Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Simply Green: Focusing on Local, Organic, and Fair Trade- How one coffee shop makes the switch!


Happy Earth Day!

In my travels and conversations, particularly because I live in Colorado, there are many people, stores, restaurants, etc. who live a very green lifestyle and make a conscious effort to do so. Living green can me lots of things. It can mean composting all of your food. It can be recycling all plastics, paper, glass. It can be riding your bike to work, or eating locally grown and organic foods. There are copious ways in which one can be green and one coffee shop in Fort Collins is going for them all.

The coffee shop is called MUGS Coffee Lounge and it's located in the old town Fort Collins on College St. The owners have made a very big move this past March to ramp up their already green efforts, to be a Conscious Consumer is the main focus of their business.

According to MUGS a Conscious Consumer "considers what the environment, social and economic impacts his or her purchases make. Quite simply, the conscious consumer considers the options available, and chooses the most responsible, sustainable, and least harmful option" .

MUGS has become a Conscious Consumer themselves by focusing on organic, fair trade, local, homegrown, reusing, reducing, recycling and composting. By doing so they are not only making an effort to be more green and help the environment, but to pass on this education to their customers. Their menu board indicates when something is Local (l), Fair Trade (ft),Organic (o) and Homegrown (h) which compliments and holds them accountable to the focus and mission of their store and at the same time demonstrates their sustainable efforts to the customers.

There are many ways in which we can be green this Earth Day, one way is to support businesses like MUGS who focuses on their green efforts EVERYDAY! It can be done and as long as each of us are taking some part, some small steps towards being more green, more sustainable, we will be helping towards the greater cause!

Image from: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1539915/earth_day_2009_events_in_the_detroit.html?cat=8

1 comment:

  1. Did you know that more than one million tons of excess waste could be eliminated each year by not having the following three items associated with an average tea bag: teabag wrapping, string and tab attached to string...Fact from “Modern Marvels” series on the History Channel’s...STEEP IT LOOSE!!!

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