Coffee Shops

Ethical and sustainable coffee shops

The UK coffee shop market is worth £6 billion a year, with nearly 8 million of us visiting a coffee shop every week. The market is growing, led by “premium” brands like Black Sheep Coffee and Esquires and, particularly, a rise in artisanal and independent baristas.

How sustainable and ethical coffee shops are depends on several factors, including:

• the sustainability of the coffee served e.g. fair trade coffee and organic options
• the sustainability of the cafe: including things like disposable cups and waste, dairy and milk options
• the ethics of the company e.g. whether they pay their fair share of tax

We cover all these issues in the guide.

With total ethical scores ranging from below 10 to 60+ (out of 100), if you have a choice of which chain coffee shop to visit, it's clear that you can make a difference with where you choose to spend your money.

Which coffee shops are in the guide?

This guide focuses on 12 coffee shop chains which specialise in selling coffee as their main product. We have also added the sandwich shops Pret a Manger and Greggs, which are also popular places to buy coffee.

The most popular coffee shop in the UK is Costa, with over 2,500 outlets. It is owned by Coca-Cola, the only company to score 0 in our new Israel-Palestine column because it is a target of the BDS boycott movement.

Costa and Greggs together account for half of the market, Greggs also having over 2,500 outlets. 

Starbucks, Caffè Nero, and Pret a Manger are then the next biggest coffee chains.

Caffè Nero also owns several smaller brands in this guide, although they operate quite independently, including how they source their coffee: 200 Degrees, Coffee#1, FCB Coffee, and Harris + Hoole.

Boston Tea Party is a chain with only around 23 outlets (in the midlands and south west of England), while Esquires and Black Sheep have around 80 outlets each. 

AMT and Caffè Ritazza are owned by SSP Group, which specialises in outlets in travel hubs such as airports, railway stations, and motorway services.

Aside from chain coffee shops, ethical consumers could try to seek out more ethical alternatives like local independent coffee shops, of which there are 12,400 in the UK. We cover what to look for in independent coffee shops later in the guide. 

Coffee shop issues

One of the key ethical issues for coffee shops is how they source their coffee and whether the coffee farmers earn a fair wage. We have created a special Coffee Sourcing category to rate all the companies on this.

We have also rated all the companies on their links to the Israeli government. This ‘Israel-Palestine’ column will now appear on the scoretables of future guides, from December 2025 onwards.

We also examine other important issues, such as single-use coffee cups and reusable cups, whether you have to pay a surcharge for plant milk, and whether the companies behind the brands are likely to be avoiding UK tax.

Carbon footprint of coffee shops

For our Climate rating, we checked whether all the companies in this guide:

• Have identified their main climate impacts and are taking action to reduce them.
• Report their annual carbon emissions.
• Have set targets for carbon reduction in line with international agreements.

More importantly, we look to highlight companies that are focused on lower-carbon products or have evidence of actually reducing their emissions. None of the coffee shops were seen to be focused significantly enough on lower-carbon products, but Pret did receive points for apparently reducing its supply chain emissions quite significantly – although no explanation was found for how it had achieved this.

The factors that most contribute to a coffee shop’s climate impact are its use of dairy milk and coffee itself. For shops that also sell a large amount of food, like Pret or Greggs, meat is also a big impact area.

Our Climate rating results show a need to seriously question why some of the UK’s biggest coffee chains are failing in the carbon reduction department.

• Eight of the 12 coffee shops scored 0/100 for Climate.
• We could not find any mention of climate impact or carbon emissions on the Black Sheep Coffee and Boston Tea Party websites; Esquires gave very little detail.
• Costa’s parent company, Coca-Cola, appeared to have no discussion of its overall global operations; and the Nero Group had no detail on reducing its supply chain impacts.
• Starbucks appeared to be taking action around deforestation related to coffee farming, and methane emissions related to dairy, but it was also criticised for its rising emissions, and the company offer to its new CEO in 2024 to commute 1000 miles a week to work by private jet.

Only five companies scored points for climate action and reporting:

• Boston Tea Party
• Esquires
• Greggs
• Pret
• SSP (AMT and Caffè Ritazza brands)

Dairy milk is a coffee shop’s biggest carbon footprint

According to Starbucks’ sustainability report, dairy milk is the biggest single contributor to its total carbon footprint, and we have therefore assumed that this applies to all coffee shops.

