- When your morning coffee has the chance to save the world
Leaving a better world to those that come after us is a war that must be fought on multiple fronts, and one of those fronts is environmental sustainability – leaving behind a healthy planet that can sustain us in terms of resources – not just the essential resources like breathable air and clean water, but the less obvious resources like biodiversity.
All of us have a responsibility to work toward making our planet more sustainable, and Sri Lanka’s biggest café chain Barista Coffee Lanka is taking this responsibility very much to heart with their latest corporate social responsibility (CSR) project Breathe with Barista.
A unique CSR initiative
Breathe with Barista, an initiative Barista has embarked on with the support of Breathe Environment Sustainability, is a project which aims to plant 1,200-plus trees within a portion of the Knuckles Mountain Range in a bid to reforest the area. These 1,200 trees are projected to produce 17.2 million pounds of oxygen as they mature – this is equal to the estimated amount of oxygen that 707 humans would use over their entire life span.
Barista Coffee Lanka Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dilupa Pathirana shared with Brunch that Breathe with Barista is the latest in a long line of CSR campaigns that Barista has devised in efforts to give back to the community that has, over the years, helped them become the biggest player in Sri Lanka’s café space. “Barista receives approximately 50,000-60,000 customers each month, and as such, we have a bigger role to play within the community than just serving coffee and food. Much of our existing CSR work is to do with helping children through organisations like SOS Children’s Village and Save the Children, and this year, we thought of taking things further to make it more nationally impactful, which was why we got involved with helping reforest the Knuckles Range.”
Barista’s reforestation campaign is a collaborative partnership with Breathe Environment Sustainability, Sri Lanka’s first online tree planting community-building platform, with the two parties entering into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on 9 March with the goal of planting a minimum of 1,200 trees in the Knuckles Mountain Range to mark World Earth Day which falls on 22 April. Once the trees are planted, they will be monitored by Breathe Environment Sustainability which will provide updates on the process to Barista and its customers.
The concept behind Breathe with Barista
The Breathe with Barista campaign will run across all Barista outlets islandwide to give all Barista’s customers, regular and otherwise, the chance to contribute in some small way to a greener tomorrow.
“We want to engage our customers the way we have in the past with our other campaigns like ‘Share a Meal’. All Barista’s customers have the chance to buy a tree that can be planted in the Knuckles on their behalf,” stated Pathirana.
Customers can buy a tree by purchasing a leaf-shaped “Breathe Coupon” worth Rs. 350, which is the cost for a tree to be planted at the selected area in the Knuckles. “When a customer purchases a coupon, that signifies one plant. The customer can further engage in it by pasting the coupon on the decorations which have been hung up at outlets to indicate the number of plants which will be soon planted through this project,” Pathirana added.
As Sri Lanka’s most digitised café, Barista has also made the Breathe Coupon available on their very own e-shop and on Sri Lanka’s first-ever coffee app, the Barista App. Leaving no stone unturned, Breathe Coupons will also be available on the food delivery platforms UberEats and PickMe as well where customers can purchase the coupon along with their orders or even just with the purpose of planting. One coupon equals one plant and when a plant that was sponsored by a customer is planted, it will be dedicated to the very customer who sponsored it and supported the cause of giving breath to the country at a much-needed time.
“The goal for 22 April, World Earth Day, is to plant 1,200 trees in that area of the Knuckles (which is approximately five acres) and the campaign has already collected more than 600 trees,” Pathirana said, sharing his hope that despite the current situation in the country, Barista hopes to meet the set goal of 1,200 trees by World Earth Day.
The need for all brands to care about our planet
Noting that Barista is not yet 100% eco-friendly, though they have made great strides in that direction – from minimising their use of plastic, to encouraging customers to use porcelain crockery and metal cutlery and using as much biodegradable packaging as possible – Pathirana shared that irrespective of what business you operate in, be it cafés, restaurants, or any other sector, businesses work within an ecosystem, and it is their responsibility to protect that ecosystem.
“Businesses work with their employees; they work within the environment, they work with the business community, and other communities, companies, and entities around them that all survive in that ecosystem,” Pathirana said, adding: “And they have no right to violate that ecosystem. In fact, they have a greater duty to protect that ecosystem, and as an industry leader (and Sri Lanka’s largest café chain), Barista really needs to set an example and set an industry standard. We have to always be one step ahead, even if it is more expensive. Even now, everything is in crisis, and everyone is cutting corners, but the right thing is the right thing, and as a business, it is important for Barista to stand for the right thing even if it means we’re standing alone.”