Sustainability & Community

I received an excellent request from one of our backers and decided to post it here as well, since it covers an important topic. Here’s what he wrote:

I hope your cafe will be environmentally friendly—any take away in recyclable packaging, no plastics, is my only request.

Words like “sustainable” and “eco-friendly” get tossed around a lot today—so much so that they often become buzz words that we grow numb to. Before our family moved to Africa, I will confess we thought very little about the amount of garbage we produced or how much packaging contained foam or plastics. That changed drastically when we moved overseas and saw the awful blight of plastic shopping bags clogging the landscape and rivers in both Kenya and South Africa. They were everywhere—almost like tumbleweeds. It was depressing.

This is just a small glimpse of the devastating impact plastic trash has on communities in African countries. It’s easy to ignore it when we don’t see it like this.

At that time, I began doing photography and social media for Nairobi’s top restaurant, whose owners were committed to nourishing their environment by growing most of their vegetables, giving food waste to farmers to use for composting and animal food, and avoiding plastics as much as possible. It worked. And it was beautiful. We saw the benefits of being stewards of our environment, and it changed the way we lived.

While Enterprise no longer offers recycling bins or pick-up, there is a drop-off location, and businesses can request cardboard pickup weekly. Rather than relying on someone else to recycle our waste, we are committed to reducing it as much as possible and not using plastics. To that end, all of our takeaway cups and lids will be biodegradable, and all our carry-out bags will be paper. Everything we use in-house will be stoneware, ceramic, or stainless steel—and therefore washable and reusable.

There are other ways to help give back to our community and make the world a better place besides avoiding things. We can also choose certain ways of living, eating, and cleaning that are healthier for our planet. Our family loves shopping and supporting our local farmers’ market. We will be offering our coffee grounds to farmers and gardeners to use in composting—free of charge. For an excellent, in-depth article on the best uses or coffee grounds in gardening (and where not to use them, pop over to Happy DIY Home. If you are a grower, please get in touch with us when we are open if you’d like to get on the pick-up schedule for coffee grounds. Grounds are great for gardens! (And check out grounds being recycled to make shoes, too—it’s amazing what you can do with coffee grounds!)

A big thank-you to our backer who sent this important request. Rest assured, it’s important to us, too,