The logic of sustainability

I would love to say I’m making sustainable decisions solely for the environment, but i’m not. I’m doing them for my own, selfish benefit:

• Bottles cost me around $2.70 plus GST each when buying a pack of 18 (500ml). Postage costs $36 from Wellington. Pretty bloody expensive eh? By gaining the services of Smart Bottles, a certified bottle sanitizer, I pay around 50c per bottle to have them washed. To incentivize you returning your bottle I offer you $2 off your Strictly Coffee coffee or menu item. The cost of bottles when you return them to me is less than the cost of buying the bottles new, and I help support Strictly Coffee, who have supported me so much.
• Coffee grind is a waste product which has a cost of disposal (just normal DCC rubbish bags). Dropping off this coffee grind to the Red Barn nursery is beneficial for me because it’s one less thing to go in the bin. It’s beneficial to Red Bard because it’s great fertilizer. They even offered to pay me for it! (I said no, but asked if I could promote the transaction- pretty good little marketing piece.)
• I use tapioca starch instead of glue because it’s easier to wash off than traditional glue. It’s also easier to apply: because the labels are applied wet, I can adjust them to be straight. Self adhesive glue sticks as soon as it touches the bottle, making it difficult to put on. Glues are also printed on sticker paper, contributing to waste, and the printing is more expensive.

Making decisions which are solely beneficial for the environment is a recipe for failure. It is a trade-off between environmentalism and economic return. They don’t need to be mutually exclusive, they should be inherent.

Inspired by the late Ray Anderson: http://blog.ted.com/2009/05/18/the_business_lo/