must introduce natural predators and disease-resistant mulch." This expended energy causes many coffee farms to resort to chemical spraying.

To ensure properly certified organic coffee, several coffee companies have established direct relationships with growers, often forming community cooperatives. Because no broker is involved, these companies can pay growers more than they would have received from commercial coffee producers.

Both Frontier and Boulder, Colorado's Allegro Coffee help organize and train farmers in Mexico and Latin America to run certified co-ops, which "sort, mill and bag the coffee, then sell it to us - we're committed to buying large amounts of coffee at a fair price," Frontier's Stewart says. "We also lend them money to buy equipment and technical assistance."

With all the difficulties and costs of producing organic coffee, why buy it? Jim Cannell, president of The Organic Coffee Company in Wareham, Massachusetts, explains that organic and other specialty coffee, processed from high-altitude Arabica beans, is sweeter and contains less caffeine, thus is "more soothing on the stomach" than the higher-yielding but more acidic Robusta beans used in commercial brands like Maxwell House and Folgers.

But "Organic-ness is not a taste, it's a process," says Stewart. Kevin Knox, vice president at Allegro, agrees. "Organics can be good or mediocre, just like any other coffee. There's a tremendous potential to improve the quality of organic coffee beans, while helping to send a message about good horticultural practices."

Although organic coffee is pricier - sometimes up to a dollar per pound - prices of organic and other specialty coffees are not the determining factor for consumers. Contends Stewart, "most people now look at the taste and the issues, what's involved in growing and roasting the coffees." And, although he says the price of organic coffee will never be lower than regular coffee, he expects the gap to narrow within a year or two because of increased consumer demand and more competitors in the marketplace.

For now, if you're a java junkie who's used to guzzling with gusto, you might also so interested in the fact that some companies donate a percentage of organic sales to good causes: Green Mountain, Allegro, Frontier and Cafe Tierra sell coffees that contribute 15 cents a pound to Coffee Kids, a Providence, Rhode Island-based nonprofit organization dedicated to improving childrens' lives through community development projects. Many companies are adding organics to their coffee lines and mail order catalogs, and sales are brisk. "My sales have quadrupled over the past year," says Jim Cannell. Frontier's beverage category manager, Steve Bosking, adds, "For a long time, there weren't any other options but commercial coffee; now there are hundreds of alternatives. People realize that life's too short for bad coffee."

Helpful Resources

*Coffee Kids, 207 Wickenden St., Providence, RI 02903/[phone].

*Frontier Coffee, Frontier Cooperative Herbs, Box 299, Norway, IA 52318/[phone].

*Organic Coffee Company, 12 Kendrick Road, Wareham, MA 02571/[phone].

*Organic Crop Improvement Associatin, 3185 Township Rd. 179, Bellefontaine, OH 43311/[phone].

*Thanksgiving Coffee, Box 1918, Fort Bragg, CA 95437/[phone].

Filtering Out the Toxins

Coffee has long been embroiled in controversy over the health effects of both cafeeinated and decaffeinated varieties. But even if coffee is safe to drink in moderation, it may not be safe when brewed in those ever-popular chlorine-bleached paper filters. Fortunately, many green alternatives are now readily available:

Brown unbleached paper filters produce the same brewing results as regular paper filters, but without the carcinogenic dioxin. cost: $2.00 to $3.00 per hundred.

Oxygen-bleached filters are whitened with oxygen rather than chlorine bleach. One brand is Earth Friendly Paper filters, made by Green Mountain. Cost: $2.00 to $3.50 per hundred.

Unbleached cotton filters are reusable, economical, and result in a higher-quality brew than paper filters. But they can be hard to clean, and the coffee oil that adheres to them may become rancid. Cost:$2.75 to $4.00, depending on size.

Gold-plated mesh baskets, coated with 24-carat gold, are the longest-lasting reusable filter. They let some grounds through for a richer, earthier taste, and rinse clean within seconds under hot tap water. Cost:$17.00 to $23.00.

The French Press makes coffee without a filter. You put coffee grounds in the glass cylinder, pour in hot water, let the brew steep five minutes, then push down the plunger to force it through a fine screen of metal or cloth. Cost:$50 to $200, depending on size.

Finally, remember that coffee grounds are great for composting!