Coffee for Climate, Bellingen NSW

A collaboration of cafe owners, locals, family and friends are volunteering their time towards the ambitious goal of phasing out single-use coffee cups in Bellingen, NSW.

Taking inspiration from the African proverb ‘It takes a village to raise a child’, the community-led initiative Coffee for Climate believes it takes a village to inspire the world.

It quietly began on World Refill Day, 16 June 2022, when Lowanna Ruth first visited coffee vendors to share the vision: “Imagine if we phased out single-use coffee cups in Bellingen?”. Her dream was of a collaboration between cafes that would support customers with enough options to make it easy for them to transition away from disposable cups.

As Lowanna says, “It’s not just about the cups going to landfill – we all need to remember the enormous amount of pollution that’s inherently part of their production long before the single-use cup arrives at our favourite cafe”.

We’ve become accustomed to the convenience of disposable coffee cups, possibly without seeing their cost from an emissions perspective. However the production, manufacture and transportation of this disposable product is a complex, energy consuming chain of events, and each stage is dependent on fossil fuels.

So what does Coffee for Climate look like?

More than one cafe on Gumbaynggir country has already phased out single-use coffee cups, with others committed to follow. “It just seemed completely logical,” says one coffee vendor Daisy Sebes. “We all had a bit of a ‘why didn’t we do this sooner?’ moment.”

Participating venues are offering their customers the following alternatives:

• Dine in

• BYO cup

• Buy reusable 

• Mug library

“It feels so achievable,” says Lowanna. “It’s climate action in every cup.” Some of the participating Coffee for Climate cafes still offer disposables. At these establishments customers will be charged a little extra, in the hope that this additional cost will incentivise an eventual switch to one of the non-disposable alternatives.

“The potential of this movement is exciting,” Lowanna adds. “Imagine the impact if other towns were inspired to follow suit.”

How does the Mug Library work?

Look for the Coffee for Climate logo in the window of participating coffee houses. Grab a free mug off the shelf, order your favourite coffee, wander up the high street or jump in your car, then drop off your empty mug to any cooperating cafe. It will be commercially cleaned and returned to the shelves.

Who is Lowanna, and where did her passion come from?

From a young age, Lowanna found solace in nature. “We’d carry swags on weekend treks through the shade of the eucalypts, sometimes on horseback, cool off in nearby streams and sleep under the desert stars,” says Lowanna. “I learnt to feel at home in the landscape; I felt a sense of belonging in the natural world.”

She established an environmental club at high school in Sydney and, while studying video at university, she marched alongside concerned citizens in various environmental campaigns.

Interestingly, it was in Oxford, UK where her ecological interests merged with filmmaking. “I’d bought myself a one-way flight to England to volunteer at Undercurrents – a not-for-profit organisation producing mini-documentaries on social justice and environmental campaigns,” she says.

“Late one night in the edit suite, while working on a piece about climate change, I had an epiphany. If current science was correct – claiming aviation was the biggest contributor to the rise of global temperature – how could I allow myself to fly back home to Australia?”

At that moment a decision was made and bike2oz was born. The challenge was to get from London to Sydney without a single flight. Lowanna and her British fiance Kevin set off by bicycle in early 2000, with occasional supplementation by buses, trains, ferries and cargo ships. 

“We pedalled 12,000kms through 16 countries,” says Lowanna.

“We promoted the low-carbon expedition across traditional mediums of radio, television, newspaper, magazines and a website.” 

Her filmmaking skills came in handy for the 72 hours of footage they recorded together over the year-and-a-half on the road. “We documented incredible urban design in European cities, where bicycles and public transport were prioritised over cars.”

They received an award from Australian Geographic for their promotion of environmentally-friendly transport.

In the intervening years, Lowanna and Kevin married and had four children. They’ve owned and managed Bellingen’s thriving organic grocery store, Kombu Wholefoods, since 2004. Recently though, Lowanna pulled back from the day-to-day operations of their dynamic business to finally write the story of bike2oz from her hand-written expedition journals, with the hope that publishing the book might inspire readers to fly less and cycle more. 

However, the 2019 bushfires followed by the flooding in the Northern Rivers in 2022, motivated Lowanna to take a breath from the bike2oz manuscript to work on a more tangible contribution to climate action. 

“The increase in extreme weather events close to home is what sparked Coffee for Climate.”

Coffee vendor Daisy is confident in the initiative. “If we were all able to get into the habit of taking our shopping bags to the supermarket, surely we can remember our keep cups?”

It’s true that some mugs might take a while to return to the library, but ongoing donations from charity shops and generous locals ensure the long-term sustainability of the arrangement. 

@coffee_for_climate
Photography Saskia Burmeister