Wicked Coffee helps save tropical rainforests

Wicked Coffee is taking part in a campaign to preserve tropical rainforests in Indonesia and Honduras.

The company's Fergus Walsh has made a deal to purchase beans direct from the farmers and, in return for his fair price (which is three times what they previously earned), the farmers have agreed to an embargo on logging and hunting in designated rainforest areas. This will protect indigenous species, including a rare buffalo and a frog previously thought extinct.

The project is managed by the Operation Wallacea Trust, and marked in the UK by the launch of Wicked's new Jungle Blend. Wicked Coffee is the preferred coffee supplier to the National Union of Students, and is served in a hundred student unions.

Fergus Walsh tells us that the new blend features a third coffee, a Rainforest Alliance one from Colombia, and "has a slightly smoky essence, and a bold flavour with light tones of natural acidity."

By Ian Boughton