Coffee Conundrums

A not so long time ago, in a galaxy not so far away I worked for a great organization with a somewhat ridiculous problem.

The problem was coffee.

You see the organization, in recognition that a caffeinated workforce is a productive workforce, happily plied its employees with Fair Trade, Organic, bird friendly, shade grown coffee from a local small scale roaster.

The Keurig single cup coffee machines which are de rigueur at most companies were not used both for reasons of cost (they cost more, interestingly enough than our so-called fancy locally roasted stuff), and sustainability (how eco-friendly is using a couple hundred single-serve plastic cups daily?) hence the problem.

Much like the three little bears each had beds and porridge made to their own liking, so did our staff with some preferring a strong brew, others a weak, and still more opting for a brew in the middle. There were arguments a lot of arguments, with the prefer-it-strong's arguing that the prefer-it-weak's should simply water the strong stuff down with hot water, and the prefer-it-weak's stating that it didn't taste the same and regardless there was no way of knowing how strong the coffee was without having to sample the stuff, which would still leave them stuck having to sample strong coffee.

Notice what's missing here?

A right and a wrong. In school and in popular culture the idea that for every problem there is a right (and consequently a wrong) answer is the de facto thought process. But the problem I've articulated here, that different people have differing but equally valid preferences, contains no right and wrong, no black and white. Taste, like so many of the problems that affect sustainable development, is subjective, and the solutions are numerous.

Extrapolated away from my old organization's coffee kerfuffle into sustainable development we see that global demands for conservation of ecologically sensitive areas is often at odds with the local people's needs for basic survival; we have a global economic system that's great at generating wealth but does so often at the cost of equality and the environment; these are not binary problems but rather optimization problems: what solutions can we find that satisfies the greatest good while causing the least harm?

My old org solved its problem by purchasing a second coffee pot and introducing a labeling system that marking whether or not the pot was weak, medium or strong (as well as how many scoops of coffee were equivalent to a weak pot, a medium pot, or a strong pot of coffee); but it is not the only solution: we could have gone the aforementioned Keurig route, or simply brewed only medium strength pots of coffee and told everyone else to deal. This solution was the one that best fit our budget and values.

And decaf lovers? Sorry... you're on your own.