Half of dairy’s carbon emissions are methane. But only Starbucks talked about dairy and methane in its carbon reporting.

Unfortunately, the nation’s favourite coffee is a latte – a coffee with a lot of milk. A large latte with cow’s milk has a carbon footprint of 552g of CO2e, the largest of all coffee and tea varieties, and roughly equivalent to driving about a mile in an average UK car. The milk accounts for three quarters of that. And if you have your latte in a disposable cup, you can add another 110g to its overall footprint.

Using soya or oat milk instead of cow’s milk greatly reduces the carbon footprint of your coffee, almost halving the footprint of a latte!

The lowest carbon option for tea and coffee is to drink it black, with black tea or herbal tea having half the footprint of a black coffee.

Do all coffee shops offer plant milk, and charge more for it?

Offering a discount for plant milk to show a company’s commitment to reducing its carbon footprint is a good idea. But we couldn’t find any coffee shops doing that.

On the contrary, four coffee shops in this guide effectively offer a discount for dairy milk by charging extra for plant milk

Chain coffee shops that charge more for plant milk:

• Black Sheep Coffee
• Caffè Nero
• Caffè Ritazza
• Costa 

And, disappointingly, Greggs no longer offers plant milk at all. 

For those seeking a full non-dairy experience, there are many vegan cafes around the country which can easily be found using the Happy Cow app/website.

Plant milk as default or same price

Making plant milk the default milk rather than dairy is a good idea for the climate and for animal rights. 

Animal Justice Project is calling for oat milk to be made the default milk option nationwide in Starbucks, instead of dairy milk. This follows an undercover investigation revealing animal abuse at a zero-grazing dairy farm contracted by Starbucks’ main milk supplier, Arla Foods. The individuals in the footage no longer work at the farm which has been reinstated as a supplier by Arla. 

• Sign the Animal Justice Project petition

Chain coffee shops that include plant milk for free:

• 200 Degrees
• AMT
• Boston Tea Party
• Esquires
• Pret
• Starbucks.

Tax avoidance and coffee shops

Costa Coffee scored zero for our tax rating due to tax disputes its parent Coca Cola is in with both the US and Australia.

Pret a Manger also scored zero as its parent company is located in the tax haven of Luxembourg.

Caffè Nero had a thorough examination in 2018 in an article by a professor of accounting, Prem Sikka, revealing how the business has repeatedly turned profitable sales years into losses by having to pay finance costs for loans from other parts of its own company structure. In this way it can avoid paying corporation tax. Page 5 of Caffè Nero Group's latest accounts for 2024 showed its operating profit (£30m) again wiped out by a 'loss' (£34m), just as Sikka described, so it seems nothing has changed. 

Starbucks is also able to report losses by owing large payments to its parent company, this time in royalties and fees.

In 2018, we were pleased to report that AMT had become the first coffee shop chain to be awarded the Fair Tax Mark. Unfortunately, it lost its accreditation due to restructuring, then went into administration in 2022 and was bought out by SSP Group, which scores zero for Tax Conduct due to subsidiaries it holds in tax havens.

Which coffee shops score best for tax conduct?

The following all received top marks for Tax Conduct: 

• Black Sheep (Conilon)
• Boston Tea Party
• Esquires (Cooks Coffee Company)
• Greggs. 

Do any coffee shops have links with Israel?

We have recently introduced a new Israel-Palestine rating into our detailed research behind our shopping guides.

A company can only score full marks in this rating if it proactively takes a stance regarding Palestinian human rights abuses by publishing policies against, for example, sourcing from illegal Israeli settlements, or working with Israel-based organisations, institutions, or companies.

No companies in this guide scored full marks. 

Most scored 80 points meaning that they weren’t found to have links to Israel, but they hadn’t actively taken a stance in support of Palestine.

The owner of Costa, Coca-Cola, scored zero as it is named as a campaign target by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) National Committee. The official BDS movement said in November 2024 that Coca-Cola Israel operates a "regional distribution center and cooling houses" in an illegal Israeli settlement on Palestinian land. It stated that another company within the Coca-Cola group, Tabor Winery, sourced grapes from vineyards located in illegal settlements.

Coffee certification and coffee sourcing

The sourcing of coffee is an important ethical and sustainability issue. 

