About

Think of it like this:

You’re in a cafe standing in front of three waste bins – (compost, recycling and landfill) – holding a paper coffee cup, a plastic wrapper, and a glass juice bottle…How do you know which piece goes where?

The goal of the Signs for Sustainability contest is to bridge creative style with environmental responsibility – helping to make sustainability cool, mainstream and easy to understand in our communities.  With the help of budding designers and students – we can use hip, innovative signage to help cafe customers to save energy, conserve water and greatly reduce waste.

A little background:

Green Cafe Network is dedicated to building a movement in the coffeehouse industry to green business practices, promote environmental responsibility and harness cafe culture for individual and community environmental education.

Here’s the Good News:  More and more coffeehouses and restaurants are jumping on board with greening their business practices – and many of these cafes have posted signs in their establishments to promote waste diversion and conserving resources.  There’s also some decent free signs available to these businesses on the internet.

Here’s the Not-So-Good News:  It’s not enough.  Why?
1. Many cafe owners have told us that the free signs currently available are either ineffective or boring… or both.  “We need style, not just function to inspire people to act” says one cafe owner.  “Those generic signs don’t work with our cafe’s hip aesthetic,” says another.
2.  On a recent survey of 40 cafes in the San Francisco Bay area, we found that only 16% had signage encouraging people to conserve napkins or paper towels, and 51% had a waste station with only one bin for trash (even though commercial recycling and composting is widely available and some of those cafes recycle and compost behind the counter).

Green Cafe Network’s Response is:  “Since when does effective signage have to be boring?  Why don’t we use style and innovation to inspire people to do the right thing?”

This is why the Signs for Sustainability art contest was born and why we’re trying to get as many creative minds in the design community involved as possible to make the most effective, stylish signs out there.

“Community” is the key ingredient to this contest.   The “winners” of this contest not only receive prizes – but are also featured on this website, with their designs available for free download and use by neighborhood cafes everywhere.