Heine Brothers’ Coffee has always believed that we should leave as small of a footprint as possible on the planet, and do good whenever possible to make the world a better place.
- We co-founded 15Thousand Farmers, to teach 15Thousand Louisvillians to grow food simply in their yards. This will help reduce our dependence on foreign oil, sequester carbon and it’s fun!
- We created a tasty coffee blend, Mountain Dream, with $5 from the purchase of each specially printed bag going to Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, to help them stop mountaintop coal removal.
- Instead of offering bottled water that has been trucked here from all over the US, we now offer bottled water in biodegradable bottles that is filled here in Kentucky!
- We offer fair-trade, organic, raw sugar on the condiment counters at all of our stores and have done away with paper sugar packets.
- In 2000, Heine Brothers’ Coffee co-founded Cooperative Coffees, the world’s first organic, fair trade coffee purchasing cooperative. We buy directly from cooperatives of farmers in the growing countries. Thanks to our customers, we’re selling lots of fair trade, organic coffee and helping improve the life of coffee farmers all over the world.
- In 2006 HBC founded Breaking New Grounds, so that we’d never have to throw our coffee grounds and tea leaves in the landfill again. We now compost thousands of pounds every week! And the worm compost, Life’s Magic, that we produce from the grounds is on sale at our stores. All proceeds go to Breaking New Grounds.
- Every week we go through tons of milk jugs, glass bottles, plastic containers, magazines, office paper, and newspaper here in our shops. We’ve been happily recycling all of that since the 1990′s.
- When you buy one of our reusable travel mugs, your first fill of coffee or tea is FREE! Plus you get discounts on drinks with it all year!
- Instead of wooden stir sticks that get thrown away, we have reusable metal spoons to stir your coffee on the condiment counter of all of our shops!
If you have any ideas for further steps we can take, please email them to us!
