“We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society.” Dr. Martine Luther King, Jr.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had more than one dream. Or rather, his dream was more expansive than most of us learned about in school. His speeches famously asked America to live up to its promise of liberty and justice for all, regardless of race. 

Less well known, he also targeted militarism and capitalism. In short, he dreamed of a world that valued people over things—over consumer goods, over property, over profit. He envisioned an economy that cared more than it competed.

Care is at the core

If we had a hard time knowing what that might look like in the past, it’s plain as day in the midst of a pandemic. More people see more clearly how the entire structure of our economic and social lives rely on essential workers—nurses, teachers, farmers, sanitation and restaurant workers. All who work in industries that feed us, clothe us, shelter us, teach us, care for us. The center cannot—does not—hold without care at its core.

What would change about modern life if we organized our economy around care? What would we value? On what would we spend our time and money? 

In a 1967 sermon, given on Christmas eve, King said the words that follow. And they resonate deeply with the CoffeeSock crew. As a small business, we depend on our workers and on the farmers who provide the organic cotton we sew and the coffee our product relies on. We depend on our community and the people who teach our children. We depend on clean air and food and shelter. We want to be depended on as well. So we dedicate ourselves to a clean and sustainable world, and to a whole economy with care at its center. 

From Dr. King:

It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality. Did you ever stop to think that you can’t leave for your job in the morning without being dependent on most of the world? You get up in the morning and go to the bathroom and reach over for the sponge, and that’s handed to you by a Pacific islander. You reach for a bar of soap, and that’s given to you at the hands of a Frenchman. And then you go into the kitchen to drink your coffee for the morning, and that’s poured into your cup by a South American. And maybe you want tea: that’s poured into your cup by a Chinese. Or maybe you’re desirous of having cocoa for breakfast, and that’s poured into your cup by a West African. And then you reach over for your toast, and that’s given to you at the hands of an English-speaking farmer, not to mention the baker. And before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on more than half of the world. This is the way our universe is structured, this is its interrelated quality. We aren’t going to have peace on earth until we recognize this basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality.

Slower days, smiling eyes, intentional connections, and mutual aid.

Sometime after the shock wore off—was it May? June?—days began to stretch out. We reorganized our lives to find nooks of space and time for a family with online work and school. We found the right times to shop and the right things to buy in the right amounts. We settled into a new routine without afterschool clubs and Saturday meets, with no parties or summer camps or travel plans.

How many times had we dreamed of being less busy? Would we have agreed to it if we knew we’d have to trade time with friends and extended family? No way. In fact, this year truly highlighted the power of a beloved community.

Slow days and a renewed love for community—that’s the treasure we’ll take forward with us.

I don’t know when days will accelerate again or whether we’ll slip easily back into packed agendas and calendars filled for months. If we do—may we hold on to the wisdom of occasional slowness. And may we choose the ways we spend our time and the community with whom we spend it, with the intention of people who know that none of it is guaranteed.

Let’s keep the mutual aid networks that we grew this year. And keep amplifying voices that were previously silenced. And even when the masks finally come off, let’s keep sending messages with our eyes and listening closer to hear and understand.

Thank you for being part of our community. Happy New Year!

In a world where human-made stuff outweighs nature and absorbs our attention how can we lighten up?

For thousands of years, we humans have been a busy bunch. We’ve built, designed, invented, cultivated, and created. For these efforts we now have shoes and saucers, houses and highways, skyscrapers and satellites. I type this on a portable computer filled with technology unimaginable one hundred years ago. That’s the blink of an eye in world time.

And we’re still going at it—building, designing, innovating, recreating, and consuming. In fact, according to a 2020 article from BBC News, “For every person in the world, more than their body weight in stuff is now being produced each week.” Helen Briggs, BBC Environment correspondent, tells us that in that same year, “the combined weight of all the plastic, bricks, concrete and other things we've made in the world will outweigh all animals and plants on the planet for the first time.”

Add to this the psychological weight of stuff, from the gadgets that demand our attention to the time and focus required to maintain it all.

That’s really heavy. 

"It is a reason for all of us to ponder our role, how much consumption we do and how can we try to get a better balance between the living world and humanity." — Dr Ron Milo, Weizmann Institute of Sciences

Weighing the costs

Why does it matter if human-made objects outweigh natural ones? What does it cost us?

According to the BBC article, one reason that human-made is outweighing nature, is that there’s simply less nature these days. Much of what we produce requires natural products we get from trees, plants, and animals. And with fewer trees, ecosystems have fewer places to grow and thrive.

There’s also a deeply human heaviness at play. We all likely have precious and well-loved material possessions. And yet we find ourselves drowning in stuff that just doesn’t mean that much. We have been so collectively overwhelmed with stuff that a small 2004 book about tidying up became an international best seller and 2019 Netflix special. 

Not only does stuff diminish the natural world and tax our attention, it also pulls our focus away from each other. We’ve all experienced moments in the midst of other humans who might be talking but are consumed instead by worlds packed into a gadget—the great irony of the promise of a connected world. We’ve all probably also noted the extra time we must spend working in order to maintain all of this.

