Inverness Coffee Roasting Sustainability and Environmental Policy and Statement

Inverness Coffee Roasting Co is committed to minimising the impact of its activities on the environment, both local and global. We are fortunate to have a team who are already passionate about environmental issues in their own personal life values and choices and in many ways Heather & Kevin have learned more from Team Bean than the other way round.

The key points of our aspirational strategy to minimise our environmental impact is:

• Minimise waste by evaluating operations and ensuring they are as efficient as possible.
• Actively promote recycling both internally and amongst its customers and suppliers.
• Source and promote a product range to minimise the environmental impact of both production and distribution.
• Make measurable efforts to by Carbon Positive

 

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How we are currently “paying it forward”

Toilet & Tap Twinning

We work with www.toilettwinning.org to twin our shop and roastery taps and toilets with:

• A tap twin in Ethiopia
• A single toilet twin in Malawi
• A school toilet block in Uganda
• four community toilets across the Democratic Republic of Congo

Refuel Roast

Of the £6.20 charged for every 250g bag of Refuel Roast, £1 goes to Adopt-A-Child for their Guatemala projects and £1 goes to Refuel Festival.

Carbon Positive

Through Environmental Organization Ecologi, we fund carbon positive projects around the world, including the UK. Many are in the countries we source our green beans from. Check em out https://ecologi.com/projects
Certificates of carbon positive impact will be available monthly.

Issues we are working on

• Compostable/Recyclable packaging: Coffee Bags

Coffee is hygroscopic which means it absorbs moisture from the air. To ensure it keeps fresh for as long as possible we use resealable kraft bags lined with aluminium/polyester with a polyethylene air valve.
To date we have made the judgement-call that the quality and durability of our product would impact customer satisfaction. Pre-covid we were happy to refill bags or jars for shop customers. This does not appear to be safe option in the current pandemic.

The Coffee Baron has spent, and continues to spend, a great deal of time investigating this hugely complex issue and at the moment our aim is to have a
compostable alternative by the end of 2021.

• Local Councils: We are working closely with Highland Council to help us to ensure that once our recyclable/compostable packaging is in place that there are resources available for those in the Inverness City area to then process the recycling at their end. However we cannot do this with all council areas and therefore even if our customers dispose of the packaging correctly, the end result may that their local council may be unable to recycle.

• Cost: We strive to produce a quality product at an affordable price. Compostable and recyclable packages and envelopes are more expensive than those that are not and they often weigh more which increases postage.

When our packaging is fully recyclable it’s important to us that it gives clear instructions to customers for the optimum way to dispose of each item. This involves extra printing costs.

Solutions Achieved

• Compostable/Recycling packaging: Envelopes

When we last updated you in March 21 we were using padded envelopes which were not recyclable. We are glad to announce that this changed in May 21.

The Coffee Baron successfully sourced a “green” Jiffy bag alternative (which is not in fact green, but kraft brown) These have a strong sustainable kraft paper outer, 100% recycled paper fibre cushioning for protecting the precious beans and are fully recyclable.

• Packing Tape

In May 21we started using this environmentally friendly tape which offers superior benefits to vinyl and polypropylene tapes, whilst the durable adhesive means it works well with most types of cardboard boxes. As it is made from Kraft paper, it can be recycled with the box itself!



Watch this space

A Team Bean beach and/or forest clean
Fully compostable packaging by the end of 2021