Cutting Waste - Update!

Hello black ether of the internet, 

As promised, here's a belated monthly update on our efforts to reduce waste one small item at a time. (Belated because I've been traveling a bit and so haven't had time to implement fully some of the changes we've been playing with.)

BUT! 

A few updates to report - the experiments with using a tablet as opposed to paper printed tickets has been going well in Santa Monica, as has the switch from Kalita to Walkure brewers for pour-overs. The Walkure uses a ceramic filter so we're at least eliminating paper filters for our pour-overs and the cup is surprisingly clean.

The next step is to roll these out over the next couple months to all the other cafes. Changing brewers is the tricky bit as we rely heavily on the ease and consistency of Clever Coffee Drippers to make a lot of our manual pours, but I think the Walkures are just as consistent, but maybe not as easy. I'd honestly love to find a reusable filter for batch brewers, but it doesn't seem like there's anything out there. We might have to make our own somehow. 

The other bit of reducing waste is that we're rolling out paper cups with the built-in sleeve. (See photo). The idea here is to eliminate needing a sleeve at all, though since we've put them out, I'm having second thoughts about the whole thing. 

Honestly, one the trickiest things to do in this world is to find a way of truly being eco-friendly. Case in point - tote bags are terrible for the world and you're 1000% better off using a plastic bag. Crazy, right? With these cups, they use more paper, so while maybe we're reducing the amount of sleeves being used, I'm not 100% convinced this is the best option from an eco point of view (though the goal of this exercise is to eliminate waste, not necessarily do the most "green" thing possible...whatever that is.) So, anyway, we're hopefully going to at least limit the amount of sleeves out there in a small way even if we're using more paper to do it. So sort of winning?

As Kermit the Frog so astutely put it, it's not easy being green.

Thanks for reading as always, feedback is so appreciated. 

Best,

Bobby