What would it look like to stop? To need less and use less and spend the time and attention on our communities instead?

Can we really lighten up?

We’ve started with the idea that we might lighten the burden of stuff on the planet, at least. Since 1960, the U.S. has increased the percentage of trash we recycle—from 6.4 percent in 1960 to over 30 percent today. That’s a start for sure, though with more people on the planet each year, we’re still producing more trash.And it doesn’t decrease the production of consumer goods, but opens up the market for more in the form of recyclable goods.

So we’ve started to reuse more—perhaps a larger step in the right direction. As everything from reusable bags and containers to cloth diapers and dinner napkins have reentered our homes, we theoretically buy fewer disposable, nondurable things. And this, too, is an important step to slow the depletion of natural resources.

Our next big challenge then is to reduce. As we move from buying short-lived, recyclable goods, to longer-lived reusable stuff, perhaps we can also rethink buying altogether.

In a world where human-made stuff outweighs nature, neighborhood Buy Nothing lists have sprung up to encourage sharing resources we already have (you can start one if you don’t have one). And much of what we need and want may be waiting like unearthed treasure at a local thrift store or vintage mall. 

Or maybe it’s nothing. Maybe what we really need to buy is nothing. That won’t always be true, but in those moments when we realize it is, when we’ve saved ourselves the time and money and effort sunk into stuff, maybe we can then reinvest that attention into ourselves and our communities.

In a remote town nestled in the Cuchumatanes mountains of Guatemala, Ana Cordoba Ostuna is working a loom, weaving as one of the youngest town residents, her granddaughter, enjoys a lollipop while sitting at Ana’s feet. 

They live in Nebaj, more than 6,200 ft into the mountains, and Ana is the matriarch of a farming family that makes up part of the Maya Ixil coffee cooperative. Until recently, the local farmers made almost all of their income by growing and exporting coffee. Now, Ana’s weaving is part of a growing new livelihood for her family and her town, where the cooperative farmers add sewing and beekeeping to their coffee farming work.

The Maya Ixil cooperative, with support from Food 4 Farmers and local organizers, has become a model for sustainable practices that grow more than food—they grow opportunity.  

Farming is fundamental

When you think about coffee, maybe you think of your local cafe or the smell of freshly ground beans.

For most of us, what we don’t think about is farming. But of course, that’s where your cup begins—in rows of small trees, covered in red berries, harvested by farmers and transported globally. 

Farming is fundamental. From fruits and vegetables to cotton and coffee, it’s strangely easy to forget that we thrive because someone else farms. 

That’s where fair trade cooperatives like Maya Ixil, local community organizers and international organizations like Food 4 Farmers come in. And, that’s where you and I come in too.

Ensuring farmers and food systems thrive

In a sustainable system, farms supply communities with fresh food all year while ensuring that the farm itself can thrive. But sometimes the system breaks down. What causes that? It’s complicated, and we don’t have all the answers, but organizations have identified two culprits that we can work to change:

• Single-crop farms—When farms grow only one or two crops, or have one main crop like coffee, corn or wheat, farmers can find themselves at the mercy of global price fluctuations or crop diseases, like coffee leaf rust. If the main crop fails or the price drops unexpectedly, the farmers lose their primary source of income.  

• Climate change—Flooding, fires, hurricanes and drought have potentially devastating effects on farmers. This needs little explanation, except to say that these dangers have increased each year.

Farming cooperatives, with support from people served by farming (that’s all of us), work to help farms cultivate additional crops and livelihoods. 

The members of the Maya Ixil cooperative have gotten the gear, training and support necessary to add beekeeping, sewing and home gardens to their family farms. According to Food 4 Farmers, “Farmers in the program have increased their monthly income by 23% on average.”

“So far, 49 beekeepers have harvested nearly 10,000 pounds of honey in 2020, 25% more than 2019's production. On average, farmers produce about 200 pounds of honey, and own 9 hives.“

How CoffeeSock is partnering with Maya Ixil

CoffeeSock has been deeply invested in using organic and fair trade materials in our work, and the filters themselves started as an effort to reduce trash in the world and combat climate change. (Read our blog on Why Organic Cotton and our spotlight on the organic cotton thread we use.)

The “sock” part of CoffeeSock owes its origin to the Costa Rican “chorreador” - a simple cotton bag attached to a wire. We discovered this marvel of a tool while on vacation in the mountains of Costa Rica, where we visited coffee farms and brought home a new mission to preserve and support the earth’s beautiful landscapes and rid the world of paper coffee filters. 

In 2020, we’ve expanded that commitment, partnering with Food 4 Farmers through 1% for the Planet, to donate at least one percent of our sales to support the continued growth of Maya Ixil’s cooperative model. 

For now, that means continued support of the bee keeping and sewing projects at the cooperative’s farms. Beginning in January 2021, CoffeeSock support will help the project expand to include The Grow Ahead venture, providing the seeds, materials and education needed to grow food crops, replant the local forests and restore native ecosystems.

