You spoke, we listened. Thanks to everyone who participated in our call for submission of your own revelation statements.
We thought you might like to see what others (specifically Anna, Amane, Stephanie, Sarah, Matt, Sean, Luigi, Aimee and John!) had to say. We cannot say it better ourselves, so please keep your eyes peeled for their words in print - on the T - this month!
Caribou K-Cups are now available on our web site and Cafe EXPRESS! We have eight new Caribou K-Cups to choose from, including five which are Rainforest Alliance certified and two that are naturally decaffeinated. My favorite is the Mahogany. You'll also see these listed in our upcoming Spring catalog.
Did you know that Caribou has over 450+ coffee shops in the Midwest, Southeast and the Rockies? Create that coffeehouse feeling in your own home by giving these K-Cups a try. Please let us know how you like them.
UPDATE: We've receive a few questions about what exactly are the Tree Nuts called out on Cafe Escapes K-Cups label. The tree nut referred to in the ingredient listing is highly refined Coconut Oil. It is so refined that the FDA does not require that it be listed in the nutritional information, but we do, as a precaution. All of our Café Escapes and Hot Cocoa contain tree nuts in the form of Coconut Oil. Each of the Hot Cocoa and Café Escapes items we offer have specific nutritional information on our website under “Tasting Notes” on their product page. The Nutritional label can also be viewed in the product images (under "More Photos"), as well as on the actual box.
UPDATE 3/23/11: The wait is over: Cafe Escapes Chai Latte is back!
We are very proud to announce a new brand to our K-Cup line-up: Café Escapes. Café Escapes are an anytime indulgence. Launching today are Cafe Escapes Dark Chocolate Hot Cocoa and Cafe Escapes Milk Chocolate Hot Cocoa. Coming soon will be Café Mocha, Chai Latte.
The new hot cocoa k-cups will be available for a limited time only at GreenMountainCoffee.com and Keurig.com. Also, for now through April 16th, we're offering them at a special low introductory price.
Please give them a try and let us know how you like them, by either replying to this blog post or "write a review" on our site. Thanks!
Big announcement for us today – we are issuing a Request for Proposals from organizations working on climate change with a focus on 4 specific areas:
We’re making four separate grants – each is $200,000, payable over 5 years – one in each area. This is good news in general and a great example of our commitment to environmental responsibility. But there are three aspects of this program that I think are particularly cool:
First, this RFP is part of a larger Changing Climate Change program we are rolling out this year to help address the growing threat of climate change. The whole program is anchored by a new enterprise statement on climate change and will encompass operational initiatives, employee programs, and carbon offsets, in addition to this RFP.
Second, not only are we trying to support organizations doing good work in these areas, we are also inviting them to come and help us do better on understanding and reducing our own carbon footprint. As part of the grant, the winners will commit to meeting with us and each other twice a year to jointly share experiences and expertise and help us figure out how to better on our own greenhouse gas footprint. This is in addition to the work they’ll be doing on one of the four core focus areas we’ve outlined. Good stuff!
Third, we are diving into the web 2.0 world headfirst, promoting this RFP on JustMeans.com and via Twitter. Through a collaboration with JustMeans.com, we’ve created a micro-site where you can read about the proposals that we’re getting and help us think about them – you can comment or express your support for a particular proposal. And we’ve created a new Twitter account so you can follow our progress with this initiative specifically and our work around Brewing A Better World in general – follow us at http://twitter.com/BrewBetterWorld.
Click here for the details on this RFP and here to learn more about our efforts to date around reducing and mitigating our carbon footprint.
Please let us know what you think.
Juan Francisco is a small coffee farmer in Nicaragua who is a member of UCPCO, one of our larger suppliers of Fair Trade Organic Coffee. He wrote a nice letter (below) about how his life has changed since he started selling his coffee at Fair Trade prices. The blue sheets below are his scanned letter with a translation courtesy of Sustainable Harvest, the folks who import this coffee from UCPCO and then sell it to us. We buy hundreds of thousands of fair trade organic pounds from UCPCO – great coffees destined for McDonalds restaurants in New England and Newman's Own Coffees in 10/12 bags and Newman's Own K Cups. If you buy some of this coffee, you might be drinking Juan's very own coffee. Or, at the very least, you'll be supporting a coop that's making a huge difference in people's lives. Do you have something to say to Juan? Post a comment below and we'll translate it and pile it up with letters from our own employees and mail to Juan via UCPCO.
The Story of Juan Francisco Valladarez
In the year 2000, I first harvested coffee from land that I owned. I was not organized as a member of any cooperative and I had no resources. At that time, there was a lot of robbery of coffee parchment, so every night after depulping my coffee, I slept in the field under the cover of a few pieces of plastic to protect me from the rain. I woke early, when it was still dark, to harvest the little coffee that I could each day. Then, I would carry the bags of parchment out on my shoulder up the hill and to the nearest town to sell them.
In 2004, an extension agent from the co-op UCPCO came to my farm to ask me if I wanted to join the cooperative. He invited me to a two-day training session. I went and I liked what the cooperative offered. I told him that I wanted to be organized, to become a member... Thanks to the team of field workers at the cooperative, my yield has improved with the organic fertilizers that they taught me to make. With their support, I have built a small wet milling area on my farm equipped with a hand depulper, a tube for pumping water to the washing tank, a drying area, a barrel, a large bucket, and a spray pump.
I also have a fair, international market that pays me a good price for my coffee, which is what helps me improve the lives of my family. With UCPCO and the umbrella organization Café Nica, I have also had the chance to cup samples of my own coffee.
I write to you,
Juan Francisco Valladarez Gonzales, and my wife Maria Luisa Landero, and children Francisco, Karla, Marvin, Milton, Karen, Melva, Nelson, and Lilian.
