Iris & June

Sourcing

We share our sustainable purchasing policy with all our suppliers and ensure there is complete transparency around the standards we expect suppliers to have when it comes to sourcing their products. We regularly review our purchasing policy and the suppliers we work with and we work together to continuously make improvements. A full copy of our purchasing policy can be read here.

Food and coffee waste

We strive to minimise our food and coffee waste as much as possible. Our food offering is based on the seasons. Our chefs use waste peels, stalks and trimmings to make soups, stocks, pickles and sauces. Any leftover milk from making coffee is saved and used to make ricotta and paneer cheese. We rarely throw anything away. In 2019 we completed the Sustainable Restaurant Association’s Food Waste Bad Taste Programme which involved measuring our food waste over a 6 week period and setting reduction targets. We now have an ongoing action plan in place to continue reducing our food waste.

We have got the amount of food we make each day down to a fine art. However, we are a member of Too Good To Go so that on the rare occurrence that there is food leftover, it doesn’t go in the bin.

Recycling

We separate all our waste to ensure everything that can be recycled goes into the correct streams. Staff are trained to ensure correct bins are used. Any food and coffee waste is processed by an anaerobic digestion plant by our waste management company First Mile

Takeaway Packaging and Plastics

80% of our packaging is completely compostable. We won’t stop until we reach 100%. Until then we make sure the remainder is biodegradable.

Ideally, we wouldn’t have any single use packaging. So we encourage our customers to bring their own reusable cups, straws and food containers. Anyone can drop by and use our filtered water tap to refill their drink bottles too.

We are doing everything in our power to remove all single use plastic from our cafe. We don’t supply plastic straws, any goods supplied to us in plastic tubs are washed and reused, as are our milk bottles.

We use glass refill bottles for our cleaning and hand soap products where possible which are returned to source and reused.

90% of the cold drinks we offer are in glass bottles, 10% in biodegradable plastic.

We are trying to eliminate all non-PVC clingfilm and plastic wrap from our kitchen and supplier deliveries. We have improvements to make in this area and are working with our key suppliers to make this happen. A full copy of our waste and plastics policy can be read here.

Socially Responsible

We want to have a positive impact on the lives of vulnerable people in our area and feel it is our responsibility to build and maintain relationships within our community with local charities and community groups doing just that.

We have partnered with Breaking Barriers to help fill vacancies with refugees trying to seek employment.

We regularly fund raise for our chosen charity The Passage which helps to support homeless people in our neighbourhood of Victoria, transform their lives away from the streets.

You can read more about our socially responsible community engagement policy here.