Some coffee shops buy fair trade coffee, either through the Fairtrade label, or Rainforest Alliance. We consider Rainforest Alliance coffee as the weaker certification standard because of its lack of Fairtrade’s minimum price and its lower fixed price premium paid on top of the market price. We therefore award more points for companies that source their coffee through the Fairtrade label. 

Our separate article on certification schemes has more information. 

Fair trade coffee in coffee shops

Our detailed coffee sourcing rating awards points for different types of certified coffee. The ratings are given below, out of 100. 

Caffè Ritazza only scored 20 as its owner, SSP, stated that not all its coffee is certified. It said 80% of its coffee was either Fairtrade or Rainforest Alliance certified (meaning the rest isn't). 

Direct trade coffee generally means long-term relationships with coffee growers, and cutting out the intermediary businesses usually means that the growers receive a fairer price.

Worst brands for coffee sourcing policies

Starbucks didn’t score any points for Coffee Sourcing because it operated its own in-house standard, C.A.F.E Practices, the only coffee shop to do so. It started selling Fairtrade coffee as a response to public pressure in 2008 but dropped it in 2022. Unlike Fairtrade, its in-house scheme has no minimum guaranteed price for farmers or premiums that farmer-led communities can decide how to use.

Coffee#1 (owned by Caffe Nero) also scored zero, as the only statement we found regarding its sourcing practices was: "let’s just say we take great care choosing the best beans."

Our separate article on coffee (and tea) certification schemes looks at a number of certification schemes including bird-friendly coffee.

Is Starbucks sustainable and ethical?

Starbucks Corporation sits near the bottom of our table, with fewer than 15 points (out of 100). It scores badly across nearly all our rating categories and has been subject to a number of lawsuits.

In 2024, Starbucks was being sued by National Consumers League, a US consumer advocacy group, alleging that Starbucks’ claim to 100% ethical coffee and tea sourcing was misleading. It argued that the claim couldn’t be true when Starbucks continues to source coffee beans and tea leaves from cooperatives and farms that “have committed documented, severe human rights and labor abuses, including the use of child labor and forced labor as well as rampant and egregious sexual harassment and assault.”

In 2022, for instance, the Brazilian labour prosecutor issued a complaint against Starbucks’ largest Brazilian supplier, citing working conditions analogous to slavery, including illegally trafficking more than 30 migrant workers.

In August 2025, the case was allowed to move forward when a Superior Court judge in the District of Columbia rejected Starbuck’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

There is also excessive pay at the top, but poor conditions for many employees.

According to the AFL CIO Executive Paywatch report: “In 2024, Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol received $97,813,843 in annualized total compensation, or 6,666 times more than Starbucks’ median employee received. The median Starbucks worker would have had to start working for Starbucks in 4643 BCE (during the Stone Age!) just to earn what Starbucks’ CEO earned in 2024 alone.”

In the US, unionised baristas from Starbucks Workers United are striking for better pay and increased staffing. It is the third major strike in the US since the union launched four years ago. A union spokesperson said Starbucks has offered no pay raises in the first year of a contract, then 2% in the years following, which he said fails to account for inflation and the cost of healthcare.

Disposable coffee cup waste

Cups and packaging are a very small part of the carbon footprint of coffee shops. The problem with single-use cups is more to do with litter and plastic pollution than climate change.

According to WRAP, over three billion disposable cups are used in the UK every year.

Not much has changed since we last looked at this issue a couple of years ago. Disposable cups are still ubiquitous in all coffee shops, apart from Boston Tea Party which banned them in 2018. 

Some companies have moved to “compostable” lids (e.g. made of paper and sugar cane) but the cups are still usually paper lined with plastic, which is very hard to recycle, being a composite material. These cups can’t be put in a mixed recycling bin but have to be collected separately to be recycled at just four recycling facilities in the UK. In reality, most are put in the non-recycling bins and are destined for landfill.

Do any coffee shops offer discounts for reusable cups?

Most companies offer a discount or extra loyalty points if you bring your own reusable cup, but we found that this information wasn’t clearly displayed in most coffee shops.

Pret and Esquires offer 50p, the most generous cash discount for a reusable cup, followed by Black Sheep at 45p.

Which shops include a surcharge for disposable cups?

