The Future Is Green: Adam Pesce Of Reunion Coffee Roasters On Their Top Strategies for a Cleaner Planet
An Interview With Wanda Malhotra
Believe that change is possible. We can all feel, at times, as though there is no point to doing the work, because what can we do when our efforts are stacked up against the negative impacts of large corporations or governments that prioritize profit over everything else.
As we face an unprecedented environmental crisis, the need for sustainable solutions has never been more urgent. This series seeks to spotlight the innovative minds and passionate advocates who are leading the charge in environmental conservation and sustainable practices. We aim to explore the most effective strategies, breakthrough technologies, and transformative policies that are shaping a more sustainable future for our planet. As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Adam Pesce.
Adam Pesce, is the President of Reunion Coffee Roasters. With over a decade of experience in the specialty coffee industry, Adam is responsible for leading the company’s sustainability programs and initiatives.
Thank you so much for joining us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’?
Reunion is a family business, and my father, Peter, has been in the coffee industry since the late 70s, so it’s safe to say I was born into it. Peter was a pioneer in the Canadian specialty coffee industry, as one of the first to really pay extra attention to the quality of the coffee he was roasting — earlier coffee was mostly just brown water. I started at Reunion after graduating from the University of Western Ontario with a degree in Politics. I worked at Reunion while also going to culinary school at night and eventually working in kitchens, unsure of what I wanted to do. When I left school, I knew I wanted to do some good in the world, but it wasn’t until I started traveling to coffee origins as a buyer, that I saw the inequity in the supply chain and the exploitation that existed, inherent in the coffee trading model. From that point, I understood that coffee could be the conduit with which I could do something positive. I have spent the time since as a vocal advocate for improving sustainability standards within the coffee industry, while focusing on making Reunion the best version of itself, in both sustainability and quality.
Can you share with us the most interesting story from your career? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘takeaways’ you learned from that?
The most important story of my career was my trip to Guatemala, a couple years into my time at Reunion. It’s where I saw the various kinds of farms: conventional, co-ops, large estates, Rainforest Alliance certified, Fair Trade certified, organic… it’s where I started to realize the challenges that the industry faced. I saw how much those certifications really, truly helped make for a much better and safer workplace for the farmers. Coming back from that trip, I realized we needed to make a change in our focus, in terms of how we were sourcing, so we could be confident in the ethics of our supply chain. That then forced me to look closer to home, at our overall business practices. That trip really was the genesis point of so much of the change we have made in the past 20 years to become the company we now are.
You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Empathy — is always something I have believed in and espoused, but it became particularly important as a leadership trait during the pandemic when everything was so sideways. We all went through this horrible thing together, but everyone suffered through it in different ways, so I really tried to open myself up to seeing things from individual employees’ perspectives — it is very easy to think you know why someone is making the choices they are making, or coming in with a particular attitude, but everyone has their own story and needs the space to be individual.
Kindness — I always tell my team, that kindness is the best tool we have when dealing with others (whether it be staff members, vendors, peers) because it is (a) free! (b) the right way to be as a person and © unfortunately, surprising to a lot of people. It so easy to lose your cool in a tough situation or jump to the conclusion that someone is careless if something goes wrong, but if you meet them with kindness and understanding, it can turn a bad situation good very quickly, and saves a lot of animosity, stress, and frustration with everyone involved.
Trust — I have struggled with this one, not because I don’t have great people working with me, but because I hold the business so close to my heart, that I want to be so careful and thoughtful about every little thing. As we have grown and my role has evolved, it obviously become impossible to be so hands on, but it has taught me to trust the team to care and to get the job done well. Once expectations are appropriately set, and if the team can feel the passion, you very quickly start to find that trust builds into a major force for good within the company.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that might help people?
