You’ve heard it over and over again - people really, REALLY don’t like your office k-cup machine. You’re not a fan either, but what other option do you have?  

At this point, you just know that you’ve had enough! Not only does your office k-cup’s quality leave plenty to be desired, but it also creates so much unnecessary, un-recyclable, un-compostable waste. 

Lucky for you, you’ve come to the right place! With Joyride as your guide, your office coffee program can not only become more environmentally and economically sustainable… but you and your colleagues will be drinking consistently better coffees - and that can make a huge difference during a busy work day.

These following three steps to a more sustainable office are here to provide you with all of the information you need to make an informed decision when choosing your next coffee provider, and how coffee itself is a huge factor in your day-to-day sustainability:

1. Keg vs. K-Cups (a battle to the hopeful death)

K-Cups:  Many are familiar with the single serve k-cup machine. Pre-ground coffee is housed inside plastic palm-sized cups, and then are flushed with warm water to brew.  

The end result is an individually brewed cup of coffee, unfortunately prepared using a cup full of, plastic, aluminum and organic materials that cannot be recycled, or reused due to the structure of the cup and brew method.  Safe to say, k-cups were advanced for their time in 1998,  but times have changed. 

The benefits: Convenience - you have to give it to them, it’s easy to brew a K-cup.
The drawbacks: Poor quality cup of coffee, every cup adds to landfill waste, non-local and coworker mumblings echoing like a bad dream from the break-room. Brewers are expensive.

Kegs: Unlike its caffeine distant-cousin, cold brew coffee kegs are less known in the workplace as an alternative to K-cups.  Joyride cold brew kegs contain approximately 80 8oz servings inside a 5 gallon keg, and carry a shelf-life of 90 days after brewing.  Cold brew is becoming a growing trend in offices that want to not only have an upgraded office coffee experience, but also care about the lifecycle of resources they use. Each keg eliminates the plastic equivalent to 80 bottles per use and in upgrading to kegs (with three taps!) we’ve calculated that an office would eliminates 85 POUNDS of plastic and glass waste per employee, per year.  

The benefits: Cafe-quality cold brew in your office or store, more caffeine per serving, improved office morale, less wasted beverage, and amount poured is personalized to the pourer. 

The drawbacks: Needs to be refrigerated. Disrupts old ways of thinking. You’ll also regret that you didn’t think of this sooner. 

2.  Local Sourcing & Production

We’ve all heard the saying, “shop local” – a motto that aims to help small businesses receive support from their communities. In our mind, every office should be thinking this way - you're a business, why wouldn't you support other businesses in your area? This is not only meant to keep money in a given community, but is also meant to reduce the amount of travel a product needs to get to a consumer, thus reducing the amount of carbon emissions in the atmosphere. 

At Joyride, we pride ourselves in sourcing and producing our cold brew coffee and tea locally. Our delivery vans operate within a tight radius of our distribution centers and we optimize our delivery routes to the most efficient paths, again seeking to lower our carbon footprint. On the consumption side, we tailor each beverage program specifically to the wants and needs of our individual customers to ensure there is the least possible amount of wasted product.

Considering that the average American drinks 3.1 cups of coffee every day, it’s important that we understand how something so small can have a great impact over time.  In providing a customized beverage program, Joyride helps offices and businesses significantly lower their plastic waste, and product waste. Having an entirely upgraded beverage program that is economically and environmentally sustainable sounds like a pretty sweet deal!

3. Streamlining Beverage Services

Having a single beverage provider will ultimately create a more organized and hassle-free experience for the consumer, and will certainly make your beverage program more sustainable overall. There will be one number to call, one main point of contact, and one person to turn to if the business experiences incremental growth. Not only that, but by choosing a sustainably-focused vendor, you can be sure that these eco-concerns will all be taken into account. 

In streamlining your beverage program, there’s more pressure put on the vendor to do their job more effectively. This allows for a more personalized beverage experience; ultimately resulting in getting issues answered sooner, and solutions faster! That’s thrilling! What’s more, all of your office beverage needs will come to you in fewer deliveries/shipments reducing the amount of wait time and carbon emissions.

We are all fortunate enough to live in an age where we can not only have our morning coffee, but have it be as sustainable as possible! Switching over to a more responsibly-sourced and produced coffee is an easy (and delicious) way to make your office more sustainable.