Coffee

Filtered
Annie Abuhamad
February 7th, 2017
6:00AM

6:00AM
Where am Germany: its
I? July 8, 1908.

Why are we
here?

A figment of
your imagination
Who are and coffee con-
you? noisseur, nice to
meet you!

Do you always ask this many

questions? I have a lot to teach
you.

Anyway, this is Melitta Bentz,

the inventor of the first paper
coffee filter. She used her sons
blotting paper from school to
remove the bitter taste caused
by boiling loose grounds or us-
ing linen to brew coffee. Smart
cookie, huh?
OK, but why does that matter?

You make coffee, dont you? You need coffee

filters for that, you dingus. Guess what coffee
filters are made of?

I dont know, wood pulp?

Wow, youre not as dense as you look! Yeah, cel-

lulose fiber, often from fast growing trees and
lots of water are used to created paper filters.
One good thing about coffee filters is that theres lit-
tle to none manual labor involved in their production.
The same doesnt go for coffee beans though.

Really?

Yeah, a lot of workers have to help out to harvest cof-

fee beans. Coffee beans last much longer if theyre
grown in the shade but most Arabica beans, which are
from South America, are grown in places with little
to no shade. Its terrible for the environment and the
working conditions are harsh.
 Coffee filters
contribute to
Why the cycle as
hasnt well.
anything
changed?

Oh.

But you dont have to support deforestation!

Its all up to your choices.
 Once theyre done, theyre
counted by a machine and
usually stored in a plastic

wrap or a small cardboard

box. After that theyre
shipped to stores to be sold.

Wow.
Thats a
lot to take
in.

Although coffee is
a nice pick-me-up
in the morning, its
production encour-
ages deforestation,
enormous amounts
of waste and de-
grades soil quality.
You should real-
ly invest in some
shade-grown, fair
trade coffee!