Coffee with a Conscience: Introducing Albany’s Wild Heart

Wild Heart Coffee & Tea | Coffee Stand

🌏 Albany, OR, USA

❀❀❀❀❀ 5.0

A Commendable Coffee at Wild Heart

For a website called “Cosmos In A Cup,” it’s ironic that there isn’t a post about coffee yet. The principle is there, but I’ve been lagging, waiting for just the right java stop to rave about. Here enters Wild Heart Coffee & Tea in Albany, OR.

Part of why I haven’t reviewed a coffee shop yet is that the majority of them are still using synthetic-lined and clear plastic disposable cups. Normally, I bring a mug and order something only when the barista is “allowed to” use it. Everyday activism is a habit now; I seldom hesitate to walk out of places that don’t offer mugs.

On this particular visit, however, I was on the final stretch of a lengthy road trip. To get a java buzz, I had to accept the impact of using a disposable cup—and this time, I was thankful to find it wasn’t an overly unsustainable choice.

The Lurking Costs of Disposable Coffee Cups

I won’t go into the whole spiel here, but to lay the groundwork for anyone who doesn’t know, disposable dishware is just about as problematic for public health and the environment as are plastic straws and plastic bags. 

For one, hidden concerns riddle the traditional paper coffee cup. Its waxy polyethylene interior coating prevents the cup from disintegrating, but supports chemical migration and leaching. If the cup is white, then manufacturers likely bleached its paper pulp with chlorine, hydrogen peroxide, or similar chemicals. Even the inks used to print designs and branding onto the cups can be questionable unless they’re soy-based or eco-solvent.  

The ubiquitous black coffee lids are typically made from polypropylene, which is yet another type of plastic. Polypropylene is considered one of the most food-safe synthetic materials, but as with most plastics, much is still unknown about the chemicals it contains—and its potential for toxicity within our bodies.

In addition to plastic’s tendency to leach harmful chemicals, its varieties are notoriously challenging to recycle. Even if we aspirationally “recycle” a disposable coffee cup or lid, the waste stream is likely to divert it to the landfill. It’s not worth potentially tainting an entire batch of recycling with one coffee cup; better to waste it outright.

And even then, when our copious numbers of cups and lids reach the landfill, they can take up to 30 years to decompose. For a coffee that took less than an hour to gulp down, the trade-off is hard to palate. 

A Cost Example of Choosing Sustainability

Wild Heart has taken sustainability in stride, offering the first 100% bamboo coffee cups I’ve ever come upon at a coffee stand. 

Paper disposable varieties—like the controversial paper straw—are nothing new. Yet with all of the eco-friendlier options available, and the almost unbelievable number of roadside coffee stands in the Pacific Northwest, most still favor the cheaper, plastic-laden cups.

There’s some poignant validity to the price discrepancy. For 1,000 of the commercially compostable 12-ounce cups from the brand Wild Heart uses, it costs $125.89. Yet, the same size and number of conventional cups goes for $69.98 at a massive retailer like Amazon. (The latter seems to be erroneously listed as “recyclable,” by the way.)

Even now, with a litany of research proving the health and environmental concerns of plastics, production is still set up so that oil-based is cheaper than plant-based. For small businesses, like so many of our beloved coffee huts, the cost-benefit ratio is simply too obscure to make the steeper, eco-friendlier investment. 

One Cup at a Time: Wild Heart’s Commitment

Wild Heart Coffee & Tea transcends these disposable norms, making a statement I wish was more prevalent among consumers. Choosing reusable, compostable, and relatively regenerative options is the cornerstone of planetary stewardship. Such principles go well beyond a temporarily satisfying cup of coffee. 

Wild Heart’s Facebook page puts it beautifully, citing our interconnectedness with wildlife and Mother Earth: 

We believe in making sustainable changes to support wildlife and our planet. Let’s protect the wild together, one cup at a time.

The business upholds these ideals through the practicality of bamboo cups and prominently displays them on-site, with signage proclaiming their hopes for protecting wildlife. It’s a conscientiousness that, in an increasingly enterprising world, feels rarer and rarer by the day.

To acknowledge one’s part in the greater whole is truly such a beautiful thing. I cherish Wild Heart for doing just that.

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