Hello fellow Carrotmobbers! We are Green & Tonic and our mission is to grow a dynamic ecosystem uniting green bars, green beverages, and green drinkers into a cocktail of action.
Green bars:
We help bar owners to realize energy, waste and water efficiencies.
Green beverages:
We work with sustainable alcohol producers to gain traction in the bars.
Green drinkers:
We educate the community about what it means to drink sustainably and how they can make an impact through something as simple as their happy hour drink choices.
Who are we?
We started as a Green Team formed from Acterra and developed a community project to make the bars more sustainable. We had just one thought: how many people stand in line at the bars on a Saturday night for the bathroom, flushing over and over? What if we did just one thing and focused on changing out all of the toilets in the bars? As we crawled down the rabbit hole of bar greening, we realized there is a plethora of sustainable opportunities to be had. Since then, we have evolved into an organization that has a vision of greening all of the bars in San Francisco and beyond!
Why are we doing a Carrotmob?
Since our inception, we have essentially been “mobbing” the bars by bringing the community out to support environmental retrofits with their presence and money, although we never applied the competition model. We thought the Carrotmob method would provide an excellent opportunity for more bars to come to the table and start thinking about taking action.
Why did we want to raise seed money?
This summer, we approached the bars in the Mission of San Francisco and had feedback that ran the gamut from “We want to be 100% sustainable, so are you going to make that happen for us?” to “We don’t know that we will raise any money from the event, so why would we want to participate?” Fair enough, we actually couldn’t make any promises. We started thinking. How could we come up with some kind of guarantee that this event will help make their green dreams come true?
Out pops the idea of a Get ZeroWasted Pub Crawl.
Why the pub crawl?
1. Reward the hard-working bars choosing to be green (for example Doc’s Clock just received their official San Francisco Green Business Certification!).
2. Raise seed money to help another bar go green on October 24th in conjunction with Carrotmob and 350.org.
3. Educate consumers on how to drink green.
4. Provide a market for green (local, organic, and/or sustainable) beers and spirits.
The Green & Tonic Get ZeroWasted Pub Crawl was a huge success last weekend! We raised $516 for the next bar we green and over 100 people attended! The bars were able to gain additional profits from the community support. As one crawler said, “It’s so awesome, I get to drink $2 solar powered beer!” Thanks for all of your support!
Now that we have the seed money and proof that we can pull in a crowd, what about the Carrotmob on Oct. 24th?
We will be doing our competition quantitatively by asking how much of the event revenue they are willing to commit to environmental retrofits. Our plan now is to go back to those bars interested and give them extra motivation to compete.
Why the Mission neighborhood?
We have a good following here. It is close to public transportation. Word of mouth between bar owners and customers is spreading. Good vibes, activist-oriented people, a surplus of awesome dive bars, need we say more?
We will keep you posted on our progress, stay tuned!!
Find out more about us at: www.greenandtonic.com and www.facebook.com/greenandtonic
Contact us if you would like to help out: volunteer@greenandtonic.com
