Two Chimps Coffee are a Climate Positive Coffee Roastery!

At Two Chimps Coffee; we have always been conscious about saving energy.

From turning lights off when we leave the room, to reusing our coffee chaff as chicken bedding! And now, we’ve taken a huge leap forward by offsetting our carbon footprint and becoming Climate Positive! Awesome!

What does it mean?

The term ‘climate positive’ is another way of saying ‘carbon negative’; rather than balancing the amount of carbon you produce, you go one step further and reduce it by more than you make. Your carbon footprint is the amount of carbon dioxide that is released into the atmosphere as a product of your lifestyle. Everyone has a carbon footprint, and it is nearly impossible to live a modern-day life without impacting the planet in some way. However, there are many ways that you can reduce your emissions and work towards becoming carbon neutral, or, even better, carbon negative.

Should I worry about my carbon footprint?

How big your carbon footprint is will depend on your lifestyle. For example, if you drive a lot or you’re a frequent flyer, your carbon footprint will be larger than someone who cycles to work and doesn’t fly often. It doesn’t just stop there; it also considers your home energy use, food and waste, how you buy clothes, everything! Carbon is measured in weight such as grams, kilograms, and tonnes and is often calculated as a sum per year.

Although climate change is a natural occurrence, the climate crisis that we all talk about is mainly due to how the world & humans have developed so rapidly over the last 200 years. Humans have increased greenhouse gasses so much since the Industrial Revolution, causing the planet to heat up. Some of the significant factors that have caused these issues are burning fossil fuels & deforestation. But it’s not too late to make a change for your future generation.

Can I help?

It’s a fact that changing the way you live will reduce the amount of emissions you produce. In 2020, Covid-19 Coronavirus caused a global pandemic. This led to national lockdowns; enforced in countries worldwide to try and reduce the spread of this deadly disease. Although this was difficult for many people and businesses, there were some very positive effects. As airports, roads and cities were effectively closed, there was a massive emission reduction since the start of the year. There were reports of cleaner air, clearer water and more liberated wildlife! Amazing! However, in the ’long game’, this is only temporary, and when life goes back to ‘normal’, our emissions are sure to go back up.

Making small changes will help to slow the increase, such as not commuting to work as much and not wasting as much food as before. When supermarket shelves were empty during the first lockdown, you had to raid your cupboards and get creative. This “waste not, want not” mentality is a step in the right direction to improve everyone’s carbon footprint.

How else can I reduce my carbon footprint?

There are plenty of ways that you can reduce your footprint. Big things like flying less, walking instead of using a car where possible and having solar panels installed at your home are changes that will help, but these are not always possible. Don’t worry; you can make small changes too. For instance, choosing to buy second-hand clothing, giving unwanted items away on websites instead of throwing them away and growing vegetables at home will reduce your carbon footprint. As will turning off the lights when you leave a room, not using the tumble dryer so often and turning down the heating by 1 degree.

What we already do here at Two Chimps HQ

We shout a lot about how we try to reduce, reuse, and recycle. We believe it’s important to help the climate crisis. We’ve recently changed 80% of our coffee packaging to fully recyclable bags, and when the other 20% of non-recyclable packaging has been used, we’ll ensure we’re 100% recyclable. Even though our card labels and stickers are both recyclable, the metal clips we use can be quite wasteful, but we have solved this! We’re replacing the clips with glue dots that are fully recyclable very soon. We have also changed our cardboard mailers to one that is made of 100% recycled material, plastic-free and 100% biodegradable.

Any leftover A4 sticker sheets or unwanted print is reused to print on the other side of the paper. We save all of our cardboard boxes whenever we receive deliveries and reuse these to send wholesale coffee deliveries. We also sort our spare boxes and give them away, for free to anyone who may be moving house—the same with any other packaging such as jiffy bags, bubble wrap and plastic filler.

Re-use

If you read our blogs, you’ll know that the waste chaff that comes from roasting coffee gets given away to our customers and employees as bedding for their chickens. We also recently discovered from Vic that when she cleans out her chickens, the waste is collected by her friend who uses it in her compost. Our coffee grounds are reused too; they’re perfect for keeping the slugs away from our roses.

When we receive our green coffee beans, they arrive in GrainPro bags which are made from high-strength PE. These protect the beans on their journey, but sadly we cannot recycle them. Instead, we reuse them, which is much better anyway. We give them to our friends who use them to protect their stored furniture for their wedding chair hire company. These bags are perfect for keeping them dirt and pest-free during the non-wedding season.

Coffee Sacks

As well as the GrainPro Bags, the beans are also shipped in a hessian sack. Not only does this serve as an extra layer of protection for the beans, but they look cool too! Some of our wholesale coffee customers use them to decorate their walls or counters, and some of us chimps have been very crafty with them too. We’ve used the sacks to make cushions, cover furniture such as footstools, toy boxes & even dog beds! There are so many ways you can reuse this hard-wearing fabric. We’ve even seen people turn them into plant holders.

As well as trying our best to reduce our carbon footprint within our business, we offer information to our customers about how they can also reduce theirs too. For example, when a new wholesale coffee customer wants to rent an espresso machine from us, we offer them the option to have a refurbished machine as an alternative to a new one. We source our preloved machines locally and spend time refurbishing them, so they’re as good as new! We bet that if you tried an espresso from a new machine and one from a refurbished machine, you would never know the difference. Mainly because our coffee is awesome, and our clever team of chimps know exactly how to pull the best espresso. Oh, and they will train you too.

What is Carbon Neutral?

This means that steps have been made to offset any carbon emissions that you create to become carbon neutral or carbon negative.

Not only have we offset our carbon footprint to enable us to bring our green coffee to our roastery, but we’ve offset all the running costs of our business too. We have even offset the carbon footprint of our team. This includes everything from their personal holidays to their home emissions.

We see sustainability as non-negotiable. We’re determined to leave a healthy, resilient planet for future generations.

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