- We were using 120,000 cups a year.
And we were using 120,000 lids a year as well.
So that's 240,000 single use items
that we were sending out.
So if you then times that by the town that we're in,
the country that we're in, and globally,
it's a really worrying statistic.
So we've decided to take a stand.
So if you come into Ottos,
you won't be able to use those cups anymore.
So we're encouraging people to bring their reusable cup.
We give a discount for that.
(dynamic music)
- Hi, I'm a coffee cup.
Hey, you might think I have it all,
because I'm made of paper and I'm recyclable.
But I'm not.
Only my lid and my sleeve are recyclable
because baby, the inside of me is all plastic.
- All of our coffee is served in jars.
There's a dollar deposit.
And then once you've finished,
you can return the jar and you'll get that dollar back.
We also have a mug wall.
You can come up to the mug wall,
pick any mug that you'd like, and then you give it to us,
we'll fill it with any drink.
And then you can either just sit in our cafe with it,
or you can even leave our cafe
and shop around at other shops,
and then just return the mug when you're done.
And it's kind of an honor system.
- Many coffee shops, including Starbucks,
was doing a 25 cent discount if you brought your own cup.
But that really wasn't moving the needle.
We read a book called "Nudge,"
and it talked about human behavior.
We learned that as humans,
we have a huge loss aversion,
more so than we get pleasure out of gaining something.
So if you get a 25 cent discount, that's okay.
But if I say this is going to cost you 25 cents,
that's more painful.
We came up with this concept of bring your cup upcharge.
So the upcharge really encouraged people
to either go back to their car and get their to-go cup.
Or to say, actually I have a couple minutes,
I'm gonna sit here and enjoy this coffee,
and not use a to-go cup, which is wasteful.
And it will end up in the landfill.
And it saved them 25 cents.
- We eliminated all dairy products.
So we only have oat milks and alternative milks.
So we reuse all of our used coffee grounds,
and we make eyebrow serum, body butters.
We make little bags for our customers
to take back to their gardens for free.
We also have a refill station.
So you can choose any of the jars that we have,
or bring your own, and then you can
fill up our roasted coffee.
We also have 100% compostable coffee pods,
which also has 40% more coffee than a regular plastic pod.
- We'd go for a little walk into an old park.
And we just noticed this increased
amount of food packaging waste, coffee cup waste.
About a month ago,
we started going through the bins
so we can understand the waste.
And we separated out the coffee cups.
We have put those coffee cups on our shop floor.
And there's 15,000 coffee cups that have been used once,
and then thrown in the bin.
Any waste in our local area anyway is getting incinerated.
It's not actually being recycled.
- With our jar concept,
I thought people were gonna be floored
that they were gonna have to pay an extra dollar.
It was nerve wracking, but it paid off.
Like people really like the concept.
And they almost come back because of this concept.
- We measured how many people were using to-go cups
before we did this cup upcharge and it was roughly 66%.
And then after we implemented this, it reduced to 30% or so,
we have the number of coffees going to the landfill.
We were afraid that we were gonna do a 25 cent cup upcharge
and maybe our customers would say, forget it,
I'm going to the other coffee shop.
The result was overwhelmingly positive.
We are using the money to cover the extra costs of the cups.
And then we're using the remainder for carbon offsets
and other sustainability efforts.
- We'd always been wanting to open up a shop,
was heavily looking into it.
What we'd be buying on a monthly basis.
And it just dawned on me how wasteful all of this is.
Like I'm spending so much money on to-go cups,
on napkins, on sugar packets.
And then it's just gonna be thrown away
after the consumer uses it, like 30 minutes later.
And just extremely wasteful in all aspects.
Not just you're tossing it into a landfill, but also money.
- When I think about my family,
who's been growing coffee for over 100 years,
and it's not for a quick buck, quick profit.
It's the ability to sustain both economically
and environmentally over many years.
We try to be sustainable all the way from the farm,
with the example that my family set,
all the way through the cafes.
And in the middle we have a roasting facility
where we purchase wind energy.
And we purchased the more expensive Loring coffee roaster,
which saves 80% in emissions, and is super cool.
And we're a Certified B Corp, we really wanna
use the business as a force for good in the world,
focusing on people, planet, and profit.
- What we're trying to do, the ultimate goal for us,
is we wanna eliminate the problem.
So we think it's gotta come from the citizen.
And if we change our behavior,
companies are gonna react to that,
businesses are gonna react to that a lot quicker
than councils and government will do.
We hope, by doing what we're doing,
we can inspire others to do the same.
(upbeat music)