Kayon Mountain - Ethiopia

CleverCoffee is a B Corp

The coffee you buy at CleverCoffee leaves a well-documented, positive imprint on the world.

When CleverCoffee became B Corp certified in 2021, it was with a score of 88.2.

In 2025 - four years later - we have almost doubled our score to 154.6 points.

This means that CleverCoffee has the highest score among all coffee companies in the EU - and the second highest score for all companies in the Nordic region.

In our opinion, B Corp certification is the world's most stringent independent certification, guaranteeing that you buy your coffee from a responsible company.

As a customer at CleverCoffee, you contribute to ensuring that coffee farmers can live a life above the poverty line and that they can afford to develop their farms so that they have a long-term source of income.

In addition to contributing positively to the living conditions of coffee farmers, CleverCoffee's B Corp certification is your assurance that we are always transparent and have a drastically reduced climate impact.

What was our score?

With our 2025 recertification we received the following score:

• Governance 19.5
• Workers 25.5
• Community 32.5
• Environment 73.4
• Customers 3.6

Total: 154.6

Documentation

Read more about B Corp

BCorporation.net: CleverCoffee

This coffee is grown in agroforestry

This roughly means that the coffee plants are shaded by other trees and plants. Agroforestry is the opposite of what is called “monoculture”, where you have a field that only consists of one type of plant, for example coffee plants.

In a forest farm, the coffee plants are part of a system with animals and plants that live naturally in the area.

There are many different types of agroforestry. There can be different amounts of shade cover, different degrees of diversity in plants and animals, and one can, for example, talk about having several different layers of shade cover, with trees that have their crowns at different heights and thus several layers.

Why agroforestry?

Since 1990, an estimated 420 million hectares of forest have been cleared and converted to agriculture, including coffee plantations. Although the rate of deforestation has slowed in recent decades, significant deforestation continues. About 10 million hectares of forest are cleared each year - an area the size of Iceland.

Therefore, we need to do something.

Forestry is a really good solution for both having food production and at the same time taking care of our ecosystems and climate.

Here are just some of the benefits of agroforestry:

• Increases biodiversity
• Absorbs much more CO2 from the atmosphere
• Minimizes the need for fertilizer
• Make coffee plants more resilient
• Extends the life of the coffee plant
• Gives the coffee a higher quality and better taste, as the coffee cherries take longer to ripen in the shade
• Better soil conditions
• Creates a microclimate that makes plants more resistant to climate change

Read more:

CleverCoffee: Agroforestry and shade-grown coffee

This coffee is certified organic.

...so it is grown in a way that is particularly gentle on nature and people.

What does that mean?

• No synthetic pesticides
• No artificial fertilizer
• No genetically modified organisms (GMO)

The coffee is certified locally where it is produced and subsequently certified here by the Danish Food Agency as DK-ØKO-100.

Organic is not without costs for coffee farmers, who already have very poor conditions. Read here about the dilemma of organic certification.

Documentation

Our Organic Certification

Vi betalte kaffebonden 46% mere for denne kaffe

... til sammenligning har Fairtrade-certificeret kaffe typisk en merbetaling på mindre end 10% for bonden. Og certificeringen er heller ikke gratis.

Forskning viser gang på gang, at certificeringer som Fairtrade og Rainforest Alliance ikke har nogen beviselig positiv effekt på kaffebøndernes levevilkår. (Cordes og Sagan, 2021)

Vestlige kaffefirmaer tjener store summer, mens kaffebønder verden over lever i fattigdom. Det er forkert, og det skal vi ændre på.

Derfor betaler vi mere for de kaffebønner, vi importerer.

44% af kaffebønderne verden over lever fortsat i fattigdom. Mindst 5,5 millioner kaffebønder lever under den internationale fattigdomsgrænse på $3,20 om dagen. Undersøgelser viser, at en tredjedel af kaffebønderne tjener mindre end $100 årligt fra kaffeproduktion (Enveritas, 2018; Sachs et al., 2019).

Når vi betaler landmændene mere, giver vi dem mulighed for at investere i sig selv og deres virksomheder. Dette fører til yderligere vækst og muligheden for at investere i mere bæredygtige landbrugspraksisser som reduktion af vandforbrug og genskovningsprojekter.

Dokumentation

Se den samlede oversigt over de betalinger vi har lavet for vores kaffebønner i vores årlige transparency report: CleverCoffee: Transparency Report

Kilder

"Responsible Coffee Sourcing: Towards a Living Income for Producers" (Cordes og Sagan, 2021)

"Why do coffee farmers stay poor? : Breaking vicious circles with direct payments from profit sharing" (Ruben, 2023)

"Six Transformations to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)" (Sachs et al., 2019)

En kort og gennemskuelig forsyningskæde

Vi arbejder altid med så kort og gennemskuelig en forsyningskæde, som muligt. 98% af vores kaffe er handlet direkte hos kaffefarmen, altså uden at bruge en mellemmand. 

Denne kaffe er en undtagelse, da vi har brugt en transparent importør til at få kaffen hjem.

Langt størstedelen af vores ristede kaffe bliver også købt direkte hos os - med nogle enkelte forhandlere som undtagelse, såsom kaffebarer og specialtetsforretninger. Man kan ikke købe vores kaffe i nogen store kæder eller på online markedspladser. 

Dermed er der færre parter der skal “have en bid af kagen” og vi sikrer en bedre betaling for kaffefarmene, som i årtier har været underbetalt og levet i fattigdom. 

Forsyningskæde for denne kaffe ser sådan ud:

• Kaffen er dyrket i Etiopien i området Shakiso i Øst Guji
• Kaffebærene er blevet processeret på Kayon Mountain
• De grønne kaffebønner er importeret til Europa af Cafe Imports
• Herefter er de grønne bønner blevet fragtet til CleverCoffee
• Kaffen er ristet og pakket hos CleverCoffee i vores eget risteri udenfor Aarhus