A recycling project by Ethical Beans and TerraCycle mends the gap in the recycling industry one step at a time

Coffee is not just a drink, it’s a culture, a community, a lifestyle. And like any lifestyle, you can buy swag. Certain key items you can acquire to help prove to others you aren’t a poser. The entry-level includes single-use take-out coffee cups, a small drip coffee machine, a French press or a stovetop Italian espresso maker. You can upgrade to a reusable cup, a nice espresso machine at home, and the barista at your local coffee place knowing your name and/or order. And finally, you can call yourself a full-on coffee snob if you buy your own beans. The highest level of coffee swag — walking home with an aesthetically pleasing bag of coffee beans that cost you between $20 to $30. In Montreal, there are many different coffee beans you can buy, from Cantook to Café Rico, with distinct flavour profiles. But no matter where you get your beans from, the bags go into the trash and onto the landfill. NO MORE! There is now another solution to help make your morning routine more green. Ethical Bean, a coffee company established in Vancouver, has partnered with TerraCycle, a global recycling solution conglomerate, to create a new recycling project key to helping the coffee consumer grow greener. If you haven’t heard of TerraCycle yet, let me have the honour of introducing you. The company’s mission statement is to “eliminate the idea of waste.” It recycles materials in products and reshapes them for reuse. For example, melting down a bunch of plastic single-use packaging to make a new park bench. Together, they have created a new recycling program that allows consumers of a hot cup a’ joe to participate. All you have to do is sign up for free, fill up any cardboard box lying around with coffee bean bags (perhaps a past Amazon order?), print the free shipping label and off the pretty coffee packaging goes to become something new! In a city like Montreal, where one in every five people you see is a coffee snob, how will the community engage with this type of program? Will the endless array of coffee shops start recycling their packaging too? Léa Normandin, an employee at Café Le Loup Bleu, one of Montreal’s “third-wave” coffee locals, is a self-appointed coffee snob. Her qualifications include spending over $20 on coffee beans. She describes a coffee snob as someone who enjoys their coffee, for whom it isn’t just a drink you have in the morning, it’s the best part of your morning. She said, “Overall, someone who considers coffee as more than just their morning pick-me-up… like myself.” Normandin sees first hand the kind of waste coffee shops and coffee consumers can create, like “coffee packaging, single-use plastic or cardboard cups when you go out to get coffee, […] not to mention all the waste we create when choosing what goes into our coffee, such as sugar packets, cream [containers], straws, etc.” Excited at the prospect of new recycling possibilities, Normandin will eagerly take part in the new recycling initiative. The only thing left to do is get the city on board!