Maya Ixil is buzzing

According to Food 4 Farmers, after the coffee leaf rust crisis hit the Ixil region, Ana Cordoba Ostuna’s husband and son had to leave the farm to find work at construction sites and as day laborers on other farms. After joining the Maya Ixil cooperative’s beekeeping program, they now have eight bee hives and plan to get more. Ana now says, “With the bees we are happy again, because they have given us the hope of a better life.”

This holiday season we celebrate what sustains us and our beloved communities.

We love The Creature, created by local artist, Veronica Ceci.

What communities do you belong to? A family, a neighborhood, a workplace, a pandemic pod?  A community of practice, of thought, of craft, or of values? An online book club, a shared love of bread baking or knitting or roller skating? 

In an age of global connections, communities need not be bound by zip code, but by mutual interest, benefit, and support. And that last part is crucial. At their heart, communities are accountable to each other.

We sustain through mutual care

If you didn’t think much about accountability in your communities before the pandemic, you probably think about it now. More than ever, we look to the people, places and businesses that place community care at their hearts. 

We see it in the pop-up pantries and people who shop for vulnerable neighbors. We see it in mutual aid donations and businesses that provide everything from fresh bread to masks. We see it in the simple act of staying home when we can, so that those who can’t are safer.  

In short, communities sustain through acts of mutual care. That’s why sustainability is ultimately community-based, even when those communities exist across the Internet.  

Ways to celebrate and support community

This is set to be a holiday like no other, with so many plans on hold or canceled. We’ll already remember 2020 and all of the challenges that came with it. Could we also remember the moments of care, joy and humanity that sprung up in our communities?

The holidays are the perfect time to turn your attention to community celebration. So we’ve got a few ways you can celebrate community care this season.

• Stock a pop-up pantry or make your own.  Have you had little pantries pop up in your neighborhood? Fill them with nonperishables, like canned beans and tuna, pasta, and nondairy (unrefrigerated) milk.  

• Buy from artists and artisans. From a gorgeous ceramic coffee mug to a building-sized commissioned mural (check out ours at the top of the page), a handmade gift from a community artisan is a symbol of personalized love and community support. Across your communities, you’ll likely find makers of jam, jewelry, stationary, kitchenwares...everything really. 

• Support community-based businesses. Shop your local mom and pop shops and online popups. Small, community-based businesses put your dollars back into their communities.

• Send love letters and care packages. Remember the joy of receiving a package from someone you love? Bonus points if it’s unexpected. If you’re missing your friends and family, pretend they’re away at camp and send them a care package. Pack in those little lovelies you picked up from community artists and businesses. And the most important part? Add a note of love and appreciation. Tell them why you’re so glad they are part of your community. 

 What are the ways you celebrate all of your communities? Let us know!

Get ready for a cozy and healthy winter at home by giving your goods a sustainable stock up score. We’ll help you prep.

And just like that, it’s late October. The end of this long, long year is almost here. In a typical year, Halloween kicks off weeks of festivals, parties and gatherings. We decorate, we travel, we shop and we celebrate.

In winter 2020, we prep.  

There may still be pandemic pod parties and small, socially distanced celebrations. But to pull it all off while staying safe and healthy this winter, you’ll need to be prepared. 

If the great toilet paper shortage of March was the warm up, this year’s flu and holiday season is the stock up Olympics. Note: We did not say the hoarding Olympics. Stocking up is more of science. Which means you need a method. 

We’ve got you covered with a simple three-step process.

Step 1: Define your successful stock up

You know you. You know what will make the next few months feel as right as they can. You know how close you are to local stores, how much space you have for supplies, how much money you’re willing to spend on the front end and how often you’re willing to get out of the house for higher-risk excursions like shopping. 

Use that as your basis for defining what a successful stock up looks like. Your successful stock up might look something like this:

• I have one all the basics on hand to prep a meal, cook the meal, clean my home, and practice personal hygiene and self care for one full month.

• I have what I need to engage in at-home activities that bring me joy and comfort.

• My shopping/stocking aligns with my value of sustainability. 

Try it! Answer these questions for yourself. 

• How much back stock do you want? A couple of weeks? A month? All winter?

• What do you want your stock to accomplish? For example, do you want to be able to easily whip up a family meal? Have ingredients available for kids to serve themselves? Feed your pets? Clean your space? (Don’t forget teeth brushing, showering and other self care needs).

• What activities do you want to maintain and what events do you want to prep for? Maybe you enjoy movie nights with the family, crafting or drawing? Maybe a birthday is on the horizon? List the supplies you need for these moments, so they remain joyful when the time comes. 

• What values do you want to maintain and how can your stock up plan align? If you’re working to reduce waste, trash and plastic, then consider your sustainable options throughout the process. 

Step 2: Make your master list

Now that you’ve defined what stocking up means to you, make a list of everything you might need. You can do this systematically by starting with your usual grocery and supply list, and then thinking through a whole day from start to finish. Missing anything you need for the day? Add it!

