How to go zero waste while setting up a modern cafe?

With the booming of coffee shops in most cities of the world, it has become a lucrative business to set up cafes. Especially the youth these days prefer spending their spare time, catching up with friends or even having casual meetings in cafes. 

Setting up a cafe needs certain things to be taken care of. Not just the interiors and the menu, but also looking after the sustainable approach. What we mean is that doing everything possible to make it a zero-waste cafe by reducing the use of materials, ingredients and every such thing which would sooner or later cause harm to mother earth. The urban lifestyle which we lead often leads to producing a lot of waste which may not get completely or partially decomposed. This keeps on piling up over years and years thus leaving the earth full of garbage.

Hence even while setting up a cafe, we should consciously put efforts to make it zero waste in every manner possible.

Here we provide a list of easy tips you can adopt to get earth-conscious and reduce the amount of waste generated within the cafe:

1. Make fertilisers with organic waste- Whatever organic waste is generated from the food and coffee can be collected and then decomposed to make organic fertilisers. The fertiliser can be made directly by the cafe operators or the waste can be sent to the waste management companies in order to utilize them further for making them useful for the growth of plants and more crops.

2. Say no to plastic- Plastic is non-biodegradable and leads to a lot of pollution. Avoid the usage of plastic bags for wrapping, or using coffee stirrers made of plastic and in all ways where plastic is used within the cafe. Instead, naturally obtained materials can be used which replace plastic, such as wooden coffee stirrers, paper bags and utensils made of glass or other fibres. Not only this, encourage the customers even to minimize the use of plastics in their lives. This can be done by putting forth the message by every form of branding you take up for your cafe. Whatever little thing we practice, can also be done by the people around us and collectively we all will make a greater impact to save the planet from being more harmed by our negligent deeds.

3. BYOB (Bring your own bag)- The zero-waste cafe can encourage the customers to bring their own bags and containers to get a fresh stock of the items from the cafe. In this way, the cafe will also not have to provide plastic bags to them. Jute bags can be used and even sold to the customers in case they have not brought their own. 

4. Using beeswax wraps for keeping the food fresh- At times we use plastic wraps or foils to cover the food items or the utensils when we refrigerate them. The sustainable approach to this in order to be a zero waste cafe is to avoid the plastic usage in the cafe and use the beeswax wraps which help to keep the food items fresh for longer durations without causing any kind of harm to them. These wraps are naturally obtained and made with organic components and beeswax. Also, they can be washed with cold water and reused in the cafe.

These simple things can be adopted which you are thinking of setting up a new cafe or even transforming your existing cafe into a more sustainable and zero waste one. This will show your conscious concern towards shaping the future of our planet without harming it in any way.