A role model for reducing waste (4.5/5 Green Stars)
After passing through US immigration at Dublin Airport, it was so nice to be welcomed by the brand new Cloud Picker Café, on the right after the gift shop. I hadn't heard of Cloud Picker coffee before but I could get a sense of its ethic pretty quickly. This café is very focused on high quality coffee and waste reduction. Sandwiches are wrapped in paper, coffee is served in compostable cups, and utensils are all wooden. Nothing that I ordered (a sandwich, oat milk flat white, and a glass of Guinness) generated any landfill waste. The staff members were friendly and everything that I had (especially the coffee) was very good. Wish I had noticed the plant-based Rueben sandwich at the time as I would definitely have ordered this. Next time!
I'm giving the Cloud Picker Café 4.5 out of 5 Green Stars for social and environmental impact, for these reasons:
* Cloud Picker is very focused on landfill waste reduction. Besides the food and drink served in the café, coffee beans are sold in post-consumer recycled plastic bags (for 1 kg bags) and Cloud Picker also offers reusable containers for beans.
* They sell reusable coffee cups and also have compostable coffee pods, if you are into that kind of thing.
* Perhaps they could have used ceramic cups, but considering that customers would leave these all over the airport (there is no designated café seating area) this wasn't feasible.
* Coffee is generally from small holders / cooperatives that often have environmental (e.g., water conservation) or social (e.g., providing childcare to workers) benefits.
* Sales of a few of their specific coffees support causes such as Project Waterfall and Unicef.
* Chaff from roasting and coffee grounds are used as fertilizer.
* It would be nice to know more about the environmental benefits of their coffees. For example, trees that provide shade cover is a priority need for the coffee industry, where full-sun monocultures have become the norm. Cloud Picker's Rwanda coffee is working towards this, with a shade plant provided to farmers by the cooperative alongside every coffee plant. The other coffees don't mention it.
* Savory food at this Cloud Picker café includes quite a few vegetarian or vegan options. There are meat options too, but they limited this to chicken, which is considerably more sustainable than beef. read more