Who knew?

Posted on January 3, 2008 by

Coffee LabsCoffee Labs Roaster in Tarrytown, NY is operating on 100% renewable energy!  Although long time friends with the amazing crew up north of us in Westchester, this information came as a surprise to me during our most recent visit last Saturday.  Almost all of us do our share for sustainability, whether it’s from building personal relationships with our farmers, buying COE, or using recyclable materials in our cafes.  But how many roaster/retailers out there are actually carbon neutral?  Sure, we may have radiant heat flooring, soy based insulation, and salvaged windows at our roasting facility, but carbon neutral?  Amazing.  Who else is doing this that I don’t know about?

  • http://www.gimmecoffee.com Kevin

    100% renewable energy is a huge step but I don’t think it means the same thing carbon neutral. For carbon neutral, they’d compute all the environmental impacts from the costs of cups, shipping greens from origin to tarrytown, etc, and then the co would either plant trees or do some other thing to offset those carbon impacts. For most commercial and residential customers of power companies nowadays, there is an option to buy exclusively renewable energy.

    JG just had a friend of AZ come in and give a price on a 40 killowatt solar array for Krums Corners and the cost (after appx 50% rebate from NY) was around $130k. The rebates make it tempting, and being/owning/maintaining an asset that generates power from climate sure sounds awesome. Oil hit $100 a barrel today, so I’d imagine technology will be advancing more rapidly in the near future.

  • http://shotzombies.com/ Mike White

    Riiiight….but i think they ARE in fact involved in a tree planting program to offset all their carbon use, in ADDITION to buying all renewable energy from ConEd…

  • http://www.benhider.com Ben

    And they are also dog friendly in the cafe, another thing that Gimme needs to adopt.

  • http://shotzombies.com/ Mike White

    they’re very dog friendly, and Mike Love and I actually talked about that. They got a special permit from the city of Tarrytown to allow that. Something that will NEVER happen in NYC unfortunately.

  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/lucey scottlucey

    Thanksgiving Coffee has a pretty admirable environmental statement… http://www.thanksgivingcoffee.com/justcup/environsustain/statement.lasso – i thought they were carbon neutral as well, but couldn’t find that in the env. statement.

  • http://shotzombies.com/ Mike White

    thanks Scott that’s awesome. Seems like most of their policies involve the good old reduce, reuse, recycle mantra, but the whole biodiesel thing is pretty cool. Lots of people in Ithaca convert their diesel cars to run on recycled vegetable oil from the restaurants around town, but I wonder how many businesses do…

    Ithaca Biodiesel

  • Thom

    I have been told used vegetable oil up here is pretty scarce now. People need to kick their healthy diets to make more fuel. An electric delivery vehicle would be where it’s at, but grid power would be needed to charge it up overnight as it would be in use during the day.

  • coffeeinaction

    Hey,

    Great to see your blog. I’m an avid fan of Coffee Labs. In fact, in February I’m taking off on a sustainable/socially responsible coffee road trip with a Coffee Labs Barista (she also happens to be a long time friend of mine). We will be keeping a blog of our trip at http://coffeeinaction.wordpress.com/. I think you would be interested in what we are up too. Also, we are really open to suggestions as far as must-see coffee places and people.

    Thanks!
    Melanie

  • http://shotzombies.com/ Mike White

    Melanie, if i’m not mistaken I believe Mike told me he was taking a trip with Dev and Jim from San Cristobal Imports. If this is the trip you’re referring to, i’ve taken it myself and it’s a great time. I even wrote about it here. Have a great time, I look forward to seeing some familiar faces in your photos.

  • coffeeinaction

    No, its not that trip, but I would LOVE to do that! This is Sara and I on our own adventure, but Mike knows its happening and is certainly providing wisdom and support for us on our journey.