Then repeat the process with your week and your month. Don’t skip over movie nights or birthdays. No need to be caught off guard without popcorn or cake supplies. 

Step 3: Give your items a stock up score

This is where the magic happens. You probably don’t have the space to have a three-month supply of everything or the extra budget to buy it all now. So how do you know where to begin? 

Introducing the stock up score. Use this method to identify the items on your list that will most benefit you to stock up on. 

It works like this. You’ll assign points to everything on your master list. Then identify your highest scoring items and stock up. 

• Is this item essential to me or my family? Must have = 2 points Nice to have = 1 point

• How often do I buy it? Weekly = 2 points. Monthly or less = 1 point

• Does it go in the landfill when I’m done with it? (Think nonrecyclable packaging). Bound for landfill = 2 points. Recyclable = 1 point. Renewable, reusable or compostable = 0

• Is there a bulk, reusable or lower waste option. Bulk/reusable version = 2 points Lower waste version = 1 point

• Can I store the alternate option? Yes = 2 points Yes, but I’d have to buy something new to do it = 1 point

Now add up the points! What are your top scoring items? Have any 10s?

Bulk, dried beans are a 10 for our family. So is nut milk and coffee. So we stock up on dried beans from the bulk bin, almonds to make our own milk, and bulk or reusable coffee supplies.

Work your way down the list, from your highest scoring items to your lowest until you’re as stocked as you want to be. 

Stock Up Troubleshooting

As you go through the process, you might find yourself in a pickle. Literally in some cases, since the only way to stock up on fresh cucumbers would be to pickle them. In those cases, revisit your stock up goals. If you’re not interested in growing your own broccoli or milking your own almonds, then don’t! The goal is sustainability, and that includes your time, effort and enjoyment.

Happy stocking! 

Friends—it’s been quite a 2020. 

We rolled into this new decade full of plans, schemes and dreams never guessing that Earth Day 2020 would find us in the middle of a global pandemic. 

And now, well into the fourth month of virus anxiety and the second month of stay at home orders, all those plans and schemes and dreams look wildly different. Every part of our lives look different. And every part of our lives have condensed in space and time. 

Every day, we are parents, small business owners, educators, community members, employers and selves—all at the same time and within the same square feet. 

Yet, just as our world has shrunk to the size of our own literal backyard, it has expanded in ways we might never have guessed. 

At the factory, we rearranged operations to safely continue shipping.

In our homes, without access to the instant gratification of every whim, we’re looking differently at our patterns of consuming and spending.

In our beloved community, we looked to serve those who serve us, and found a deep need to help protect those on the front lines—from baristas to health care workers—by sewing masks.

Read about the Sockers for Service Workers project.

Expanding wider, we see a city pulling together to feed each other and protect the most vulnerable. Across cities, across states there’s fewer cars, less trash, less waste, less noise.  

Across lands, wildlife is taking to the streets and meadows and forests, reveling in the freedom from us. Across skies pollution is clearing. 

On this Earth Day 2020 we are as big on the inside as we are on the outside. We are stunned by perspective. It reminds us of this amazing video from 1977 that illustrates how the small, local spaces we inhabit live inside the global and the universal. (We included the short video below, courtesy of Ray Eames and the Eames Office).

The earth is healing this Earth Day. In our small corner of the planet, we renew our vision to a world with less trash and to a community with stronger, tighter bonds. 

From this era of forced hiatus, may we better preserve our beloved communities and in so doing, create the collective strength we need to preserve the earth for a few more millenia.

All Together Now!

Powers of Ten takes us on an adventure in magnitudes. Starting at a picnic by the lakeside in Chicago, this famous film transports us to the outer edges of t...

Wrappers, packaging, boxes and bags—trash feels inevitable, especially around the holidays.

When everything from carrots to conditioner comes in single-use packages, waste piles up fast, even when you’re eco-conscious.

If you’re like many people we know, you’ve heard about the folks adopting a “zero waste” lifestyle. Yet, far from being inspiring, the advice is often intimidating, unrealistic, expensive and time consuming. It can leave people feeling guilty and overwhelmed. 

We may grow some of your own food, choose reusable products and borrow, swap or thrift instead of buy, when possible. Yet most of us still roll the trash bin to the curb on trash day. Heck—we live in neighborhoods that have a trash day every week.

What’s a family to do? What’s anyone to do? In order to sustain our planet, we must adapt and change. And we can do it, one product at a time.

So, let’s talk trash. Let’s look at one product swap at a time and see if we can do better. If we can get people talking trash together, and sharing product swap successes and failures, maybe thoughtful, simple swaps will become a collective habit. It’s worth a shot.

Trash talk has rules

For this trash talk series, we promise you two things:

• Product swaps won’t cost too much. Actually, the swap should cost less in the long run—but it won’t require a large investment at the beginning. Sustainable should be affordable and attainable.

• Swaps will be simple—no complicated processes or unrealistic DIYs. 

Trash Talk #1: Milk Cartons

While some recycling centers can handle coated milk and juice cartons, they’re actually pretty tricky to recycle. Here in Austin, the city’s handy “what do I do with…” recycling app tells us to place milk cartons in the trash can rather than the recycling bin. 

