Change is coming to Meet Los Amigos! A change for the better, of course! In case you haven’t heard, we will be offering only denim bags for our 69kg coffee selections.
Yes, you heard that correctly. Starting with the coffees from this new harvest season, we will be replacing our jute sacks with denim bags to reduce the waste and carbon footprint of our operations.
Photo by The New Denim Project
How Does It Work?
We have partnered with Jaime Engelberg from The New Denim Project, a Guatemalan-based company he created along with his daughters to bring about a new concept and revolution to the fashion industry.
The Abierto de Diseño team, alongside Jamie Engleberg (middle) and his daughters. Photo by Abierto de Diseño
The New Denim Project is a design lab and textile manufacturer focused on sustainability, earning a reputation and praise from fashion industry magnates such as Vogue. We wouldn’t expect anything less from a team of forward-minded people looking to unite technology and ecology to set unprecedented standards in this Fashion Revolution Movement.
Source: Vogue Mexico
It’s worth noting that their commitment to forging a better world doesn’t stop at their beautiful products and textiles; The New Denim Project are keen on providing full transparency in their workplace, promoting social responsibility and zero tolerance towards “child labor, forced labor, discrimination, harassment and abused” – as mentioned on their site. Just like coffee, their industry’s future wouldn’t be possible without the humans behind it!
The New Denim Project’s Workers at the factory. Photo by Amanda Bjorn for The New Denim Project
Needless to say, we’re huge fans of their work, which actually stems off way beyond the fashion industry; but what exactly are these fashion pioneers producing? Simply put, Denim is an upcycled material from cloth that can no longer “be used” and is discarded as waste. However, The New Denim Project aims to create upcycled products from discarded denim to create useful, sustainable products – from clothes to our new coffee bags, but how is this possible?
What is Upcycling?
Upcycling is a sustainability approach that redesigns one-way industrial systems into circular economies to reduce waste, carbon footprint, water usage, microplastic, and the use of toxic chemicals. This “circular system is restorative and regenerative by design, aiming to keep materials and components at their highest form of use and value at all times,” claims The New Denim Project on their website. They tell us that this is an excellent way to preserve and enhance natural resources and give used manufactured products more value, rather than letting them turn to waste that goes into landfills.
Among the impact of their operations, they are able to save up to thousands of liters of water, prevent tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere and reduce overall energy usage. We recommend you give our friend’s website a visit to learn more facts and learn more about this sustainable process. It’s packed with information and amazing products and collaborations. We’re excited to be a part of their journey through sustainable coffee bags!
Denim Coffee Bags
As we mentioned earlier, we’re going to be implementing changes starting this year, which means all your 69kg coffees will be shipped with an eco tact bag inside of upcycled denim bags to provide full protection for your coffees during transit.
Additionally, we would like to support you in creating new items out of the bags. For this, we are going to provide you with sewing patterns for tote bags and aprons that were custom-made for our Denim project. Feel free to reach out if you would like to use them.
In case you don’t want to re-use the Denim bags, our White Flag Coffee project would like to offer you the service of taking back the empty bags without any charges. White Flag Coffee will then create items for sale to support people in Guatemala to become financially independent through coffee projects. If you are interested in that option, feel free to reach out to Christina (christina@meetlosamigos.com).
Going Green
We know that sustainable change doesn’t happen overnight, but we are beyond excited to be able to be heading towards a more eco-friendly path in our operations. The coffee industry generates a massive amount of waste. Take jute bags, for example. Most of them are produced in India or China and then exported to coffee-producing countries, generating large amounts of waste and carbon footprint in the process – just to reach Guatemala to then be shipped again, eventually being thrown into the trash once they’re of no use. Through our partnership with The New Denim Project, we want to close the cycle and provide you with a more sustainable product, which you can reuse! If you simply wash the bags, you can create DIY clothing, blankets, totes, and more! Feel free to prolong the life of this already upcycled product!
More Announcements!
We mentioned change was coming for the better, not only in terms of sustainability but also in terms of quality! We’re excited to announce our Diamond Edition, a personal selection of mind-blowing Guatemalan coffees that were so outstanding that we thought they deserve a special treatment of packaging! All of these coffees will be shipped in a special edition 2x15kg vacuum-sealed eco tact bags packed in lovely designed boxes so you can show them off in your shops!
The idea behind the design of the boxes is to create an annual design challenge to support outstanding graphic designers around the world. This year we had the pleasure to work with the incredible Lya Li of Florida Estudio. Lya is a Chile-based graphic designer and passionate about her craft. We simply loved her idea to combine 70s elements and diamonds to express the funkiness and amazing flavors of our 21’ diamond edition.
Feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions about our new coffees or new bags! We’d be happy to work with you!
