It’s a workday. You head out and make a pitstop at your favorite cafe for a quick coffee and a ham and cheddar quiche catches your eye. You grab that too. At work you sip your coffee, snap open the recyclable container holding your quiche and dig into breakfast. You finish and carry on with your day until you reach a stopping point. You clean up and carry the paper coffee cup and a plastic fork and container to the recycling bin. Job well done? Maybe not. Most coffee cups have a thin lining of polyethylene rendering it technically recyclable but difficult to separate from its paper cocoon and there’s a high chance that food container is contaminated with food residue.
Recycling Isn’t the Environmental Panacea We Once Thought
This wishful recycling, or “wishcycling,” is exactly what kept Black Crow Coffee owner, Deana Hawk, up at night. As a cafe owner, she wanted to make socially and environmentally responsible decisions for her small business. She always kept a steady flow of locally produced baked goods available, and she ordered recyclable coffee cups and she sent her coffee grounds out for intermittent composting but it didn’t feel like enough. She’d heard on the radio last year that China wasn’t taking American recycling anymore. In fact, there were already cities in Florida, like Sunrise and Deltona, who’ve stopped their recycling programs altogether. Instead of focusing on the evermore contentious world of recycling, Deana decided to do a deep dive into her trash to find out more.
Black Crow Coffee Becomes the Very First Zero-Waste Certified Business in St. Pete
In April of 2018, Deana brought Kali Rabaut of Shift Co. in for an audit of their waste stream. After saving trash for several weeks, they took to the sidewalk, laid out each piece of trash and conducted a full waste audit. The findings were shocking to both Deana and her staff. The audit revealed that only 27% of the cafe’s waste was being diverted away from the landfill. Kali and Deana got to work and Black Crow Coffee became the first zero waste business in St. Pete.
Some things were an easy fix after some serious aha! moments. They discovered through the waste audit that they were throwing away a whopping 9 rags a day resulting in a loss of 3285 rags a year. No problem. Now Deana washes and reuses them. Other changes took more finesse. As Kali put it, the process or reducing took “lots of tiny thoughtful steps.” She worked with vendors to bring them on board. Vegan Sunshine Donuts switched out their packaging for compostables. All food waste including coffee grounds are now sent to compost. A beverage for here? You’ll get a ceramic coffee mug. If you want food or coffee to go, the goods arrive in a compostable disposable container. If you finish it before you go, you can toss it into the well labelled compost can. Ultimately, the waste audit and implementation plan resulted in a cool 90% landfill diversion. In the end, recycling only accounted for 4.2% of their waste diversion. A whopping 57% was diverted by upping the amount of composting by switching out plastic containers for compostable goods. Another 28.7% was diverted through the art of utilizing reusables like spoons, cups and rags.
Becoming Zero Waste Certified took “lots of tiny thoughtful steps”
In an effort to eliminate almost every single use plastic in the joint, Black Crow nixed their straws. Don’t worry, they didn’t get get rid of straws altogether, they just got creative. Now if you order an iced mocha at Black Crow, you can sip through your very own pasta straw. In fact, you can do so at both locations. The cafe opened up a second location in the Calusa Commons next to Squeeze Juiceworks downtown and they’re well on their way to adding a sister to the zero waste family. It’s been an educational journey not just for the owners and employees of Black Crow Coffee, but also for its visitors. Patrons can see the difference. They notice the little things, like Black Crow’s delicious homemade chai. Black Crow used to purchase chai that came in cartons, but after learning that the recyclable cartons weren’t actually recyclable in this region, they started making their own. This change has had a ripple effect throughout the community and people have begun visit the cafe for its notable zero waste status. So join in on the hype and stop by for a guilt-free cup in St. Pete’s very own Zero Waste cafe.
Want to know what you can recycle in Pinellas County? Check out: https://www.pinellascounty.org/solidwaste/recycling-directory/ pdf/recycling_directory.pdf
Want to be the second zero waste certified business in St. Pete or interested in having your own waste audit? Visit shiftco.us
