Bobsy Blog 2019 No. 15
COFFEE AS UNUSUAL
V-Coffee, The What, The How & The Why???
“Why isn’t all coffee vegan!?” I am often asked with a surprise look on the face. Well, no not really. All coffees are definitely not created equal. Sure, the coffee bean itself is, it’s the fruit of a plant and is therefore vegan. Most people drink their coffee with cow’s milk to have their latte’s, cappuccino’s & flat white, etc. Black coffee is plant-based of course and people who drink their coffee black are fully vegan yes. But, but the coffee shops they frequent are not, and they consume more cartons of cow’s milk everyday than most supermarkets sell. Not to mention the volume of “fresh milk” they throw away daily due to expiry.
The Dairy Milk.
With dairy milk having a massive eco-footprint of 1,000 litres of water per 1 litre of milk, one can easily see the problem at hand. Compare that to 40 litres per 1 litre of Oat milk. But the problem of dairy milk (and all other dairy products especially butter) is not just the vast amounts of water wasted, but the devastating impact it has on our natural resources & our environment, from clearing of forest lands to grow crops to feed the cattle, to the run off of waste water from dairy farms & so on and so forth. Not to mention the ethical side of dairy farming and you begin to get the picture.
It’s not a pretty one whichever way you paint it.
The Coffee Cups & Lids.
This is a big one! Coffee cups are coated with 30% plastic inside the cup & therefore cannot be recycled conventionally (certainly not in HK) and cannot biodegrade or be composted. The coffee cup lids are made of hard plastics, and therefore technically can be recycled, but most end up going straight in to rubbish bins together with the cup and the paper jacket. Wasteful little buggers indeed! And as you are aware most coffee shops in HK are still serving their coffees in throw away cups with the lids firmly on, even for stay in customers, as if there was no environmental crisis.
Globally over 1 billion take-away coffee cups are thrown away each day!! A large percentage of the plastic makes its way into our oceans causing havoc on marine life & human life alike.
In Hong Kong we throw away 2 million coffee cups every day!!
Drinking coffee has become a very big problem.
BOYCOTT PLASTIC COFFEE CUPS & LIDS!!
The Coffee Beans.
10 Million tons of coffee are produced each year. Most of it is not organic and is therefore steeped in synthetic fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides & insecticides. Conventional intensive farming is wrecking havoc on the soil, the waters & the air to satiate the 2.5 billion cups of coffee consumed each day.
So, as I was saying not all coffees are created equal.
Coffee as Unusual.
V-Coffee is created & designed to be anything but coffee as usual.
Organic Fair-Trade coffee beans of single origin, roasted locally in HK. Blended with a choice of organic plant-based milks, fuelled with high quality plant-based butters & oils & served in an eco friendly, fully compostable & biodegradable coffee cup and lid. MANA! also offers 10% discount to customers who bring their own cup. Voila!
V-Coffee is an original concept that MANA! developed back in 2015 at our charming small coffee shop MANA! PoHo. It took many days of trial and error to find the right formula without compromising quality, taste & ethics to create the puuurfect cuppa in every way possible.
We have since opened our designated V-Coffee Bar at our new MANA! Starstreet location, where you can enjoy our original signatures coffees without trashing our beloved planet.
Now of course I can go on & on about the wonderful concept of coffee & the role it is playing in our culture, and the importance of
“coffee moments” in my daily life… But I will save that for another blog one fine day. Until such time, please bring a level of awareness to your daily habit & the trail of waste you may be leaving behind you for generations to come. The solutions are on hand today, and just require your pro-active participation.
Until soon…
Bobsy Gaia
