Sustainability
Our pursuit of doing good beyond the bounds of our business extends to all corners of the company. That's why we joined B1G1, an initiative that enables businesses to give back seamlessly while running their business as usual. The projects B1G1 supports span from human rights protection and clean drinking water to education, all carefully assessed according to robust criteria.
We believe everyone deserves access to basic human necessities - the essentials required to enable a person to thrive and fulfil their potential. We are in the privileged position of being able to help others, so when you buy a coffee, we give a day's access to clean drinking water to people living in poverty. Since 2018, we have provided 209,802 days of clean drinking water.
Here are a few of the things we do to reduce our kitchen impact:
We educate the team heavily on the recycling system. The chef sources local and seasonal food first and foremost to reduce our footprint. Our waste is mapped at the menu design stage to ensure minimal food waste.
In addition to waste mapping at the menu design stage, we plan and buy ingredients in bulk to reduce packaging. Many staples that can be bought packaged and pre-prepared (such as lentils and baked beans) are cooked from scratch instead to reduce packaging further. Our piping bags are reusable, and we ensure that all food scraps go into green bins for composting.
In 2021, we decided to ban single-use cups at UW Kitchen. 295 million single-use cups are thrown away each year in New Zealand, and we didn't want to contribute to that. Since moving to reusable cups, we've kept over 24,000 coffee cups out of landfills.
Come visit us
If you're planning to drop by, we recommend booking as tables tend to fill up quickly! To learn more about our Christchurch hub, read about our newly designed flagship store below and take a look behind the door of our workroom.
