With everyone concerned about saving the planet, coffee shop owners play a very important role in using fewer paper cups, paper or foil sachets for sugar, and plastic straws for iced drinks.
Here’s how you as a consumer can help your favorite café towards sustainable, planet-friendly operations:
- Use only washable and reusable cups, mugs or latte bowls.
- Do not use or ask for plastic straws. There are many metal and bamboo straws for sale even in cafés.
- Drink coffee without sugar or creamer. Drinking coffee the way it is served (black, latte, piccolo, etc.) without adding anything is the eco-friendly way to enjoy your brew. Some people like to add some syrup dispensed from bottles by the barista.
- Bring a reusable container and ask the café to fill it with your favorite brew. Imagine the paper cup you will avoid using. That helps especially if you drink more than one cup a day.
- Spent grounds from espresso, latte and other drinks can be given to coffee farms or gardens for aerating the soil and bringing back to Nature the wastes of the coffee she lent us to drink.
- Avoid using single-use plastic in iced drinks and water-dispensing stations. Bring a cup!
And best of all, use local coffee. It has traveled fewer miles, has helped more farmers to keep planting coffee, and keeps our economy alive!
Go green. Go local. Go Philippine coffee.
written by Pacita Juan / Background vector created by Freepik