Can we do better?

Plastic milk containers are at least more recyclable than the cartons in most places, but we’re trying to avoid plastic when we can. As for glass? We did find a few local options for buying or refilling glass milk containers, but they required spending a lot more, driving a lot more or both. 

Can we do even better? 

Consider these two solutions:

1. We can drink less milk. Instead of buying more when we run out, we set a weekly limit, and when it’s gone, it’s gone. Need milk for a recipe? See suggestion number two.

2. We can make our own nut milk. I promise that this option doesn’t break the rules of simple and cheap. It’s easier than you think, and nut milk works great in recipes. Check out our recipe, or this super simple version from Bon Appetit.

Let us know your milk carton swaps. Or suggest a product swap to tackle next.

Our 2020 vision? A world with less trash, starting with a household of less trash.

This is it—the summer you get your cold brew game strong.

You could follow someone else’s recipe (like ours—it’s awesome). But what if you could dial in your own custom brew? How, you ask? By taking a page from your middle school science class. There’s no better way to win cold brewing than the scientific method.

Grab your lab coat and clip board and let’s do this—it’s cold brew chemistry!

Remember the scientific method?

• Ask a question. For example: how do I make the most delicious cold brew?

• Do background research. We’ve got you covered here. Actual scientists have asked the big cold brew questions and compared hot versus cold brewing.

• Come up with a hypothesis. Our hypothesis? Medium roast, course ground coffee steeped for 12 hours with a cinnamon stick is objectively best.

• Test your hypothesis by doing an experiment. More on this in a minute.

• Analyze the data and draw a conclusion. And by analyze data we mean—drink lots of cold brew, take notes and rank the brews.

• Share your results. On Facebook and Instagram, obviously.

Set up your experiment

You’ll start with the variables you want to test. We suggest playing around with:

• Grind size

• Amount of brew time

• Roast of coffee

• Flavor infusions

When you’re ready to test, science says you can’t test more than one factor at a time. You’ve got to isolate those variables, people. If you test different grinds and roasts at the same time, it will be harder to figure what worked.

To keep your experiments and ratings straight, make a handy chart. That way, when you tell your friends you have created the scientifically proven best cold brew coffee, you’ll have the data to back it up! Feel free to use our simple testing chart.

Gather your supplies

You won’t need Bunsen burners, but we recommend drinking out of beakers or test tubes. That’s just good scientific fun.

You will need a cold brewing method. We’ve got kits and extra filters, here.

Get to testing

Choose one of the four variables to test. If you want to experiment with flavors first (and who can blame you), keep the other factors the same for each experiment. Once you’ve decided on the scientifically proven best flavor, see what changes in grind size will do.

You’re probably going to want to get a crew together for this. The more people who try your brew and fill out your rating sheet, the more iron-clad your claim to scientific superiority. So, enlist a few coworkers or friends and get to brewing.

Don’t forget to add “cold brew chemist” to your resume. NASA, here you come.

Welcome spring and those longer days and sunny afternoons. Welcome rains and pollen too. And as the flowers and trees rev up their blooming, welcome bees.

Bees have much work to do in the spring, tasked with pollinating flowers, trees, fruits and vegetables. The hours they put in pay dividends to everyone, ensuring habitats for creatures who rely on plant homes and keeping a full one-third of the food we eat pollinated.

According to Greenpeace, “70 out of the top 100 human food crops — which supply about 90 percent of the world’s nutrition — are pollinated by bees.”

And don’t even get us started singing the praises of honey. (Or do. We can go on and on, starting with these recipes for infused honey.)

Of course, honey bees are not the only bee pollinators in question. According to the Xerces Society’s pollinator conservation program, the most endangered bees are the rusty patched bumble bee and other lesser-known wild bee species.

The bottom line? What’s good for the bees is good for the planet and all of its creatures, including you and me. And we have the means to help a bee out!

Your Morning Mug Can Help a Bee Out

According to the journal Nature, While the coffee plant is known to be self-pollinating, bees can augment the process. According to research, “honeybees can boost [coffee] crop yields by over 50%. These findings, together with world coffee-harvest statistics and results from field studies of organically shade-grown coffee, indicate that coffee plants would benefit from being grown in habitats that are suitable for sustaining valuable pollinators.”

You may have heard that the population of pollinators, including honey bees, has declined in the past decade. While sources give different estimates for the extent of the problem, they all tell a similar story about bee decline, especially in the United States, due to climate change, pesticides, and habitat loss. So, if coffee farms use pesticides or other practices that repel bees, then the farm actually contributes to bee decline even though the farm would benefit from the bees—just like the rest of the planet.

But what does this have to do with your morning coffee or tea? Plenty, actually. Because the beverage you drink and the way you make it can contribute to the solution. Specifically:

• Choose organic coffee and cotton. You can help reduce pesticides by using organic coffee, tea, and filters. When you buy organic, you not only encourage coffee growers to go organic—you also ensure that any of your used grounds that end up in landfills or compost is itself organic, a double help for the bees.

