Three terms should describe your responsible coffee: organic, fair trade, shade grown. Why? Well, the alternative is a cup of chemicals, unfair wages, and deforestation. Ick.

Standard Coffee Production

The most common pollutant in coffee production is petroleum based fertilizers, which seep into the water supply and also eventually destroy the soil.

Pesticides are used heavily, often in amounts that poison the workers. Chemicals illegal in the US and other nations are not always illegal in developing countries. Workers have often not been informed of the risk nor of the proper use of such chemicals.

Here is a list of some of the common pesticides used:

Endosulfan: Effects the central nervous system, causes kidney, testes, and liver damage.
Chlorpyrifos: The EPA banned most household uses in the US. Linked to birth defects. It is extremely toxic.
Diazinon: Extremely toxic to birds and beneficial insects.
Disulfoton & Methyl parathion: Classified at the highest toxicity.
Cypermethrin: Extremely toxic to acquatic life.

The pulp from coffee production is often dumped into water supplies, decomposing and robbing the water of oxygen.

"A study in Central America in 1988 showed that processing 550,000 metric tons of coffee generated 1.1 million metric tons of pulp and polluted 110,000 cubic metres of water per day. This was equated with a city of 4 million dumping raw sewage into the region's waterways." -WWF

Organic Coffee Production

Crops are interplanted with food crops. The natural habitat remains for birds and predatory insects (which allows for natural pest control). The pulp that is thrown in the river in standard coffee production is often used as mulch in organic coffee production. Organically grown crops work with the natural ecosystem to keep balance and produce a much better product.

Naturally, coffee plants like the shade. Coffee producers began making a sun resistant coffee plant, and then stripped the land of trees to grown them. Herbicides are often used to clear the fields of any other vegetation, which erodes away the soil. Shade growing coffee protects against deforestation and loss of habitat for native species (and it is tastier).

Coffee growers are paid extremely little by large corporations. Much of the worlds coffee is made by people receiving a "sweat shop" wage. Sometimes it is less than the cost of producing it. To become Fair Trade certified a coffee company must adhere to specific guidelines, including paying higher wages for the product and providing assistance to farmers (such as transistioning to organic farming). It may cost more, but it means that the guy that spends his life growing your coffee gets to keep his land and put food on the table.