Conscious Consumers

This is a nice little initiative by the non-profit 42 Collective:

Conscious Consumers

It's a Wellington-based project to award cute badges to cafes that follow "sustainability" practices (fair trade, composting, organic, seasonal produce, recycling, allowing BYO cups, eco-friendly cleaners, free-range eggs, compostable packaging).

It's worth checking out the details of the badges on the website - requirements for earning some of them are pretty mild (for example, to qualify for the "seasonal produce" badge, only three dishes on the menu need to use entirely seasonal produce).

Cafes do get charged to belong, which might explain obvious omissions such as People's Coffee (who obviously could qualify for the Fair Trade badge). Badges are awarded mainly based on the declarations of the cafes, although 42 Collective "reserve the right to audit".

I've yet to spot the badges in cafe windows, but the website is handy for finding which cafes belong.

I'll definitely be more likely to go to Meow for my cafe treats - the closest cafe that promises to use organic milk!


Update Nov 2010:
Conscious Consumers is growing - People's Coffee have joined up and the website has about 20 cafes in total now. It's tipped to spread to Auckland soon!