• Choose reusable filters and gear. You can help prevent habitat destruction by choosing reusable, sustainable brewing supplies. Unrecycled paper means tree loss, which means homeless bees.

What’s Good for the Trees is Good for the Bees

Sure, bees are into flowers. But they love trees too. They pollinate flowering trees and build their hives in tree branches. It’s a win-win. So, the less paper we consume, the better for trees and bees (and fruits, nuts, vegetables, and you).

So, as bee season begins in your area, you’ve got a thousand more reasons to save the trees 🌳 + feed the bees. 🐝

One pack of CoffeeSock reusable filters replaces more than 365 paper filters.

Photo courtesy of Fiberactive Organics

Held Together By a Thread

Take a quick look around you and spot all the things that are made out of fabric. Maybe you’re sitting on a sofa or grabbing something from your bag. Maybe there’s a blanket or towel nearby. Let’s assume you’re wearing clothes. Choose one item and look closer. You probably don’t think about it much, but the whole thing is likely held together by thread.

Held together by a thread—it seems so vulnerable and impermanent. Quality thread is actually quite tough. That’s why a stitched-together sofa can last through decades of movie nights and naps. Of course, it will break down eventually. So, like all materials that will eventually be disposed, even thread can be organic, sustainable and compostable.

If you read our recent blog about organic cotton, you’ll know why we are committed to making CoffeeSock products organic down to the thread. Organic thread helps us keep our promise to bring you sustainable products that reduce toxins and trash.

Meet Julie Moore & Fiberactive Organics

We’re very proud to spotlight our thread vendor, Fiberactive Organics! Headquartered in North Carolina, Fiberactive Organics sources organic cotton thread from around the world.  

Founder and CEO, Julie Moore, came to the business with a dedication to sustainable practices that support a clean environment and human dignity. She trained as a graphic artist and supported herself through school by managing the family business—her dad’s dental office. Though dental management and graphic arts might not seem a likely start, Julie’s training as an artist found expression in fabric portraits and graphic quilts, and her designs have been featured in international quilting publications. 

Julie on the Bhuria’s farm near Indore, India

Fabric arts, sustainability and good business sense—these threads wove through her life and led quite naturally to Fiberactive Organics.

Sustainability & Sewpure Thread

Dedicated to sustainable practices that preserve the soil, tread lightly on the environment and support the dignity of human labor, Fiberactive only uses materials certified by the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS). And Julie doesn’t source her cotton by hearsay. Knowing that the soil conditions and cotton varieties grown in India work well in organic thread, she travelled there herself to check it out. On her website, she tells the story of the Sewpure cotton thread—that’s the variety CoffeeSock uses—as it moves from cotton crop through milling and spinning.

Outside the city of Indore, she met farmers and local leaders in organic farming, Raphael and Tashila Bhuria. According to Julie, this husband and wife team “are not only extremely well educated in organic farming, they are leaders in organic research, they have developed methods of composting and creating amendments from their compost that other farmers can apply to their crops for better yields and deterring pests.”

Raphael and Tashila Bhuria on their farm.

Follow the “Story of Sewpure” from the Bhuria’s farm through the organic production cycle on Fiberactive Organic’s website. 

Thank you Julie! From the CoffeeSock team.

Thinking on Dr. King this MLK day – on his legacy of love and action towards justice – it put in mind the giant logs that litter the beaches of the Pacific Northwest. Stable seeming logs, immobile looking, delivered to the shore by powerful waves. 

The beginning of 2019 found us on the Olympic Peninsula in a cabin by the sea. The stretch of Pacific Ocean along the western coast of Washington is stunning, strewn with rocky cliffs, dense evergreens, marsh land and rainforests rich with mossy trees. The ocean litters these beaches with logs – felled by storms, erosion, critters and perhaps logging, then dragged across the water to the shore.

Some of these logs are giants. Sitting on a rocky beach, they seem at home, like they’ve been there forever. We want to stand on them and see further down the coast. But even those behemoths are no match for the powerful sea. Every day the tide comes in to deliver the day’s catch of wood and stone. And every day the tide goes out, taking even the sturdiest with it.

In this way, the water arranges and rearranges the beach daily. And in this way even the giant logs are vulnerable, impermanent. They move at the ocean’s bidding, unless something else anchors them down. 

“Killer logs” the signs read – a warning not to trust those things that seem so permanent and unmoving. 

 These logs whisper to us about our most stable plans, our most sure-footed ideas, and our most long-standing institutions. Those things in this life that we value, they require that we do more than stand on them to better ourselves. We have to add more than just our weight. 

Dr. King asked that we all actively aspire to bring about the beloved community. That we act as accomplices to the work of justice. The wave he pushed and the institutions it ushered in - they are only so permanent as we make them. We must continue to anchor them today, lest the tide roll all his sturdy progress back out to sea.

One of the many wonderful things about owning a small business is the opportunity it provides to clarify and live a mission (day in – day out!). At CoffeeSock, we started our business on a mission to do two things: run a small business that frees us to design a family-focused life we feel good about, and to sell a useful, simple product that reduces trash, keeping it out of landfills and off of the land.