We are psyched to announce today our plans for the largest single-phase photovoltaic array installation in the state of Vermont (100 kilowatt) on the roof of our Waterbury VT distribution center! We're expecting to begin construction this spring and have the array operational by summer.
Click here to read the press release and the details.
This project has been about a year in the making and is the culmination of both our commitment to supporting responsible energy use and reducing our carbon footprint as well as a terrific collaboration with the State of Vermont's Clean Energy Development Fund, Green Mountain Power, and Gro-Solar.
Our hope is that this project draws attention to the role that solar energy can and must play in our regional, national, and global energy future.
Learn more about our commitment to the environment here.
UPDATE: Click here to see what our local affiliate Fox 44 had to say about our Solar project.
Hi Boston -
We've enjoyed being in your midst these past few months. We asked for your input to our "I realized" campaign and were delighted to receive such an overwhelming response. We laughed, we cried....
Thanks so much for your enthusiasm! We thought you'd enjoy seeing some of our favorites, starting with one that's just perfect for Valentine's Day -
"I realized that true love can start over a cup of coffee."
"I realize that the world never stops, we all need to have more fun and forgive more."
"I realized a bean is not just a bean."
"I realized everyone benefits from consideration."
"I realized good coffee is good for the soul."
"I realized in order for the day to end well, it has to start right."
"I realized K-Cups are good for a happy marriage."
"I realized morning coffee is my daily must :)"
"I realized not all coffee is creted equal."
"I realized that coffee is a cause. Support Fair Trade!"
"I realized that inspiration can come in a paper cup."
"I realized a cup of coffee is like a mini vacation, any time, anywhere."
"I realized an interest in coffee is among those precious things I share with folks from all over the world."
"I realized how amazing Green Mountain Coffee was when my school made the switch last month."
"I realized it's time for change."
"I realized my day is better with Green Mountain Coffee."
"I realized sometimes I go to bed already looking forward to my morning cup of coffee."
"I realized that a good cup of coffee in the morning just makes my day much better."
"I realized that being refreshed throughout the day is possible."
"I realized that good coffee can be worth waking up for!"
"I realized that I am a better person after my morning cup of Green Mountain Coffee! (At least that's what my wife says)"
"I realized that I can't control everything. Sometimes it's best to just let it go."
"I realized that it was easy to bbe kinder to our planet."
"I realized that life just isn't the same without coffee."
"I realized that today is a beautiful day."
A group of employees from GMCR and Keurig. Inc., just got back from a trip to Mexico on an "Origin Trip". Each year we send 3 different groups of employees to coffee producing countries to learn about coffee, meet coffee farmers, and do some sightseeing. Started in 1993, we've sent employees ever since and now we're up to three trips per year - one to Mexico, one to Nicaragua, and one to Guatemala. Over 18% of employees have been on one of these memorable source trips. I got to go to origin in 1996 to a small farm in Costa Rica with 8 fellow employees and had an amazing time. Now I get to bring a different group of employees to Mexico and it's one the funnest parts of my job. We made a photo album of the trip and logged the trip on Google Maps. Try some coffee from the coops we visited - Huatusco, Finca Triunfo Verde and Cesmach. Enjoy!
We are proud to announce that our Green Mountain Coffee 10- and 12- ounce bags, which debuted this past summer, have been recognized with a design award from Graphic Design USA. We certainly thought they were stunning, but it was nice to receive a “certificate of excellence” award from real design professionals.
Our favorite part is the environmental benefit. The film for the bags contains 19.4% PLA, a polymer made from renewable resources. It’s a small but important step in improving the environmental impact of our packaging.
But we’re really writing to say thanks. Sometimes in a press release you don’t have room to call out all the people and companies that make a big change like this happen. We had help from a huge cross-section of employees from our design/creative, sales, marketing, engineering, manufacturing, purchasing, Consumer Direct and Customer Care teams. We also collaborated with top-notch suppliers and designers outside of our company: marketing agency BrandBuzz with art director Peter Herbst, principal designer Cliff Bachner and illustrator Miles Hyman; supplier Fres-co System USA, Inc.; and Gintzler Graphics, Inc.
And of course, what made all the difference was the feedback from you, our coffee fans! Keep the comments coming on this blog. We love hearing from you.
We've just lowered prices on our Special Edition (B60) and Platinum (B70) Keurig Single-Cup brewers. These are now $129.95 and $169.95, respectively. And we always offer FREE SHIPPING on all Keurig brewer orders.
There’s a coop in Northern Peru called CHIRINOS that has just embarked on an exciting project with compost. You might think of compost from your kitchen as the stuff full of eggshells and coffee grinds that’s always piling up and begging to be taken out to the garden compost bin. To a small farmer in Peru, compost is essential, especially since many small coffee holder farms in Peru are having problems with tired soil. Working with the support of Sustainable Harvest, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, and our good friend Edgar Blandon from Colombia, CHIRINOS is building their own compost plant to make compost for its farmer members. Called a Peer to Peer program, it’s the result of a timely collaboration between two different coffee farmer coops in two different countries – Peru – where CHIRINOS is and Colombia where Edgar CORPOAGRO is. (We buy a lot of coffee from both coops).
Edgar is being loaned out to CHIRINOS as a Compost Consultant. He’s already been to CHIRINOS once to do soil management and organic fertilizer production training. He’s also been doing some soil analysis, compost facility site analysis, scouring the area for sources of the raw materials for the compost, as well as some training on all the factors that go into making good compost.
Sometime this month, CHIRINOS hopes to break ground on the compost facility.
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Try some of our coffee that might have some beans from CHIRINOS. Maps.
Try some of our coffee that might have some beans from CORPOAGRO. Maps.
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