San Francisco

It’s the night before Carrotmob, and I thought I would put up one more post to clarify what exactly is going on at Epicenter Cafe, and why we are going to use our consumer power to make them rich tomorrow.

(EVENT INFO IS HERE)

We are doing this because Carrotmob and Epicenter have made a deal: Epicenter spends time and money becoming as sustainable as possible, and in exchange, Carrotmob shows up to make them as profitable as possible.

Things that Epicenter Café already offered before Carrotmob:

- Direct relationship, fair trade, organic, bird-friendly coffee
- Porcelain cups to reduce the waste of disposable cups
- Water dispensers to discourage disposable bottled water use
- Locally-made organic food
- A grease trap installed to minimize run-off
- A waste sorting system for recycling and composting everything in the kitchen
- A lighting system based on CFLs and low-voltage halogen

Things that Epicenter Café has done so far because they won the Carrotmob:

- Created a new 8% price discount for people who bring their own mugs/cups
- Put in new customer-facing 3-color trash cans
- Joined Green Café Network
- Put in a dirty / clean spoon system to replace the wooden stir sticks at the condiment counter (this mostly helps people who take their drinks to go and use wooden sticks.  “For here” orders already get metal spoons with their ceramic cups).
- Pursued an energy audit. Basic results were that the lighting is already as efficient as possible, but there are a few other things that can be explored.

Additional changes that Epicenter Café is still working on:

- Becoming a SF certified green business (takes several months)
- They explored biodegradable plastics as promised, and the Carrotmob voted that they shouldn’t use anything corn-based. – They are currently researching potato-based “spudware”.
- They are also deep in research of options for using more post-consumer paper. With both the paper and the spudware they have laid out a budget for it and are currently getting bids from 4 different vendors.
- They are also having a HVAC specialist come out to see whether the HVAC system can be improved.

So there you have it. Perhaps if you buy one extra drink they’ll spring for a windmill. See you tomorrow.