With these missions at our heart, we have been grateful to grow into a thriving small business in a community of makers, doers and travelers. We’ve made new partnerships, welcomed inspiring makers into our shop, and travelled far and wide. 2018 took us on so many fantastic adventures, from our beloved Texas beaches, to the mountains of New Mexico and the deserts of the American Southwest. 

We always knew we had a great product on our hands. But we could not have anticipated all the beauty and challenge and growth that this little shop would bring us through the years. 

As we look ahead to the new year ahead we do so with full hearts and open minds. We are scheming, sure, but we are open too to the unexpected and as yet unrevealed. So – welcome, 2019! Let’s do this.

S Aziz123 [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

Ok – so you’re not going to eat your CoffeeSock filter, so why should you care that it’s made from organic cotton? Yes, organic cotton keeps pesticide residue out of your coffee – but the organic label means more than clean food and drink. 

Nonorganic, or “conventional” cotton is a big, chemical intensive business. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, cotton ranks third for use of pesticides behind soybeans and corn – weighing in at around 48 million pounds of pesticides on “approximately 12.6 million acres of cotton planted in nine states.” While we may not ingest cotton, pesticide use also depletes soil and ends up in water supplies, threatening humans and wildlife.   

By contrast, organic cotton does not use toxic chemicals. “It doesn’t damage the soil, has less impact on the air, and uses 71% less water and 62% less energy.”  What’s more, CoffeeSock uses organic cotton certified by the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS).The GOTS standards go beyond standards for toxicity and environmental impact, requiring GOTS certified companies to meet social standards that include criteria for minimum wage, working conditions and collective bargaining. 

From the soil in which its planted to the humans who harvest the crop, organic cotton provides tangible environmental and human rights benefits. And since CoffeeSock products are made with organic cotton cloth and thread, they are completely and safely compostable when it’s time to replace your sock.  

So no, you aren’t going to eat your CoffeeSock, but the more products made from clean crops the better – for the soil, the water, the air and all the creatures who need them. 

Inspiring the next generation of small business owners

New mittens for the kids. Gifts for our favorite folks. Flour and sugar for treats. The holidays are here, and most of us are shopping – a lot.  And whether it’s for gifts, groceries or gloves, you probably have a choice between shopping the giants and buying from small businesses. 

Actually, more than 30 million U.S. businesses are small, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration. So most people can find a small business that provides the good or service they need. And although small business are – well – small, they make a huge impact. 

Between 2000 and 2017, “small businesses created 8.4 million new jobs while large businesses created 4.4 million.” And small business owners are families, women, immigrants and people of color. Data from the Small Business Administration give us these numbers about small businesses:

• 10 million women-owned and 2.5 million more owned equally by men and women

• 8 million minority-owned

• 2.5 million veteran-owned

• 20 percent family owned

• More than 14 percent owned by immigrants

Those are some inspiring numbers! 

And if that’s not enough, small businesses tend to stay local, hire local, and support local civic life. That community connection keeps small businesses accountable to and engaged with the communities in which they operate. According to Ashoka Changemakers, a “global network of social entrepreneurs, innovators, business leaders, policy makers and activists” small and medium-sized businesses tend to be more environmentally friendly, because these businesses “typically have a deep connection to their communities’ and environments’ needs, and therefore often have an incentive to be good stewards of their surrounding environment.” 

CoffeeSock is a small, woman-owned, family-run business with community and environment at our heart.  We employ a rad group of women artists and leaders to produce sustainable products that add value to our community far and wide. And we’re proud to support the Austin economy and contribute to the city’s civic life. That’s what small businesses do all over the globe.

This gift giving season and beyond, when you need to buy, we hope you’ll spend small, where the your purchase multiplies, supporting families, women and minority owned businesses, local communities, and sustainability.

Happy holidays y’all!

I made my first altar for Dia de los Muertos four years ago, one year after my dad passed away. It wasn’t a tradition I grew up with, but missing my pops and hungry to commune with him, I was drawn to the ritual and to the chance to share memories with my children. 

My dad was a dreamer and a doer, a trait I proudly inherited. But more than that, he was my greatest encourager. When I went to college to be a “weather girl” he cheered me on. When I decided to become a dental hygienist, he was enthusiastic. When my visions turned entrepreneurial, he went along with my scheme to buy our childhood house and turn it into a coffeeshop and bookstore. I still own and love that house, but it is still not a coffeeshop or a bookstore. 

Later, as a young pregnant wife, I decided on a house cleaning business, and my dad bought all of the tools I would need – a top of the line vacuum cleaner and natural cleaning supplies. And for my first sewing business, he sewed reusable bags alongside me at a time when no one was really using them. He delighted in my successes and encouraged me to be better and stronger. He was my first sewer when I started CoffeeSock. Meticulous with his tools, his filters turned out perfect even as my own were a bit wonky. It drove him crazy, so he made our first acrylic pattern, and standardized our product. 

