Fans of Ethiopian coffee will be pleased to hear that we've added another to our current lineup of Single Origins. Limu is sourced from the Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union (OCFCU) — the largest Fairtrade Organic group in Ethiopia that represents 400 cooperatives made up of 400,000 farming families. This Limu is a fully washed coffee that has a juicy green apple acidity, creamy body, sweet delicate aftertaste and notes of earl grey tea.

You can grab a bag from the first roast right here, or read on to discover how this coffee is linked to our carbon neutral journey.

The name Limu comes from the Limu woreda (district) of the Oromia region of Ethiopia, home to OCFCU. We're now connected to the communities there in two ways — through purchasing these Single Origin beans and through the carbon offsetting program we use to counterbalance the unavoidable carbon output of our supply chain. The Fairtrade Climate Fund program allows us to produce carbon-neutral coffee, something we started doing back in 2016.

Currently, the Fairtrade Climate Fund carbon credits we purchase provide families of the OCFCU cooperative with new Mirt and Tikikil cookstoves. Tikikil stoves use significantly less wood than traditional stoves and reduce CO₂ emissions by 40%. OCFCU families now spend less time collecting firewood with less impact on their local ecosystem. An estimated 75,000 trees have been spared since this project started.

Climate change is already having a major impact on the cultivation of coffee, we've seen it with our own eyes in Papua New Guinea, and much of the  two billion cups of coffee drunk worldwide every day (yep, it's that much) is grown by small-scale farmers in coffee-belt countries already facing their fair share of challenges. 

The Fair Climate Fund cookstove project works with the OCFCU coffee communities to protect their local forests and reduce CO₂ — and the cookstoves are all produced locally, adding another revenue stream to the region.

The current project goal is to distribute 40,000 cleaner cookstoves in total and eight local Mirt and Tikikil workshops have now been set up to deliver this. 6,000 households have been successfully equipped with an Mirt and Tikkal each, meaning over 12,000 stoves have so far be distributed.

"The new cookstoves have many advantages. Two trips of foraging wood lasts us for two weeks. This saves us time. In addition, there is much less smoke in the kitchen and I no longer burn my hands and legs. These stoves are much better and we are happy with them." — Mulane Jabessa.

Mulane is a coffee farmer from the  OCFCU who lives with her husband and children. Hear from Mulane in this Fair Climate Fund video.

On top of this, through the Fairtrade system, farmers also receive training in sustainable agricultural practices, such as efficient land use, planting shade trees and income diversification. 

Through our relationship and certification with Fairtrade ANZ we were able to liase with representatives from Fairtrade in New Zealand, Australia and the Netherlands, in order to adapt the Fair Climate Fund calculator for Australia & NZ coffee market. Meaning we had the means to track the carbon footprint of our coffee throughout its lifecycle from farm to shelf — we've been offsetting our carbon ever since.

Try a bag of our Limu for home, or click here to learn more about a climate-neutral coffee value chain through this short video from Fairtrade in the Netherlands.