The Environment
A caring and sustainable approach to the environment is critical to all of us.
Food and drink businesses can be fairly intensive on our planet, so it is particularly important that we do all that we can to reduce our impact.
In high visibility locations such as our cafes in green spaces, we also have the opportunity to lead by example.
Compostable cups and lids.
We have completely removed single use plastics from our menus – we use cans and glass which are vastly more recyclable.
Our takeaway cups and lids are compostable, as are our straws which we also only provide on request for those who need to help with drinks (generally the elderly and very young). Our takeaway cutlery is also compostable.
We offer discounts for customers who bring reusable cups (when permitted) – we sell RCups to help with this.
We offer free tap water as standard and install bottle fillers at our cafés.
We use high-quality energy efficient catering equipment rather than cheaper equivalents.
rCups reusable cups.
Composting coffee grounds.
For our fit outs, we use LED lighting throughout and thermal insulation where possible to improve building efficiency.
We use as few suppliers as possible, which deepens our relationships, reduces the number of vehicle movements at each café – which also improves safety.
Where we’re responsible for our waste collection, our commercial waste supplier sends our general waste to a waste-to-energy plant and mixed recycling is returned back into the packaging supply chain. We’ve installed pneumatically powered cardboard baling equipment which reduces the number of pick ups and all cardboard waste is sent for recycling
At The Rookery Café we compost our coffee grounds and kitchen peelings and are in the process of establishing this at The Skylark Café. This very much depends on the site but is easy to do if the appropriate space is available
We use the Innuscience Cleaning System which uses natural enzymes in place of synthetic cleaning chemicals – this vastly reduces our environmental impact and keeps the cafés nice and clean!