We've Eliminated Cling Wrap

As proud as we are of our 95% diversion rate, that still means we’re sending some trash to the landfill. Our cafe’s mission and the inspiration for the naming of our signature espresso Huli, means “to grow through change,” so we want to keep developing to become and even more responsible company.

Cling wrap can’t be recycled with our other plastic films and wraps. It’s been a long process, but we have been able to eliminate every piece of plastic wrap produced by our cafe! Just a single piece of plastic wrap runs through our shop, the wrapping for our delicious Squash Harvest Bread from Macrina.  

This was another area where we were able to use some of our savings from the cost of disposal, Each week we get some delicious biscuits from a fellow EnviroStars business, Honest Biscuits. In the past we wrapped each biscuit in plastic wrap to keep it fresh for customers. By creating a new rotation system where we place the biscuits in air tight containers, we’ve been able to maintain the freshness without the waste. While we did use a little money to get some good airtight containers, we are saving an incredible amount on the labor associated with the honest biscuits. It often took nearly thirty minutes to wrap, sort and allocate the biscuits each day of the week. Honest biscuits also helped us out in the transition by being willing to swap out reusable containers each week instead of using cardboard boxes.  Now instead of wasting these boxes, spending a ton of time wrapping the biscuits and separating them for each week day, now we just transfer them from Honest Biscuits’ containers to ours and pop them in the fridge. The total process takes about five minutes instead of thirty! We also implemented this process for our locally made Top Tarts (a housemade play on the the Pop-Tart) from Sod House Bakery. 

We’ve also discovered the mightily helpful Bee’s Wrap! This product is a thin cloth coated in bee’e wax. It can be washed like a normal dish and we can follow the same wash, rinse, snaitize cycle to implement it as a reusable alternative to plastic wrap. These handy prices of Bee’s Wrap are used to wrap the tops of the syrup bottles at the end of each night, eliminating a little more plastic from our waste stream. If you want to try them for yourself, you can find them on our shelves!