While you weren't looking, the members of Green Day quietly founded an organic, fair-trade coffee company — and it's taking sustainability to a new level
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
As the members of best-selling punk rock band Green Day, Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tré Cool have spent their lives sharing their passion for music.
What casual fans might not know is that these music legends are also passionate about coffee and sustainability. Their love of coffee also came along with with their frustration over the waste associated with drinking it — which led them to found their own company, Oakland Coffee . The company offers organic, fair trade coffee in BPI-certified compostable pods and packaging.
It's the only US-made compostable packaging that has been certified by the Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI), which means you no longer have to feel guilty about using single-serve cups or throwing away coffee bags: you can dispose of the packaging right in your curbside green bin, alongside other food and green scraps.
The founders also care about where the coffee comes from and how it's grown. Oakland Coffee sources and roasts its USDA-organic, single-origin coffee from small farms and co-ops in Central and South America, where beans are grown using practices that are both environmentally sustainable and conscious of the needs and practices of farming communities.
To further support the communities where their coffee is grown, the founders created a charitable organization, Fueled By Love. Through Fueled By Love, Oakland Coffee visits and works with its coffee producers to improve local problems like lack of accessible medical care, lack of educational resources for children, and under-serviced water infrastructure.
The design of the business thus benefits every stakeholder in the process: the farmers, the environment, and you, the coffee drinker. By buying Oakland Coffee , you can drink your favorite beverage, while supporting the people who produce it and being more eco-friendly .
The single-serve cups, compatible with Keurig and Keurig-style brewers, are available in three blends, Cerro De Oro , Straight Edge Decaf , and Fourth Wave , a medium-dark roast with a rich, smooth flavor, sourced from Peru and Honduras. If you find it difficult to reconcile the convenience of K-cups with their detrimental environmental impact, Oakland Coffee's compostable single-serve cups may be the solution to let you enjoy them with less guilt.
The coffee itself is delicious, rich, and strong, solidifying Oakland Coffee's place as a truly well-rounded coffee brand. It's sustained by the founders' clear love for coffee, a loyal following of the founders themselves, and a mission that sees past the coffee mug to its larger social and environmental implications.
Jun. 29, 2018, 1:10 PM
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Green coffee !
How cool is that. I'm a coffee lover and an environmentalist so I'll be checking out Oakland Coffee.
I thought it sounded great. Biodegradable packaging and sustainable farming.
A little pricey yet might be worth it.
It is pricey, the pods are twice what I currently pay for them. If they start getting enough orders perhaps they can lower the price a bit. Either way it's worth a try.
America's obsession with coffee is ridiculous. It's just a stupid beverage, no different that it was decades ago. Someone got the bright idea to pretend it is some novel new invention, requiring millions of shops devoted to it and virtually nothing else. It just goes to illustrate how easy it is to lead people around by the nostrils and get into their wallets. I drink one cup every day. The cheapest store brand Columbian, brewed through a reusable kourig filter, and a shot of good creamer - it's as good as any expensive cup from a shop, but costs pennies instead of dollars, and you don't have to act like a snob about it and arrive ten minutes late for work because of the line of losers who can't figure out how to make it themselves.
Lol, I knew it had to happen some day and here it is ...... i agree with you 100% Hal but you know what they say.
A fool and his money are soon parted.
One could say the same about beer.
There are all different types of blends of coffee, and different type of beans coming from the same regions. There is more to roasting and brewing coffee than just beans from Mexico. Some appreciate the differences and some don't.
There is a huge difference between craft beer and cheap beer. It is not the same with coffee. Generic grounds taste similar to gourmet bullshit, and frothing up milk to top off your coffee is pathetic.
When traveling on the toll road, my wife and I will stop for coffee. We go into the plaza, I go into the convenience store and she goes into Starbucks. I pay $1.50 for a large cup (with a variety of creamers to choose from) and am back in the car. Ten minutes later she arrives after paying $4 for something that is hot enough to melt your fingertips, smells burnt, and is topped with a flavorless frothy milk goo. I don't get the fascination.
Well yes..Starbucks is overpriced. But not all coffee is. There are some very good blends out there that are worth paying extra for. I agree that Starbucks is a scam. They sell an experience more than a cup of coffee...kind of like Whole Foods.
Roasting and brewing coffee is also a craft. You just don't know very much about it. From roasting techniques to the correct blend of beans, one has to have a great deal of knowledge about it to make premium coffees.
Some of that convenience store coffee is pretty tasty. The last few times I got Starbucks it tasted burnt.
I like my Maxwell House brewed in my Mr Coffee coffee maker
Oddly I like McDonald's coffee grounds. Though it costs almost as much as this product.
First of, buying their coffee is making it at home and not standing in a line.
Second, congrats that you figured out the run around to buying the single cups and finding the filter.
Third, again this is coffee for people to make at home, so don't understand the rant.
Fourth, If it takes people being led around by the nostrils to understand that we need to make products and have industry that can be sustainable, I am all for it.
It's just a rant about the state of coffee in general. I don't expect everyone to understand, since 'everyone' is the reason why there are around 32,000 'specialty' coffee shops in the US. Green Day would not be in the coffee business if this country didn't have such a huge boner for the 'gourmet' coffee fad.
My boss is the biggest coffee snob I've ever met. This guy comes in a minimum of two hours late every morning, for no reason other than he likes to sleep in every day like it's the weekend. He claims that it's because he has insomnia, but it's obvious why he can't sleep. He drinks Starbucks at least three times a day - on the way to work, at lunch (causing 90 minute min. lunches), and on the way home. In addition, while everyone else is working from 8 - 10ish and he is in bed, we frequently need information from him to continue on tasks. It holds up progress tremendously. He arrives hours late, and the first thing he does when he gets in the office is tinker with his fancy fufu coffee maker for ten minutes to make a single cup of coffee, to chase down the Starbucks he picked up on the way in to the office and ensure the strongest coffee breath imaginable. It makes me want to scream.
Decaf is good for some.
Switching to decaf is not going to be enough for some of the fruit-loops here
Heh Heh, I can relate.
I have worked at places that ran better when the boss was gone.
greenday is punk? saying punk , brings to mind billy idol , or the sex pistols , not greenday , that's more 90s newwave , kinda like when Jethro tull won a music award as best metal artist/group over metallica.
Well at 56 , I have permanent coffee cup crook in both hands , though now adays I usually brew with a bunn drip maker , but when I want REAL coffee , I get beans , grind them myself , and use a perculator pot. takes alittle more time , but the results if the grind and beans are right cannot be beat.
but then again I also make cowboy coffee that can substitute for waterproofing if needed, and that's simply smash the beans and boil them in a silk sack until the water changes colour. the beans are then resmashed , and the paste is a waterproofing.
My favorite coffee in the stores is Dunkin Donuts. At home I usually make instant coffee, and Nescafe is the best.
The Green Day coffee should do well, as long as they don't expect to set the world on fire. The masses will not pay twice as much for coffee just because it is "sutainable". Most people don't even know what means.