Part 3 of Marion Vigot’s Interview
In part 3 of our interview with Marion Vigot, we dive into her work with Responsible Cafes and the growing sustainable cafes movement reshaping cafe culture across Australia. As the organisation’s General Manager, Marion is helping cafes, communities, and everyday coffee lovers rethink single use waste and embrace sustainable habits.
In this part of our conversation, she shares why it matters, and how Responsible Cafes as a website and an organisation is creating impact. Responsible Cafes is an Australian not-for-profit initiative helping cafes reduce waste and embrace more sustainable practices, and a hub for helping people find sustainable cafes and see what cafes are doing to promote sustainability. The idea is to “connect eco conscious Aussies with sustainable cafes”.
Also don’t forget to check out Part 1 of our interview where we talk about Marion’s home compostable packaging business, and Part 2 where we talk about how much we love composting.
Podcast Interview Marion Vigot Part 3: Video & Audio Versions
What To Look For In Sustainable Cafes
Understanding what makes a cafe sustainable isn’t always straightforward. From reusable cups and reducing single use packaging to food waste, recycling and other everyday practices, there are many different things to consider.
Every cafe is unique and will have different ways they choose to do things, and no cafe is perfect, and even small steps in the direction of sustainability should be celebrated. We need to keep a positive attitude and a good sense of humour in the sustainability space, and we are not here to judge cafes for the way they do things but to gently encourage more sustainable practices and therefore more sustainable cafes.
When you are looking for sustainable cafes, the idea is to celebrate small wins. A cafe may have only just started looking at sustainability or they may be sustainable cafes veterans. This is why at Responsible Cafes they let the cafes shine and speak for themselves about what sustainable actions they are taking.
Either way, there are some things to look for when you have your eye out for sustainable cafes, and here are a few:
-They encourage reusable cups, ideally offering a small discount if you bring your own cup
-They limit single use items, especially single use plastic items
-They care about how their waste is handled, and have systems where they compost their food waste and recycle everything they can
-They source from ethical suppliers
-They offer a mug library
-They have home compostable take away coffee cups
-They have cardboard take away items
-They encourage dine in rather than take away
Even if a cafe is only doing one of these things, they should be celebrated! And they should join Responsible Cafes!
How Did Responsible Cafes Start?
The story of Responsible Cafes started over ten years ago, it was initially founded in Sydney, in the Bondi area, by a group of volunteers who were meeting every week to run. As they were running together, they kept coming across litter on the beach, especially coffee cups.
They decided to chat to all the cafes in the local area, and any cafes that agreed to help them with their initiative were put on a map. That’s how they started the map on Responsible Cafes, to help people find these sustainable cafes. These cafes started offering an incentive for bringing your own cup.
The running group was called Responsible Runners, as they were passionate about sustainability and picking up litter on the beach, and when they made the map they called the initiative Responsible Cafes.
The map became popular back in 2017 when the TV show War On Waste chose to feature Responsible Cafes. There was one episode where they filled a tram with coffee cup waste and that was very impactful for people to see, and realise that we really use a lot of single use coffee cups in Australia. The number at the moment is 1.8 billion per year (that really is a lot!)
The TV show really helped spread the word about Responsible Cafes as thousands of like minded sustainable cafes jumped on the map and started offering a discount for customers to bring their own cup, in the hope of encouraging reusable cups and reducing the number of single use plastics used.
After the COVID 19 pandemic, the movement took a big hit as people were worried about the spread of germs and so were not able to bring reusable cups into cafes anymore and the use of single use coffee cups soared. In 2021 Marion jumped on board Responsible Cafes. Before that Marion was an advocate of them though, as it was one of the things that she discovered when she moved to Australia, she came across it one day and thought it was a great initiative. She started helping out offering education in the compostable packaging space, and volunteering where she could to support the initiative.
In 2021 the team at Responsible Cafes asked Marion if she would take over the organisation. This was at a time that Marion and her partner Alexis had just started Compostable Alternatives, their business that makes home compostable coffee cups and other home compostable single use items for sustainable cafes. It was very early on in making that business so Marion thought about it carefully as it was a lot of work, and if she wanted to do it well, she had to spend a lot of time on it.
But in the end she decided to go for it as it was a no brainer. Reusables and compostables are just so complementary and cafes usually offer both, and it makes sense to raise education about both. So Marion became the general manager of Responsible Cafes and formed a new team in order to get sustainable cafes back on board, get them to use and encourage more reusables and learn more about compostables, especially after the difficult time of the pandemic.
It can be hard because of the setback due to the pandemic but like any initiative it is not a sprint, it is a marathon. Responsible Cafes has been going for over ten years now and still going strong.
What is Responsible Cafes Like Now?
Responsible Cafes has grown over the years, originally it was only a map referencing sustainable cafes that offer discounts for reusables, and since then it has become an accreditation for cafes who are taking sustainability seriously and for awhile it was also a rating system for cafes who want to highlight the sustainable actions that they are taking.
The video interview was taken in 2024, so since then a few things have changed and the map is getting an upgrade at the moment. When the new map becomes live, there will no longer be a rating system but there will be new badges of sustainability awarded to cafes. The badges can also help to guide cafes on what else they could do in order to take sustainability to the next level.
