In the first week of November 2019, our Ottawa office took a greener turn with a new coffee machine that does not use capsules or cups.

Previously using a Keurig coffee machine, our waste was significant with approximately 80 staff members consuming coffee daily. Keurig K-cups are difficult to recycle, and we believed that if waste could be avoided altogether, we would greatly reduce our environmental impact.

Bean Around Town is an Ottawa-based company, providing coffee machines and supplies on a subscription basis with the environment as a main focus. We selected this company as our provider since it only uses organic, fair trade coffee beans that are locally roasted. The beans that are currently being used are from Equator Coffee Roasters, a Certified B Corporation, which meets the highest verified standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability. Every week, the machine is cleaned, and the coffee grinds are composted. Other measures undertaken by this company include no pesticides, recyclable and bulk packaging, wooden stir ticks as opposed to plastic and automatic energy saving mode on all machines. All these initiatives made Bean Around Town a provider that perfectly aligned with our vision.

The quality of the coffee also encourages more of our staff to choose coffee at the office over coffee chains that serve coffee in single-use coffee cups that are, most often than not, not recyclable nor compostable. The Italian-made machine freshly grinds beans for every cup of coffee and our staff can choose from a wide selection including espresso, cappuccino, latte and more.

Since its implementation in November, our new coffee machine diverted approximately 2,000 Keurig cups from the landfill! We look forward to continuing on this path and implementing other impact-reducing initiatives in Ottawa but also in the other regions we operate in.

Learn more about Bean Around Town at https://beanaroundtown.ca/