Recap: Etelle Higonnet, Founder of Coffee Watch

The post-show recap of the recent episode featuring the Founder of Coffee Watch Etelle Higonnet. Coffee Watch is a coffee industry watchdog. Their mission:

"Coffee Watch is a nonprofit watchdog organization dedicated to the proposition that we should make the world a better place with each cup of coffee.

We fight to reform the global coffee industry.

Our resolve is unyielding. The coffee industry must change. The dark and bitter days of slavery, child labor, deforestation, and pesticide-soaked monoculture must end."

Find online at: https://coffeewatch.org/

https://bsky.app/profile/coffeewatch.bsky.social

https://www.instagram.com/coffeewatchorg

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Episode Transcript

(00:25):
Hey, coffee drinkers, welcome back to the Coffee People
podcast recap show. Thank you for being here and
being a supporter of our Coffee People platform.
I'm your host, Ryan Walt. You can follow or subscribe to
the show wherever you're listening, but you'll only find
the bonus context links, recaps to the show, and options to
become a paid supporter on coffeepeoplepodcast.com.

(00:48):
A lot of great options for paid supporters.
If you'd like to help us tell the stories of coffee people, we
certainly appreciate you. Our recent podcast guest, Atel
Igoni is the founder of Coffee Watch, an industry watchdog
organization dedicated to the proposition that we should be
making the world a better place with every cup of coffee.

(01:08):
And after spending an hour with her and some time digging into
the reports and content shared on coffeewatch.org regarding
deforestation, workplace slaveryor indentured servitude, climate
impacts due to harmful farming practices.
And honestly, I don't know how she does it.

(01:29):
I don't know how during our showat least, she continues to laugh
so freely and and share optimistic motivation that all
of this can get turned around. I really appreciated it.
Joy seemed to kind of ooze from ET al, even as she was offering
up some devastating statistic about climate philanthropy or

(01:51):
the impact poorly produced coffees can have.
So to recap this episode with ETal.
Igoni of Coffee Watch we're hereto kind of give you some bullet
points, you know, if you didn't have a chance to listen all the
way through or just as a reminder, if you enjoyed the
episode, ET al. Spent a dozen years or so
working with human rights organizations like Amnesty

(02:12):
International and UNICEF after graduating from Yale Law School.
Eventually the weight of that work caught up to her.
This challenging work to work innonprofits, mentally,
physically, emotionally. It inspired a transition for
into work and more environmentaland climate challenges with
organizations like Greenpeace and Mighty Earth.

(02:34):
You'll find links to those on our newsletter.
So I was questioning, you know, how it's possible for this
version of humanity to maintain the viewpoint that things can
get better in the face of our daily barrage of negative news
that we seem to get about climate all the time and a
seeming lack of control that I personally and the, you know,

(02:56):
all of us have toward the whole earth of problems that encompass
the topic of climate change. And it's all just acknowledge
that it's hard, but having a baby, a son, cemented her
resolve to fight with everythingshe has to make the world a
better place for him and, and his future.

(03:17):
And I think having something like that to to focus on This is
why I'm doing this is really important, especially when
you're doing work in the nonprofit space.
On to the challenges facing coffee in particular.
For starters, supply chains are hard to follow.
They're hard to follow, even if you're part of them.
I mean, coffee got problems thatreally isn't debated that much

(03:41):
in our industry. Some problems are more obvious
than others. And Coffee Watch's goal is to
shine a bright, unyielding lighton those problems.
You know, OfferUp, what they found, push for change.
And in the first year of the organization, they just
celebrated one year. She's learned that not everyone
has been really excited or even willing to hear what they have

(04:04):
to say. The reasons why our legion
including bandwidth, financial impacts to business, the
logistics of changing an established supply chain, even
the emotional toll of challenging the status quo.
There's a lot you know that thatmakes it hard to take steps
forward toward the type of change that she's asking for.

(04:27):
I'd add the simple weight of accepting and staring at
something that makes us feel badwhen many of us not speaking for
for you, but for myself, many ofus need all the positive
worldview reinforcement we can find, especially right now.
During this episode, the term NGO came up several times.

(04:48):
NGO is an acronym for Non governmental organization.
Ng OS are often, although not exclusively, nonprofits that are
funded at least partially by governments, but they operate at
least partially independent of said government.
I'll link to more information oncoffeepeoplepodcast.com because

(05:10):
there is a lot, a lot of variances to what constitutes an
NGO and how it might impact yourcommunity or an industry.
It's also used the term deforestation, which is pretty
much what it sounds like. I wanted to define it a little
bit just because it's not as simple as just cutting a tree
down or a bunch of trees down. I mean, it is, but it's the

(05:33):
clear cutting of a forest by humans for a land use that isn't
planting more forests or replacing them in a responsible
way. Only 31% of the earth is
currently covered by forest. The introduction of farming and
agriculture has drastically put a dent in the tree, the trees,

(05:54):
the land area covered by forestswhich are huge carbon sinks
around the world. It's actually the main driver of
deforestation is farming and agriculture.
You can look for more links on the value of forests and the
impact of deforestation on coffeepeoplepodcast.com.
I'll also share some of my personal favorite books about
trees, The Secret Life of Trees being one of them.

