The jaguar in your coffee cup: Unpacking the hidden costs

We saw this WWF Denmark ad campaign recently, the one with the jaguar staring out from a cup of coffee, the turtle trapped in a tuna can, the macaw’s struggles hidden in our craving for avocado toast. "The Hidden Cost," it says. And it nails something we grapple with constantly: how little we really know about the journey our everyday things take before they reach us. We grab our coffee, our chocolate, our cotton t-shirts, relying on vague assurances or maybe a little green seal on the package. Many of us want to believe we're making good choices. But the truth is, most of the time, the origins are murky, the impact on local ecosystems and communities invisible. Those certifications we lean on? Even they've been facing uncomfortable questions (remember the scrutiny the fishing label MSC received? Or the certified organic cotton debacle in India a few years back?). This can easily leave us feeling powerless, like we’re just a cog in a massive, opaque machine. 

We consumers do have some power, sure, and our choices matter, especially collectively.
But the real leverage often sits much higher up the chain, with the companies sourcing, producing, and selling these goods.

Why trusting the label isn't enough

The structural problem here is the profound opacity of global supply chains. Think about the journey of a coffee bean—from multiple smallholder farms, perhaps in a remote region, through local cooperatives, exporters, international shippers, roasters, distributors, finally to your cup. 

At each stage, information can be lost, fragmented, or intentionally obscured. Certifications attempt to bridge this gap, acting as information proxies. They're often useful signaling mechanisms. But one of the challenges is that they operate within the very market system they're trying to police. They face pressures: the need for funding can make them beholden to the industries they certify; the complexity of verification allows (or, in some instances, might even be designed) for loopholes. Furthermore, the significant cost and administrative burden involved can act as a barrier, potentially excluding smaller producers that can’t afford the certification process, even though their practices might fully align (often even exceed) with sustainability goals, and would otherwise qualify.

Sometimes, certifications even risk becoming little more than sophisticated greenwashing tools. It creates an information asymmetry where corporations possess vastly more data about their own supply chains than consumers, or even regulators, do. So while consumer pressure is a factor, it’s often diffuse and struggles against the concentrated economic incentives that prioritize low prices and shareholder value over deep environmental or social accounting. 

The current system isn't inherently designed for the kind of radical transparency needed to see the jaguar in the coffee cup before it comes out. We need policy levers and potentially new corporate governance models that shift those underlying incentives. Indeed, regulations like the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), with its detailed European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), are now compelling companies to rigorously map and report on precisely these kinds of hidden environmental and social impacts throughout their value chains. 

A personal detour: The certification Catch-22

The point about the cost versus the practice really hits home for one of tumblebee’s founders, as her family's small vineyard experienced this. The first couple of years, the vineyard had organic certification, then the decision came to not do it anymore due to administrative and financial burden, even though the practice on the vineyard remained the same and even improved.
It highlights that frustrating disconnect – where the label reflects the ability to navigate and pay for the system, but not necessarily the reality on the ground.

What story does your consumption tell?

And what story does that cup tell, then? Beyond the data points and supply chains, what narrative are we participating in when we drink it? We've grown accustomed to the magic trick of the supermarket, where goods appear divorced from their origins, stripped of their connection to soil, water, forest, animal, and other human lives. 

The 'hidden cost' isn't just ecological damage; it's a cost to our own understanding, our own relationship with the living world. We treat the Earth and its creatures as resources, commodities, forgetting they are also complex communities, beings with their own stories, their own intrinsic value beyond their utility to us. The jaguar isn't merely inconvenienced by coffee plantations; its world, its reality, is being un-made. Perhaps the true hidden cost lies in this severing; this illusion that we can consume without consequence, that our comfort doesn't ripple outwards, disturbing ancient balances. 

We need more than certifications; we need a different way of valuing. 

We need stories that re-weave the connections, that remind us the world is a living whole we are inescapably part of.

Changing the equation (and how we can help)

So, right now we're caught. We see the ad, we feel the unease, and we sense the deeper disconnect. It's easy to feel overwhelmed. But acknowledging the scale of the problem, and where the real power lies—primarily with corporations and the systems they operate within—is crucial.
It doesn't absolve consumers of responsibility, but it directs our energy. Yes, we can try to choose better, ask harder questions, support businesses that genuinely strive for transparency.

But maybe the bigger task is demanding that companies reveal the true cost, making the hidden visible not just in clever ads, but in their actual business practices. Seeing the jaguar in our coffee shouldn't require a WWF campaign; it should be inherent in how we produce, trade, and consume in the first place. 

Tackling this complexity, moving from awareness to meaningful action, is exactly what we're focused on building at tumblebee. We believe technology and better data flows can help illuminate these hidden connections. 

If you're part of an organisation striving for greater transparency and accountability in your supply chains and in your material choices, and you're curious about how we can potentially help map these intricate journeys, we invite you to connect with us.

You can request early access to our platform here or book a brief introductory call with us here to explore how tumblebee could be a fit for your challenges.

Let's figure out how to change the equation together, so that the jaguar is in the rainforest and not a bycatch in your coffee cup.

Credits for the WWF campaign pictures: Nikolaj Lykke Viborg