By Celsias Team
Posted on May 23, 2011. Listed in:
Every year the Gold Awards celebrate Wellington business excellence in almost every category. And at last week’s awards it was a boutique family-owned coffee company that took home the Green Gold Award, which pays special tribute to businesses with positive sustainable practices and programmes.
Celcius Coffee is New Zealand’s first carboNZero certified coffee company, offering 100 percent licenced fairtrade coffee blends. And when you take a look at the company’s impressive list of sustainability steps, it’s not entirely surprising that it should win such an award. Among its sustainability credentials are:
- Giving coffee farmers a better deal by roasting 100 percent fairtrade beans
- Delivering emission free coffee thoughts its CarboNZero status
- A Sustainable Packaging Policy with a goal of zero waste to landfill, achieved through measures that include reducing, reusing and recycling waste where possible.
- Developing and implementing a Sustainable Business Policy, which includes purchasing from local and environmentally friendly products and services.
- Celcius participates in the ‘Conscious Consumers Café Project’ which awards badges to cafes that have demonstrated a commitment to socially and environmentally conscious business practices. Celcius has nine badges so far.
- The company is also developing something it calls "SweetGrounds". The soil conditioner product incorporates waste coffee grounds and naturally occurring minerals to provide a sustainable use for a waste product that might otherwise end up in landfill.
To win the Green Gold Award, Celcius nudged out the following finalists:
- Blue Cactus Hairdressing: leading change in an eco un-friendly industry
- Commonsense organics: the leading one-stop retailer for organic produce
- Label & Litho: NZ’s first label printing company to achieve Enviro-Mark Gold
- Wellington Combined Taxis: NZ’s first “carboNZero” taxi service
