Our Mission
Sustainability at Hej
Hej Coffee is a neighbourhood coffee company and speciality coffee roaster supplying fresh
hand-roasted coffee to businesses in the Greater London area, with concessions in offices,
schools, hospitals, and others.
The mission is simple: to create community coffee spaces, bringing the neighbourhood to
your workplace. With significant work on corporate social responsibility, Hej invests in local
communities and charities through our ‘Coffee for Causes’ programme, and take a conscious
approach to coffee production and distribution, opting for reusable buckets for packing coffee
and delivering exclusively by electric vehicle.
SUSTAINABLE COFFEE ROASTING AND DELIVERY
Central Roastery Location
One of the main aspects we wanted to improve in our journey to sustainability was to cut down on emissions resultant from transporting goods. As a large number of our clients were London-based, it only made sense to establish a roastery in a central location in the city to cut down on travel time. But this wasn’t enough for the team - we also had to change our delivery methods.
SUSTAINABLE COFFEE ROASTING AND DELIVERY
ELECTRIC DELIVERY FLEET
In 2019, we introduced Ernie, a restored 1960’s electric milk float, converted to deliver coffee in a more environmentally responsible way. Beryl, Betty, and Ron, our state-of-the-art cargo bikes, joined Ernie shortly after to form our electric fleet, reducing our emissions to zero on short distance deliveries.
As of 2022, we are proud to say that we have completed transitioned to a fully electric fleet of delivery vehicles. We now deliver fresh coffee beans throughout London with zero emissions. From roastery to cafe, warehouse to delivery, HEJ Coffee is powered by renewable energy, leading the way in the electrification of the coffee industry.
Eco-Friendly Packaging Solutions
VEGWARE CONTAINERS
We use Vegware for our lids and take-out containers, a sustainable, plant-based material that can be composted and recycled. By avoiding single-use plastics, Hej Coffee has saved over 4.6 tonnes of carbon, 6.3 tonnes of virgin materials, and 20.7 tonnes of finite resources. That’s cancelling out carbon from 8 flights from London to New York
Eco-Friendly Packaging Solutions
KeepCup
We have joined the reuse revolution with KeepCup and encourage our customers to take one home. You can find our branded KeepCups in-store at our neighbourhood café/roastery in Elephant & Castle. Customers who bring in a reusable cup to our Elephant & Castle café enjoy a discount on their coffee orders.
Eco-Friendly Packaging Solutions
ReCUP
Did you know that most coffee cups aren’t conventionally recyclable? A plastic coating on the paper complicates the recycling process, requiring special recycling systems – which the average coffee drinker doesn’t access easily.
That’s why we supply ReCUP sustainable coffee cups. ReCUP use EarthCoating® to make their cups fully recyclable in conventional paper recycling systems.
Understand this: we never use unsustainable cups for our coffee. All non-reusable cups we supply can either be recycled or composted.
Eco-Friendly Packaging Solutions
Carbon-Negative Coffee Bags
Our retail coffee bags are made from Sugarflex™, a carbon-negative and recyclable material made from sugarcane. Using renewable plant-based content and sustainable production techniques, our bags are as eco-friendly as possible. If for any reason one of our coffee bags does end up in landfill, it will gradually reform into biogenic carbon instead of generating greenhouse gas emissions. And by using water- and bio-based inks, we reduce harmful chemical waste.
Eco-Friendly Packaging Solutions
Reusable Containers
We store and deliver wholesale coffee in reusable buckets, collecting these buckets for refill when we drop off the next delivery. Every four months, we save 4,000 coffee bags and 700 boxes from landfill with our circular coffee delivery system.
