Counter Culture's Sustainability Committee Recycles Old Metal
Our three-man Technical Services department performs myriad functions here at Counter Culture Coffee, from repairing fussy brewing equipment to exploring new developments in the world of coffee technology. New technology presents a sustainability dilemma: on one hand, our commitment to quality drives us to seek out new ways to present the coffee lover with the best possible taste experience, while, on the other, we hate to contribute to the manufacture of more and more coffee brewers without finding a home for the ones we replace.
We have sold and donated some of our outdated-but-still-functional coffee brewers and grinders over the past few years, and recently we advertised them as freebies on Craigslist, but we have never been able to find homes for all of them. 
Having ruled out whole-machine reuse as a solution, we began pondering the idea of disassembling old equipment in order to divert the metals—mostly stainless steel and some copper—from the landfill. Tom White, a Counter Culture technician and Sustainability Committee member, discovered a metal recycling center here in Durham that would pay us for the metal pieces of the machines, and over the past two months he has taken the initiative to disassemble equipment destined for the wastebasket and take it to the recycling center.
Best of all, the money that comes from selling the metal parts will support other sustainability projects around Counter Culture!
Saludos,
Kim Elena