The 3 things they focus on at Responsible Cafes now are:
- Supporting the network of sustainable cafes, providing them with accurate information, giving them materials, posters, and guides to make it easier to learn about sustainability, and highlight what they are doing to their customers. This also includes visiting cafes which is what Marion also does through the roadshow. Marion and Alexis have done up a van and are travelling Australia visiting cafes to help them with their journey, which is what they call the roadshow and Compost Revolution (check out Part 1 and Part 2 of our interview with Marion to hear more about that).
Marion visits cafes around Australia and helps them go through their Responsible Cafes profile, and make sure it is up to date, and helps them with the process of becoming more responsible by reducing their waste, onboarding reusables, and help them know about new systems and new initiatives that they can implement for them to save on operating costs and bring in additional revenue to do with sustainability and help them understand that sustainability doesn’t have to be more expensive. They also do some work with local governments in areas.
- Responsible Cafes runs advocacy campaigns, for example one year they ran an initiative called Bring Your Own Friday encouraging people to bring their own reusables every Friday, and the initiative ran for a whole year. They aim to have one message every year. Last year they did a campaign encouraging dining in, to bring people back into the cafes. Instead of constantly eating on the go and ordering something to take away, they are encouraging people to take five or ten minutes out of their day to just sit down and have a coffee, slow down, and make the most of that moment. You don’t have to have take away all the time, every time.
Some cafes don’t offer dine in items and only have take away cups, and they encourage them to rethink that and know that it is better for the planet if they do offer reusable mugs for people to sit down and have a coffee, and it’s not too hard to introduce. It is good for people to connect with one another over a coffee instead of always being on the go.
- To support the network of sustainable cafes with innovative products that they should know about, so that they can trial them and implement them, and improve their sustainability rating. This includes working with and recommending inspiring brands and services that Responsible Cafes feels will add value to the network of cafes, and increase the message of using reusables and compostables. The idea is to help cafes save on operating costs and reduce their waste and help them have a better footprint on the environment.
So we can see that in many ways, Responsible Cafes and Compostable Alternatives are very complementary. Responsible Cafes does a lot of educational work around breaking misconceptions, and pushing advocacy campaigns and increasing awareness nationally about the problem of single use waste in cafes. Compostable Alternatives brings in some solutions, and alternative products that cafes can use depending on their needs. This helps cafes to encourage their customers, learn about composting and re-value waste.
The road trip that Marion and Alexis are doing is embracing both under the same hat in order to visit more sustainable cafes and spread the compost revolution and also the reusable message. They help cafes understand basic concepts in sustainability, helping them get featured as well, and showing them that the support is available. So both organisations support each other and together bring so much value to cafes.
When Marion comes in to a cafe, she is basically a sustainability consultant, she has a look at what they are doing, what they have tried, what worked, what didn’t work, and brings her expertise, she draws from all the things that she has seen before and experienced, and the ways that she has supported other sustainable cafes.
Based on that she will work with the cafe to come up with a customised way forward to find solutions that work for that cafe. This is very important because no two cafes are the same, no two cafes have the same environment, and what works for one cafe may not work for another. It is good for cafes to have that personalised support so they can see that they are being understood, and have a way forward that can work for them.
Check Out The Responsible Cafes Website To Learn About Sustainable Cafes
There’s a lot of information and resources on the Responsible Cafes website. The blog is a big part of it, it includes interviews with sustainable cafes, educational articles, and research and information on specific topics that people are searching for. The blog is there to help people understand basic concepts about sustainability, and talks specifically about Australia, as it is an Australian initiative.
There are also posters and guides, mainly for cafes, to highlight sustainable actions they can take. They have tried to be creative with these and add a touch of humour into the sustainability. Sustainability doesn’t have to be too serious and it is much better digested and understood when coming from a place of compassion but also in a way that doesn’t take it too seriously.
Responsible Cafes does this well as they explain basic concepts without being too technical, taking things lightly, being very understanding to cafes and people, because everyone is just doing what they can. They just try to inspire and uplift people to think differently and to try their best. No one is perfect and no cafe business is perfect. Some sustainable cafes are leading the way and taking bold steps and for example have completely ditched single use packaging, which is incredible. These are the examples that are highlighted in the blog so that more cafes can trial those initiatives, or start to think about these things in a new way.
Responsible Cafes loves to uplift people and bring a bit of sunshine into the single use plastic pollution problem. Everyone is just trying their best and no one should be blamed for what they are doing, but everyone should be inspired to change.
This is where a sustainable cafes can join Responsible Cafes
(remember any small action is celebrated!)
Get your favourite cafe on board here
Search for sustainable cafes in your area here
They have made a guide of which cups are the best to use, called The Better Cup Guide. It compared the different types of cups used for coffee, it is well worth a read, get it here.
They have a very thorough guide called The Reusable Swap Systems Guide which can be found here which goes in depth about what sustainable cafes can do to not use single use coffee cups, there are swap systems you can put in place where customers borrow a reusable cup and return it, and lots of ideas on that.
Remember to check out Part 1 and Part 2 of our interview with Marion as well! In Part 1 we talked about how Compostable Alternatives started, Marion’s story, the compostable packaging products she makes and the bus journey; and in Part 2, we talked about composting and how wonderful it is.
