Previously, I’ve blogged about waste production in my café and shared some ways which it has implemented to reduce waste. In this post, we shall take a look at drinks sold at the café, particularly the hot café latte.

                       My favourite drink 🙂

While cashiering, I’ve always received questions from customers.

‘How much is a cup of latte?’

Without much hesitation, I’ll reply them ‘It’s five dollars’.

However, after attending the lecture on freshwater impacts, I’d hesitate to answer that a cup of latte only costs five dollars. The word cost has much more meaning to it. Not only does it include the final amount of money the customer has to pay, it also includes the value of resources used in the production of this final product. So, to find out how much a cup of latte actually costs, I will be examining its water footprint.

What goes into a cup of latte?

                                            Here is the simple recipe!                                                      P.S. More milk is used to ensure the right amount of foam for a latte

The water footprint of 2 espresso shots traces all the way back to its source – coffee beans, and how it has been grown. My café uses two types of coffee beans, one out of which my manager and co-workers are unsure of. As such, the calculations will be based on the coffee beans from Mexico alone. While I was researching, I chanced upon this article that had a clear breakdown of the steps in the production of coffee beans. It concluded that 1kg of coffee grounds requires approximately 164.85 litres of water. That’s about 1114 glasses of water, enough water to feed you for 139 days if you were to drink 8 glasses a day! To produce two espresso shots, it takes about 18g of coffee powder. That equates to approximately 2.97 L of water.

But let’s not forget about the milk needed in latte as well. We used Meiji full cream milk which is a product from Thailand (not Japan!). From this research paper, it concluded that 366.22kg of water is required to produce 1 kg of milk. That means, for every 200ml of milk used, 75.48 L of water is wasted.

As such, 1 cup of café latte = 75.48 L + 2.97 L = 78.45 L of water footprint.

That’s about 443 times the volume of liquid we consume from one cup of                                                                      latte!

However, this is merely the water footprint of producing one cup of latte! Let’s not forget the carbon footprint produced in the process. While preparing a cup of latte, energy is also required for the coffee machine to extract the espresso and to power the pitcher rinser. These two items also require water when they are used. As such, a cup of latte has in fact a lot of costs tied to it – water footprint, carbon footprint and energy use.

After knowing how much a latte costs, will I reduce my consumption of it? Yes. I’ll limit myself to only one cup of latte at work, even if I’m tempted to practice my latte art skills! What about you? Will you still drink your favourite latte?

    Ever thought how much a soy latte costs?