(06:18):
I I wish it were easier to breakdown all the numbers because
there are so many and it's easy to glaze over.
I know I did just reading them and hearing them that you know,
numbers that indicate where we are in this phase of climate
change and and how farming of products like coffee cause some
of that impact. Just to kind of keep it to a .1

(06:42):
of the more surprising numbers that came up during our
conversation with the Tel was only a small percentage, like 2
to 2 1/2 at the at the outset ofphilanthropic giving goes
towards climate challenges, evenless specifically towards
agricultural challenges like coffee.
That really surprised me becauseit seems like such a huge issue

(07:05):
that we're all focused on at least a little bit or aware of.
Federal cuts to programs that were operating under the USAID
banner have shined a light a little bit on how sometimes NGOs
aren't ineffective because they waste money.
Some do, no doubt, but not always.
But sometimes they're ineffective because they don't

(07:26):
have enough money to pay for solutions or to attract the
people with the right skill setsto do the jobs.
There's this theory that people that work in nonprofits do it
because they're passionate and they love it, but they shouldn't
be doing it to get paid, which Idisagree with.
I think that there's a there's room for both things to to make
enough money at a nonprofit where you can feel good about

(07:48):
helping and also support your own family.
Back to the show, a couple more thoughts.
Coffee Watch is based in Denmark, the country hotel calls
home. A 2025 study published on
kefailey.com indicates that Denmark has a thriving coffee
culture, which I've also just heard anecdotally.
There's sixth in coffee consumption per capita, quite a

(08:11):
bit higher than the US, which comes in at 24th per person.
The average Denmarker drinks at least 2 cups of coffee a day,
which is pretty impressive considering they're also one of
the most expensive places to drink coffee, paying an average
of $5.40 per cup in 2025. That doesn't actually seem like

(08:32):
a lot for a specialty coffee, but we're talking about the
average price is 540, so that means even kind of on the low
end they're they're definitely higher.
I asked Itel if they were already seeing climate change
refugees in Denmark, and she said yes, but cautioned that
we're really at the beginning ofclimate migration.
It's a hard statistic to quantify, and the line between

(08:56):
people moving because of climatechange or moving with an
understanding that climate impacts their decisions isn't
always clear. For example, my wife and I
recently moved to the Pacific Northwest.
We didn't move because we were forced out of our home because
of climate, but one of the variables we considered when
narrowing down, you know, the choices of where we would land

(09:17):
was places where there'd be enough water in the future and
where weather may not become as extreme in our lifetime.
We're not climate refugees, but it's definitely a factor in our
decision making. And I hope we're right.
It's so, so far beyond, you know, all the science that we

(09:39):
can understand, but there's so much that is unknown, which
makes it a challenging, a challenging thing for for anyone
making a decision on where to live.
This all kind of makes my head spin and my natural cynicism
soars as they tell how she maintains faith in her mission
Coffee watch mission. And she said that we should

(10:01):
engage and learn about all the bad stuff only so you can work
towards changing and fixing it. You know, don't fall into that
doom scrolling trap and start blaming yourself.
You do what you can do to make things better, which is a great
way to kind of go about every day.
It doesn't have to be perfect. You know, buying better coffee,

(10:22):
ethical coffee shade grown coffee is a start, according to
Intel. Sharing it with others and
encouraging that they buy bettercoffee too is the next step.
And, you know, then there's another and another and another.
They offer an ethical coffee buying guide on coffeewatch.org,
which we'll share in the newsletter.
And finally, in two disparate ends of the spectrum, we learned

(10:48):
that ET al. Igoni drinks oatmeal lattes and
once charmed a pair of hitmen. So you should listen to the show
and hear that story. I'll close out our recap today
by asking, what's what's your reason for wanting a better
future? He tells us your son and his
future mine is for some weird intrinsic desire to leave things

(11:12):
better than I find them, so thatthe lovely people in my life
that will likely outlive me havea nice place to to play and also
dogs. I assume my pup Keto whiskey
Lemon thundernuts is immortal and I want to do what I can to
make a better future for him andhis future siblings.

(11:33):
And that includes drinking better coffee.
You can watch or listen to the entire episode of the Coffee
People podcast featuring ET al Ligonet of Coffee Watch on most
podcast platforms and of course,YouTube.
We could really use your help ingrowing our YouTube subscriber
list. You can find us there at Coffee

(11:55):
People Podcasts. All of the important links,
including that one, are in the show's notes.
Thank you to our friends and partners, including Rostar
Coffee Packaging. Find them at rostar.com.
Civets Roasting machines, the official roasting machine of our
show, Asaya Coffee Source or Green Coffee importer, Friends
relative coffee company who we produce ya no ya coffee with.

(12:18):
And of course, all of you listening to the stories of
coffee people and aspiring to make the world a better place.
Wherever you are, please tip your baristas.
And of course, drink good coffee.
Cheers everyone. The climate change thing is

(13:34):
wild. There are just so many issues
I'm not even aware of and I'm paying attention.
I'm drinking coffee.