“Little Martian is a project born of the idea that it is counterproductive for a coffee roastery to put a higher value upon cup quality than that of the long-term sustainability of the coffee economy.”

Little Martian (LM) is a project, spearheaded by Q-Grader, and 17-year industry veteran, Matt Ehresman, who is attempting to operate a coffee roastery with 100% renewable energy.

If successful, it will become the first to do so in the great state of Wisconsin, and be among the first to do so in the world.

At opening, LM will operate on a single 1kg (2.2lb) Aillio Bullet roaster, powered by the energy gathered by two 440w SolarEver solar panels and stored in 4x100ah BattleBorn LiFePO4 batteries (for more information on the selection process for these batteries, as well as the pros and cons of energy storage chemistries, check out the write-up here).

This will allow for about 3 hours of roasting per charge cycle and a max monthly capacity of nearly 100kg.

The coffees on offer will share LM’s goals of community building, reforestation, and/or biodynamic/regenerative styles of agriculture.

It is also hoped, and this is perhaps the thing that makes LM most unique, that others can “steal” this idea and take its methods and ideologies to larger businesses.

The way forward is clear: we must ditch the “half-way” efforts, the deluded platitudes of greenwashing, and the searches for 90+ coffees that are grown in monoculture; rather we must become truly sustainable. Pay (true) premiums for land-stewardship at origin, reduce or eliminate our waste products at home as well as abroad, and eliminate our reliance on petroleum products.

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It is important to state that Little Martian is not a political organization.

Reducing our individual influences on waste and pollution is simply good work.

In essence, the conservation of our lands is in the public interest; and it is this concept that is at the very heart of the Little Martian Coffee Project.