Monday was Earth Day, and if you’re new around here, you may have noticed that we care a lot about our environmental impact. What you may not know is that our passion was originally inspired by our coffee producers! On one of our first origin trips we saw that they care a lot about the environment and the way their practices affect it. They often go the extra mile, even reusing their coffee pulp and repurposing water to grow grass for cows. Their passion fueled ours and years later, here we are - a zero waste business always looking for ways to improve our impact, both locally and globally.

We want to share some tips with you for moving towards a more sustainable lifestyle, but first we want you to know that we practice what we preach! Here are a few of the things we do daily/monthly/yearly to improve CREMA’s sustainability.

1. COMPOSTABLE STRAWS - Our straws are 100% compostable, and if you’ve ever ordered an iced drink in the shop you may have noticed that we don’t give you one automatically. That’s not because we’re lazy or inattentive…rather, we hope that the lack of straw will at least make you think twice before grabbing one - after all, mouths are for sipping!

   P.S. We are also working towards implementing metal straws in the near future - stay tuned!

2. RESPONSIBLE RECYCLING - If you had a video montage of all the time our staff spends sorting through the recycling…well, let’s just say you’d be impressed. Not a single bag of recycled goods goes to the curb without us first hand-sorting it. If a contaminant makes its way into the recycling, the entire thing goes to a landfill and that doesn’t fly with us. Give us a pair of gloves, cuz we’re diggin’ in!

3. SET UP FOR SUCCESS - Have you heard the news? We’re building a new location in East Nashville! It will be largely dedicated to roasting and fulfillment with a small take-away cafe for our coffee-drinking friends and neighbors. Throughout the construction process, we’ve been trying to look at everything through the lens of sustainability. From recycling whatever construction waste we can to purchasing secondhand equipment when possible. In addition, we made sure to set the shop up for success from the day we open by paying attention to details like choosing eco-smart water heaters for the building and incorporating a charging port for electric vehicles (that’s right, we’re going to be using an electric vehicle for our coffee deliveries!).

4. EARTH DAY ENCOURAGEMENT - Studies show that you need to repeat a behavior 66 times before it becomes a habit. Grabbing a cup on the way out the door may not seem “difficult” per say, but if it’s not habitual, chances are you won’t remember to do it. So for Earth Day yesterday we decided to woo folks into bringing their own cups by offering to fill it with hot, fresh coffee…for FREE! We hoped that it would serve as a reminder that it is simple to grab your own cup on the way out the door, it just takes forming the habit to make it last. 16 billion disposable cups are used worldwide each year - on Earth Day we removed 24 from that number. It may not be earth-shattering, but we have to start somewhere and we’re so thankful to you for joining us.

Back to YOU! That’s enough of what we’re doing on our end, we want to empower you to implement some basic changes for the better. Our Community Educator, Maddie, is passionate about implementing Zero Waste practices in her daily life, so she teamed up with barista Abby Clark (who just so happens to be a fantastic artist and creative visionary) to create some simple steps toward sustainability that you can start taking right now!

Sustainability can certainly seem overwhelming when confronted with all of the ways our daily choices make an impact, both locally and globally. We hope that we’ve been able to inspire and inform - showing you that if we can do it, you can too! And you don’t have to start big or drastic, you just have to start somewhere.

Interested in taking the next step? Here are some valuable resources:

Compost Nashville
Nashville Curbside Recycling Details 
Bamboo Toothbrushes
Recycling Education Station