Our next big focus is on calculating our carbon footprint fully, so we can set ourselves on the course to become carbon neutral. A lesson I learned from our 10+ years as a B Corp is that you must track EVERYTHING if you want to understand your impact. Keeping track of GHG emissions throughout the entire supply chain is no joke, so we are re-dedicating ourselves to the work so we can see better understand our impact on the planet — what ‘bad’ we are doing, so we can ensure it is being mitigated at every turn and offset where we need to. We have not set the timeline yet, but we want to be much more aggressive than some of the larger multi-national corporations have… getting to carbon neutral by 2050 or even 2035 might be too late. Coffee growers are so impacted by climate change that we feel an even bigger responsibility to act now.
Could you describe a groundbreaking project or initiative you’ve been involved in that significantly contributed to sustainability?
We are proud ‘early adopters’ on a few initiatives that have grown significantly since our time with them started, namely Bullfrog Power and the B Corp movement. We have been with Bullfrog Power since 2011, supporting renewable energy projects and offsetting our electricity consumption for all that time. And we have been a Bcorp since 2012, which gives us a framework to measure and grow our positive impact in the world, being a business that aims to do better and provide a public benefit within our business model.
How do you navigate the balance between economic growth and environmental preservation in your sustainability strategies?
We have been fortunate to grow continuiously as we have become more sustainable, so I cannot believe that the two are not intertwined. We made a financial decision to become more sustainable but that work comes at a cost. However, something I learned a long time ago is that we must make that financial case to all of our stakeholders, including our customers, suppliers and internal team. Consumers, more and more, want products they can feel good about buying, so we are proudly a part of that movement. We probably don’t charge enough, considering how much ‘sustainability value’ we bring to the table, but we always felt that it was important to help bring customers along with us in the early days of this movement.
What emerging technologies or innovations do you believe hold the most promise for advancing sustainability and why?
For us in the coffee industry, one of the most important innovations that needs to happen is in our packaging material, so much of which is still a metalized plastic that cannot be recycled or composted. We have worked with a couple of our suppliers to develop compostable packaging materials for our single-serve pods (an environmentally friendly replacement for k-cups) that can maintain the quality and freshness of the coffee packed in it, but the availability of that material is still limited. We have to get plastic out of the supply chain and have a long way to go, but smart people are working on it, so I remain optimistic.
Based on your research or experience, can you please share your “5 Top Strategies for a Cleaner Planet”?
1 . Don’t think that the little things don’t add up. All of our small actions matter, and the collective benefit of many small actions is anything but unimportant
2 . Vote with your wallet! Making better choices will impact the decisions that the businesses you buy from make. If we all ask for more sustainable, certified products, better packaging options, etc, businesses will listen!
3 . Buy in bulk, or, at the very least in larger formats. We have become such a wasteful society so anything that we can do to mitigate our waste is critical.
4 . Don’t be afraid of new technologies. I have been driving an electric car for 9 years. Is it a perfect solution, no. But I am always asked about the downfalls, or have people telling me the negatives about the batteries, or the energy going in. That doesn’t mean that it’s not worth investing in or trying. I’m not a tech evangelist, but there are extremely intelligent people making remarkable strides. Check out ‘precision fermentation’ (eg. Solein) and try to not to be excited about what it could mean for reducing energy consumption and hunger.
5 . Believe that change is possible. We can all feel, at times, as though there is no point to doing the work, because what can we do when our efforts are stacked up against the negative impacts of large corporations or governments that prioritize profit over everything else.
What is the best way for our readers to continue to follow your work online?
On instagram @reunioncoffee and through our website at www.reunioncoffeeroasters.com
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent on this. We wish you only continued success.
About the Interviewer: Wanda Malhotra is a wellness entrepreneur, lifestyle journalist, and the CEO of Crunchy Mama Box, a mission-driven platform promoting conscious living. CMB empowers individuals with educational resources and vetted products to help them make informed choices. Passionate about social causes like environmental preservation and animal welfare, Wanda writes about clean beauty, wellness, nutrition, social impact and sustainability, simplifying wellness with curated resources. Join Wanda and the Crunchy Mama Box community in embracing a healthier, more sustainable lifestyle at CrunchyMamaBox.com.
The Future Is Green: Adam Pesce Of Reunion Coffee Roasters On Their Top Strategies for a Cleaner… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.