Why Green Cafés?

beans333For starters,over 70% of American adults drink coffee on a daily basis!

  • Within the coffee industry, the specialty coffee industry holds great potential for role modeling a shift toward sustainability.   On average, 12% of  Americans adults have visited a coffee house in the past month, and twice that may adults visit cafes  in the San Francisco Bay Area – over 26%.
  • The 21,000+  coffee shops in America use billions of gallons of water a day, tons of electricity and generate massive amounts of solid waste (just food waste accounts for 16% of the solid waste in California’s landfills and paper accounts for 30%).
  • Cafés also purchase huge quantities of paper products, coffee, sugar, milk, and food that are directly tied to critical issues in international trade as well as ecological effects from the timber industry, agriculture (and the uses of pesticides, fertilizers, etc.), and dairy industry (uses of hormones, chemicals, etc.).

Addressing a Need

In a country that consumes 24% of the planet’s resources yet only holds 5% of the world’s population, Green Café Network is dedicated to addressing the need for  Americans to change our consumption patterns by working at the neighborhood level to make sustainability a norm rather than an abstract idea.  We believe that in order to decrease America’s “ecological footprint” (i.e., the amount of land and resources needed to sustain our rate of consumption), we must make changes through individuals, who ultimately influence the market and policy.

We also believe that Americans are ready to take direct action toward tackling our ‘environmental problems’ – yet, in most urban neighborhoods there is a lack of the role-modeling and community-building that is essential for achieving long term change in our attitudes and behaviors.  For example, a Gallop Poll done among adults nationwide found that 65% of respondents felt that businesses OR citizens (as opposed to government) should have primary responsibility for solving our nation’s environmental problems.

Considering that coffee shops have a tremendous impact on the planet and they influence a huge number of Americans each day – Green Café Network is dedicated to fulfilling the potential of coffee shops to become catalysts for positive environmental and social change.