It’s not easy being green

In a recent post, Austinite Michelle Greer wrote about visiting Pittsboro, NC, and being impressed with how so many businesses are really, truly locally owned and operated. Of Austin and the need to keep it weird, she says:

We need to support locally owned businesses. We should watch local acts… We should use Austin hosts and use Austin software. A person living in Austin should feel like he or she can open a business and people will support it. If it sucks, tell that Austinite what their business can do to earn your business. If we don’t support each other, who will?

These are good points. We have, from the beginning, vowed to be as local and green as we can be. That said, the process is a bit trickier in reality than it is when we’re sitting around scheming to come up with a plan that will not only be good and green, but ideally will single-handedly put an end to global warming and ultimately give Al Gore a chance to take a much needed vacation.

For example — we want to use as many local vendors as possible throughout LaunchPad Coworking. We’re using a local architect, local web developers and designers, and our extended team is culled locally. We’re using green materials everywhere, and of course we’re recycling (and believe me, you’d be astonished how many restaurants and retail stores don’t recycle). We’re even composting right in downtown Austin.

Going green and local on the menu is another story. We’re doing as much as possible, but the hurdles are impressive. It is not possible to run a smooth operation if we have a zillion small vendors making eight deliveries a day spread out over the week. Some local vendors don’t even deliver, which means if we use them, we have to commit to driving around and picking up. Gas prices are high, to put it mildly, and all that driving, even if gas was cheap, is not exactly green.

Another obstacle concerns the Venn diagram where “local organic” produce overlaps with “seasonal.” Sure a lot of folks say they prefer the local stuff. But that means our menu will have to change to accommodate Mother Nature. Big grocers offer all sorts of produce year round, but they get it from far, far away when it’s out of season here. So will you really be okay with it if we have to forego tomatoes for a stretch? The tradeoff being that, when we do have tomatoes, if we go 100% local, you can know for certain those tomatoes are fresh picked and from just down the road and, more importantly, as Tina Rosenzweig puts it, “will taste really frickin’ great.”

There’s the cost issue, too. Tina points out, “It’s easier and cheaper to just call [food distributor] Benny Keith and have a truckload of non-green stuff delivered. Being healthy and environmentally sound is really expensive.”

But we remain committed to the goal of green-as-possible. We’re getting one hell of an education learning about what’s available. We promise we’ll always have a weekly local salad. And we’re working to find other downtown vendors interested in combining our buying power to give us all more options.

Tina is going to make sure our café staff is educated so they can explain any seasonal menu changes and clarify when some items seem priced a bit high. We’ve already committed to using a local coffee roaster (Texas Coffee Traders), and Austin-based Luxe Sweets will supply all of our muffins, cookies and scones.

The challenge is worth it. “I’ve not had the luxury of trying to do this before,” she says. That’s how we like to look at the hurdles — luxury moments we can look back on clearing in awe.

Resources

Wheatsville Co-op has a great list of local vendors within a hundred miles of Austin.
Barr Mansion — the certified organic event venue in East Austin.
Whole Foods — which, though mammoth, did start here as a small shop.
Farm to Market — Independent grocer on South Congress.
Greenling Grocery — delivers local produce and produce from within a 200 mile radius.
East Side Café — grows a lot of their own ingredients.
Johnson’s Backyard Garden — delivers affordable boxes of local produce to private homes.