Another option to discourage people from taking the single-use cups is to apply a surcharge on disposable cups, such as the “latte levy” which added an extra 25p to the price of each disposable cup. This was suggested by the Environmental Audit Committee in 2018, who found that consumers are more likely to respond to extra charges than they are to discounts.

In early 2018, the latte levy was voted down by MPs after lobbying by Costa (owned by Coca-Cola, the single-use-plastic-bottle megacorp). Starbucks introduced its own 5p latte levy later in 2018 which led to a 126% increase in the use of reusable cups, but the vast majority of customers continued using the disposable option. It still operates that surcharge.

Deposit loan cup schemes

If coffee shops provided cups to borrow for a deposit, it might make it more convenient for customers who often leave their own reusable cup at home.

Boston Tea Party operates a deposit loan cup scheme in all its shops. Pay £2 to borrow a cup and either use it again, swap it for a clean cup next time, or get your deposit back.

Trials of returnable cups are currently taking place in Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Manchester, and Sheffield, and in lots of small, independent coffee shops around the country. The big coffee shops are still relying on recycling their disposable, single-use cups.

Why does Costa have poor ethics and sustainability?

Costa Coffee is currently owned by Coca-Cola, but it looks like the soft drinks megacorp wants to sell it and is in talks with three private equity firms.

Coca-Cola is a target of the BDS boycott campaign and is the only company to receive 0/100 in our new Israel-Palestine column.

Coca-Cola is named as one of our top five unethical companies. 

A 2025 report by the non-profit, Oceana, said that, by 2030, Coca-Cola products will account for enough plastic waste in the world’s oceans and waterways to fill the stomachs of 18 million whales. Coca-Cola ranks as the world’s top branded plastic polluter.

Coca-Cola actually acknowledged, in 2022, that reusable packaging was “among the most effective ways to reduce waste” and committed to a goal of reaching 25% reusable packaging by 2030.

But that pledge was quietly dropped in its December 2024 sustainability roadmap. The company’s updated goals instead focus on increasing recycled content in packaging and boosting collection rates – measures which shift the blame onto consumers rather than addressing the root of the problem.

High caffeine in high street coffees

Caffeine is a drug, albeit a socially acceptable one, that many of us consume on a daily basis. Government guidance states that caffeine intakes of up to 400mg per day are unlikely to cause adverse effects in adults, but over that may cause some adverse effects – as most readers will probably already know.

A Which? survey in 2023 found that Costa and Pret serve some of the highest caffeine content coffees around, while Starbucks has the lowest. Which? found the following caffeine contents:

Cappuccino:

• Costa: 325mg
• Greggs: 197mg
• Pret: 180mg
• Caffè Nero: 110-115mg
• Starbucks: 66mg

Single shot espresso:

• Pret: 180mg
• Costa: 100mg
• Greggs: 75mg
• Caffè Nero: 45mg
• Starbucks: 33mg

Other caffeine-containing food and drink:

• Mug of tea (350ml): 75mg
• Mug of instant coffee (350ml): 100mg
• Energy drink (250ml): 80mg
• Can of cola (330ml): 32mg

A can of coke has less caffeine than an espresso, an energy drink has less caffeine than most high-street cappuccinos, whilst a Starbucks cappuccino has less caffeine than a mug of tea or instant coffee.

How much caffeine is in your coffee depends on:

• The type of bean used – Robusta has twice the amount of caffeine as Arabica.
• The level of roast – high (or dark) roasts have less caffeine than light and medium because the caffeine is burnt away.
• Where the beans come from – climate, altitude, and soil all affect caffeine levels in beans.

However, caffeine aside, there is emerging evidence that a moderate intake of coffee may have some health benefits, for example, for the gut microbiome.

Which coffee shops score best for animal issues?

13 of the 14 coffee shops scored zero in our Animal Products category because they all sold dairy and/or meat that was not organic or free range. 

Boston Tea Party was the only company to score above zero because it sells organic dairy and free-range meat.

Organic dairy milk was offered by three others: AMT, Esquires, and Pret. Although organic practices don’t fully address the animal rights issues associated with the production of animal-derived products, certification at least ensures some environmental and animal welfare standards.

In terms of vegan food, Greggs is famous for its vegan sausage rolls but recently stopped selling vegan pasties. It’s always worth asking at the others, but Pret seems to have the biggest range. 

Additional research by Ruth Strange