Green Café Network

love our planet a latté!

Green Café Network is dedicated to addressing America's over-consumption by reducing the ecological impacts of the coffeehouse industry and harnessing café culture for environmental education.

We believe that tapping into Americans' love of coffee and cafe culture is an innovative and effective way to inspire businesses, individuals and communiites to reduce their impact on our planet.

By 'greening' the coffeehouse industry at the grassroots level, we aim to bring sustainabiliy to the mainstream by educating, inspiring and mobilizing a new population of environmentally responsible citizens.

Our Goals:

Started in the San Francisco Bay Area, Green Café Network (GCN) takes a two-tiered approach:

First, we work with independently owned coffeehouses to actively reduce their ecological impacts and become certified green businesses;

Second, we educate and inspire the staff and communities of these neighborhood cafes so they can transfer green business practices to their personal lives. 

Our Vision and Goals Include:

• To make aggregate reductions in waste, energy, water and emissions through changes in café practices and individual lifestyles.
• To continuously increase public environmental awareness and citizen action through the coffeehouse culture.
• To collaborate with coffee shops, individuals and organizations from every neighborhood of San Francisco, striving for our work to be accessible to all communities.
• To ultimately green the entire specialty coffee shop industry (which is still growing at 7% a year!).
• And to use our network of cafes and supporters to influence product supply chains, promote social justice, influence policy, inspire citizen action and of course, mainstream sustainability.

Addressing A Need:

In a country that consumes 24% of the planet’s resources yet only holds 5% of the world’s population, Green Café Network is dedicated to addressing the need for  Americans to change our consumption patterns by working at the neighborhood level to make sustainability a norm rather than an abstract idea.  We believe that in order to decrease America’s “ecological footprint” (i.e., the amount of land and resources needed to sustain our rate of consumption), we must make changes through individuals, who ultimately influence the market and policy. 

We also believe that Americans are ready to take direct action toward tackling our ‘environmental problems’ – yet, in most urban neighborhoods there is a lack of the role-modeling and community-building that is essential for achieving long term change in our attitudes and behaviors.  For example, a Gallop Poll done among adults nationwide found that 65% of respondents felt that businesses OR citizens (as opposed to government) should have primary responsibility for solving our nation’s environmental problems.