Eco-effects: coffee vs. tea

Since I always hear about workers in some third world country earning a penny a day to pick our coffee beans and tea leaves under the blazing sun, I wanted to know which one affects the environment more.

Tea comes from the leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant and is usually infused with herbs and spices for the selection of flavors we love to choose from. With tea being planted mostly in rugged, fertile areas, many animals lose their habitats with the intrusion. As tea plants are inserted into the ground, loose soil is becoming runoff and heading towards a waterway. 


After tea is grown, it must be dried. For it to be dried, wood is used, meaning trees in the area had to be cut down for this purpose.

Coffee comes from a bean and grows into a plant. When the plant is finished growing, the beans travel to a processing plant for the separation between pulp and bean. The pulp is removed, but there's waste now mixed with pulp, sugar, and water. The waste is used as a fertilizer now, but, in the past, it was dumped as waste in waterways, which is probably still occurring somewhere in the world. 

Like tea, coffee needs a place to be cultivated, therefore natural forests and habitats are removed to make way for the production since direct sunlight is a major source for the growth process. 

So it seems both tea and coffee as well as other crops affect the environment positively and negatively in the same way. I still prefer tea over coffee. To learn more about the agricultural effects of growing cash crops, visit the World Wildlife Fund.