It's probably no secret to anyone that women are the shoppers of the world. It's estimated that women make about 85 percent of all consumer purchasing decisions, including those relating to more than half of all traditionally male products. When it comes to things like personal care and cleaning products, you just don't find many men in those departments.
So it's incredibly significant that women are paying more and more attention to what's in the items they buy, and that they are increasingly favoring products free from toxic chemicals, GreenBiz reports.
Undoubtedly, that's been fueled by the growing number of reports, studies and articles about the chemicals and compounds found in commonly used household products such as shampoos, lotions, body cleansers, laundry detergents, fabric softeners and cleaning products of all kinds, and their potential health impacts ranging from allergies, rashes and asthma to birth defects and fertility issues to cancer. And when these chemicals are found in products intended for children, women will want to err on the side of caution.
As a result, GreenBiz reports, companies are under increasing pressure to report what's in their products and to remove toxic substances.
Beauty and personal care products companies have been under particular pressure. Campaigns have brought attention to the endocrine-disrupting parabens and formaldehyde releasers used as preservatives in many personal care products. As a result, companies like Johnson & Johnson and Revlon are announcing they'll be removing these ingredients. Avon said in the spring it will remove triclosan, another preservative linked to endocrine disruption, from its products. Other companies, like Procter & Gamble and L'Oreal, are also getting pressure.
Companies that make cleaning and laundry products have been under pressure too, with major stores like Walmart and Target agreeing to pay more attention to whether companies publicly disclose the ingredients they contain. Just recently, SC Johnson, which makes Glade odor-control products, agreed to disclose what goes into "fragrance," an often-mysterious ingredient found on labels that's usually not broken down to its chemical components which are often allergens. Clorox, makers of many cleaning and laundry products, has also said it will begin in 2015 disclosing the makeup of fragrance in its products.
Campaigns like Mind the Store and the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics serve a twofold purpose. They provide information about what's in popular consumer products and a rallying point for those who want to add their voices to the demand for safer ones. There are also specialized campaigns like Detox the Box to disclose and remove chemicals that can cause cancer and reproductive problems from feminine pads and tampons which, because they are considered "medical devices" and not personal care products, don't have to disclose any of their ingredients, and Getting Ready for Baby, which focuses on what's in baby care products.
Some women are even looking for natural substitutes for chemical-laden products, turning to thinks like baking soda, lemon juice and herbs to do the same job. Given these trends, it's probably safe to say that, to compete, our store-bought personal care, cleaning and laundry products are likely to become less toxic and more green in 2015.
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Consumers may be happy, but climate change is making coffee farmers bitter. Diseases and pests are becoming more common and severe as temperatures rise. The fungal infection known as coffee leaf rust has devastated plantations in Central and South America. And while robusta crops tend to be more resistant, they need plenty of rain – a tall order as droughts proliferate.
The future for coffee farming looks difficult, if not bleak. But one of the more promising solutions involves developing new, more resilient coffee crops. Not only will these new coffees have to tolerate higher temperatures and less predictable rainfall, they'll also have to continue satisfying consumer expectations for taste and smell.
Finding this perfect combination of traits in a new species seemed remote. But in newly published research, my colleagues and I have revealed a little-known wild coffee species that could be the best candidate yet.
Coffee Farming in a Warming World
Coffea stenophylla was first described as a new species from Sierra Leone in 1834. It was farmed across the wetter parts of upper west Africa until the early 20th century, when it was replaced by the newly discovered and more productive robusta, and largely forgotten by the coffee industry. It continued to grow wild in the humid forests of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast, where it became threatened by deforestation.
At the end of 2018, we found stenophylla in Sierra Leone after searching for several years, but failed to find any trees in fruit until mid-2020, when a 10g sample was recovered for tasting.
Field botanists of the 19th century had long proclaimed the superior taste of stenophylla coffee, and also recorded its resistance to coffee leaf rust and drought. Those early tasters were often inexperienced though, and our expectations were low before the first tasting in the summer of 2020. That all changed once I'd sampled the first cup on a panel with five other coffee experts. Those first sips were revelatory: it was like expecting vinegar and getting champagne.
This initial tasting in London was followed by a thorough evaluation of the coffee's flavour in southern France, led by my research colleague Delpine Mieulet. Mieulet assembled 18 coffee connoisseurs for a blind taste test and they reported a complex profile for stenophylla coffee, with natural sweetness, medium-high acidity, fruitiness, and good body, as one would expect from high-quality arabica.
C. stenophylla growing in the wild, Ivory Coast. E. Couturon / IRD, Author provided
In fact, the coffee seemed very similar to arabica. At the London tasting, the Sierra Leone sample was compared to arabica from Rwanda. In the blind French tasting, most of the judges (81%) said stenophylla tasted like arabica, compared to 98% and 44% for the two arabica control samples, and 7% for a robusta sample.
The coffee tasting experts picked up on notes of peach, blackcurrant, mandarin, honey, light black tea, jasmine, chocolate, caramel and elderflower syrup. In essence, stenophylla coffee is delicious. And despite scoring highly for its similarity to arabica, the stenophylla coffee sample was identified as something entirely unique by 47% of the judges. That means there may be a new market niche for this rediscovered coffee to fill.
The taste testers approved of stenophylla's sweet and fruity flavour. CIRAD, Author provided
Breaking New Grounds
Until now, no other wild coffee species has come close to arabica for its superior taste. Scientifically, the results are compelling because we would simply not expect stenophylla to taste like arabica. These two species are not closely related, they originated on opposite sides of the African continent and the climates in which they grow are very different. They also look nothing alike: stenophylla has black fruit and more complex flowers while arabica cherries are red.
It was always assumed that high-quality coffee was the preserve of arabica – originally from the forests of Ethiopia and South Sudan – and particularly when grown at elevations above 1,500 metres, where the climate is cooler and the light is better.
Stenophylla coffee breaks these rules. Endemic to Guinea, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast, stenophylla grows in hot conditions at low elevations. Specifically it grows at a mean annual temperature of 24.9°C – 1.9°C higher than robusta, and up to 6.8°C higher than arabica. Stenophylla also appears more tolerant of droughts, potentially capable of growing with less rainfall than arabica.
Robusta coffee can grow in similar conditions to stenophylla, but the price paid to farmers is roughly half that of arabica. Stenophylla coffee makes it possible to grow a superior tasting coffee in much warmer climates. And while stenophylla trees tend to produce less fruit than arabica, they still yield enough to be commercially viable.
The stenophylla harvest on Reunion Island. IRD / CIRAD, Author provided
To breed the coffee crop plants of the future, we need species with great flavour and high heat tolerance. Crossbreeding stenophylla with arabica or robusta could make both more resilient to climate change, and even improve their taste, particularly in the latter.
With stenophylla's rediscovery, the future of coffee just got a little brighter.
Aaron P Davis: Senior Research Leader, Plant Resources, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Disclosure statement: Aaron P Davis receives funding from Darwin Initiative (UK).
Reposted with permission from The Conversation.