Carbon Insetting vs Offsetting: What Coffee Companies Need to Know
Carbon insetting means sequestering carbon within your own supply chain — not buying credits from unrelated projects. Here's why coffee companies are making the switch.
For most coffee companies, Scope 3 emissions — the carbon generated across their supply chain — represent up to 90% of their total footprint. And 68–91% of coffee’s emissions occur before beans leave the farm.
Historically, companies addressed this by purchasing carbon offsets: credits from unrelated projects like wind farms or forest preservation elsewhere in the world. But that model is under pressure.
What’s changing
The EU Green Claims Directive is moving to restrict carbon neutrality claims based solely on offsetting. Companies that rely on conventional offset-based strategies face growing regulatory and reputational risk.
The shift is towards carbon insetting — sequestering carbon within your own supply chain, not purchasing credits from unrelated projects.
What carbon insetting looks like for coffee
For a coffee company, insetting means funding regenerative practices on the farms that actually grow your coffee. It directly links climate action to your product.
This is a verified value chain intervention — a term increasingly used in CSRD and ESRS reporting. It’s more traceable, more credible, and directly addresses Scope 3 Category 1 emissions (Purchased Goods and Services).
Why it matters now
Coffee is one of seven mandatory commodities under SBTi FLAG targets. Any coffee company setting science-based targets is required to include Forest, Land and Agriculture emissions — making farm-level measurement essential.
Companies that act now are positioning themselves ahead of regulation rather than scrambling to comply later.
How F.O.C.U.S.™ enables insetting
F.O.C.U.S.™ is an open standard — any coffee company can use it, unlike proprietary brand-specific programmes. It works at the farm level, where the majority of coffee’s carbon footprint originates, using bespoke allometric equations and soil measurement to verify carbon sequestered.
Full farm-to-registry traceability supports transparent reporting against CSRD/ESRS, SBTi FLAG, EU Taxonomy, and EUDR.
For more detail, see our FAQ on carbon insetting and the full measurement methodology.
