Sustainable September 2015 - Day Six

Well, Well, Well, fancy meeting you here! hehehe. Thank you for coming back again! :)

 How did you go with yesterdays tea substitution? Did you get some beautiful loose leaf tea? Isn't it yummy?

How do you wake up in the mornings? Is it with Coffee? a grudge at the alarm clock? or is it some other way? Weirdly this morning I woke up (on a morning I was allowed to sleep in) and woke up at 6.30am and got up and did some yoga. Yes, that is traditionally unusual for me. Awesomely I had so much energy this morning that I couldn't stay in bed. So I got up in my PJs and did some stretching, followed by yoga. I went dancing last night, so was rather sore this morning from overdoing it. It was totally worth it last night though.

The reason why I ask about how you woke up this morning is because a large number of the population wakes up with coffee! Since I suffered from Insomnia, I had to give up coffee, coke/cola and some strong caffeinated teas (I know... so not fair!). Giving caffeine up did help with the insomnia, and yet I sometimes miss how comforting a good cup of coffee used to be.

What type of coffee do you drink? Freshly ground? Barista coffee? Coffee bags? Instant Coffee in a jar? Single Serve Packet Instant coffee? Coffee Pods?

Did you know that some types of coffee are better for the environment that others? Generally how they are packaged is a good indicator of "good" or "bad" coffee products.

For example, the most recent phenomenon of Coffee pods has caused a huge increase in rubbish. Most pods are not recyclable and just end up in landfill. The Conversation (a news site I frequent) last year reported on the increase of coffee pods and their damage to the environment. In the article titled "What our love affair with coffee pods reveals about our value",  It talks about how we are lulled into a false sense of security about the environmental cost of pods.. It also states that in 2013 "independent consumer group Choice reported that Nespresso had sold an estimated 28 billion capsules worldwide – about 28 million kilograms of aluminium, much of which may be sitting in landfill, with recycling figures not made public." (The Conversation, 2015).

 Thomas Guignard/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA (Photo taken from the above article).

Single serve packet coffees are not much better. Plastic wrappers of single serve coffee end up in landfill like the pods do.

So it is pretty simple to see why the Sustainable September idea for being kind to the planet is...

September 6: Change coffee sachets or coffee pods to bulk coffee beans and grind them yourself or start using a coffee plunger and bulk coffee. 

It is a matter of thinking before you buy. What is the best for me? What is the best for the environment? Then you can find a middle ground. I know it is not always easy to just jump straight into grinding your own coffee beans or trading your coffee pods machine in for a plunger. So do what you can. 

Every time we make a change, it impacts the world around us. Its part of the reason i am doing this. Changing the world around me... and changing the world around us all, one little thing at a time.

KINDNESS IDEA: Make a plunger of coffee and share it with a neighbour, friend or colleague.

KINDNESS IDEA 2: Pay for a Suspended Coffee at your favourite Coffee Shop. Don't know what a suspended coffee is? "A suspended coffee is the advance purchase of a cup of coffee for someone who needs it, no matter why. But it really is about so much more than the coffee. It can provide physical comfort, conversation, a smile or even a laugh, and a sense of belonging." Check out suspendedcoffees.com for more information.

I hope this finds you all well, and happily caffeinated! :) 

Much love to you all, 

Daena x

PS. If you are a religious person, there are some Sustainable September resources that a good friend of mine created for Churches (specifically for the Uniting Church of Australia - Synod of Western
Australia) so if you want to add some environmentally focused points to your worship services, that check it out here.