My dad. We worked together. We hiked through Central America together. And we drank countless cups of black coffee together, sometimes lukewarm, but never minding. I am grateful for the annual ritual that does him honor, along with those others before him whose legacies have traveled through the ages and reside in me and my family.

This Dia de los Muertos, I will add marigolds to my dad’s altar, light a few candles, and celebrate him in memories so that he lives on in my children. 

La Fortuna Waterfall, Costa Rica

September 15th kicked off National Hispanic Heritage Month, and we are deeply grateful for the contributions of Hispanic Americans to the CoffeeSock company and story. In many ways, CoffeeSock traces its lineage back to Mexico and South America, starting with those first sips of coffee, snuck from my mama’s mug. 

Baby Corina and her mom Maria

My love of coffee began with stolen sips. In my memory, my mama always had a cup of coffee near. She drank her brew with just enough sweetness and cream that I found it irresistible and took every opportunity to test it.  My momma immigrated from the Mexican border town of Piedras Negras when she was 13, and my childhood memories combine the smell of a fresh pot brewing with the sounds of her Spanish music. I still enjoy listening to Selena while sipping a cuppa, but I drink my brew black these days.

The “sock” part of CoffeeSock owes its origin to the Costa Rican “chorreador” - a simple cotton bag attached to a wire and the first cotton filter I ever used. There in the indescribable beauty of Costa Rica’s mountain landscape with my future husband, we marveled at the perfect cup of coffee this simple tool produced. Back in Austin, I made my own cotton sock for my Chemex – and then made more for friends and family. What started as a desire to share with my close circle bloomed into a mission to rid the world of paper filters.

CoffeeSock is steeped in these stories and forever grateful. And of course, we might not be here without the efforts of coffee growers too, many in Mexico and South America. In fact, according to Equal Exchange, Mexico produces the most organic coffee worldwide! 

 For National Hispanic Heritage Month we dedicate the ritual of our morning mugs to our own Hispanic heritage, and to the contributions to the planet of all those of Hispanic origin. Cheers!

 ---Corina

Making our chorreador-inspired travel socks

Fall morning rituals

With the fall equinox, we welcome back the coziest of all autumn things: layers. Late September brings a gentle coolness back into our lives and we gratefully hunt through long-buried clothes for our favorite sweaters and flannels. Meanwhile, our sock families in far-flung places prepare for the rains, first snows and inaugural fireplace lightings that signal the season’s change. 

At CoffeeSock’s home in Austin, TX, we are practically giddy to welcome warm beverages back into our morning routines. OK - some of us kept sipping away at hot coffee no matter how high the heat, but for most of us, iced teas and coffees have been the go-tos since early May. But that’s one of cold brews many beauties, you can heat it up. It goes from afternoon cold to morning hot in 5 minutes. Cold brew has layers. And if you’re layer-crazy like we are, add a cinnamon stick or a hint of vanilla. Or cozy up to a camp fire or hearth with a coffee and a hint of Irish whiskey.

Whether the advent of fall brings a reprieve from sweltering heat or a nudge to prepare for winter, happy Autumn friends! 

- Mix and Match -

Drink cold on a warm afternoon or warm it up on a chilly morning.

The school year is back in full swing - the loosely structured days of summer now fully replaced by the near-constant activity that school brings. From late August until late May, everyone seems so busy. 

Busy sometimes feels like a collective hysteria, a need to be constantly doing more, accomplishing more, adding achievements to the narrative resume that is social media. But busy also fuels productivity that can feel really gratifying. Perhaps the difference is personal meaning and what Buddhists call right livelihood, work that causes no harm. 

That’s why when the orders pour in here at CoffeeSock, and when the to-do list moves onto a 2nd (or 3rd!) page – when we have to stay late for an order or network after hours – we remember that this is our right livelihood, a business (and busy-ness) that fills a need, reduces trash, and makes a fantastic cup of coffee. 

We aren’t letting busy totally off the hook though. As we labor and as we plan, we take time to be still too, often in the quiet morning before the school-day rush.

Making socks & reducing trash…

Then stealing a still moment

Happy summer solstice sock family! Around here, we are thrilled this time of year as we finally dive into the maker projects and road trips we've dreamed about during those 9 busy non-summer months. Yes, the temps regularly soar above 100 degrees (that's about 38C for out non-U.S. readers), but that's nothing a swimming hole, a shade tree, and a cold treat can't handle. Somehow, when we're diving into the 68-degree waters of Austin's Barton Springs, or one of the many beautiful waterscapes of central Texas, we just don't mind the heat so much. 

Of course, we don't limit ourselves to the local spots. That's one of the many magics of summer - we can take off elsewhere.  And we sure do love that dreamy place called elsewhere. We get there while lazing in a hammock, or we jump in the van and head that way, or we find it between the covers of a book.  So, on this sunny solstice day, we're using our extra daylight to send some appreciation to the sun-fueled summer and planning our projects and dreaming of our elsewheres and happy with our here. 

What are your projects and elsewhere plans this summer? 

Hitting the trail