Recycling and Product Design

So, while lots of people are getting revved up and excited about combating the latest environmental problems (global warming, for example!), recycling might seem like old news. But even if is has shed its glamour, much like bell bottoms, FEMA, and the grapefruit diet, recycling is still an important way to contribute to an organization’s environmental management system. Our approach is two-fold. First, we look to reuse and recycle as much as possible. This applies to the reuse of plastic buckets for our roasting and local delivery needs, to the burlap bags and wood pallets that we offer to local farmers, to the scrap notebooks we make from retrieved paper products. Our Comprehensive Sustainability Officer stalks the premises, looking for anything that can be recycled or donated to the community. Recycling bins are found throughout the facility to promote the proper disposal of the materials in our Roastery. Secondly, we also have committed to sourcing papers with recycled content – including copy paper, post-it notes, envelopes and out-sourced print-jobs.

Our one pound kraft bags, which account for over 80% of our packaging, are recyclable, and we encourage all of our customers to dispose of them responsibly. While most coffee companies offer their product in plastic bags, these kraft bags have a special non-toxic glassine lining that disintegrates in the hot waters used to recycle paper. Calculations indicate that we’ve prevented close to 1 million plastic bags from lying to waste in landfills because of our commitment to using renewable packaging options. And to date, no customer has called and said “Hey, I think plastic bags are prettier, why don’t you convert all your stock to them?”