Nomad’s four years with saving 250,000 cups

This week, Nomad Bewicke turned four. On May 20, 2022, we opened our doors in North Vancouver with a simple belief: that a coffee shop could be a place worth returning to, and that how we serve coffee matters as much as what we serve.

From the beginning, we tracked every reusable cup use. Not as a marketing exercise, but because we believe accountability begins with measurement. That counter started at zero.

Four years later, it reads 250,000.

Across our Bewicke and Kitsilano locations, with Harry Jerome on the horizon, our community has collectively avoided the equivalent of 250,000 single-use cups. At 72g of CO₂ per cup, that's roughly 18m of tCO₂ that didn't enter the atmosphere.

We want to be clear about what this means, and what it doesn't. Single-use packaging is a systemic issue, and 250,000 cups is not a solution. It is evidence, however, that behaviour change at the community level is possible, and that people are willing to participate when the system supports them.

This spring, we launched our Carbon Rewards program, a tiered recognition system for guests who bring their own cup or borrow ours. It's one more way we're trying to make the sustainable choice the easy choice, without greenwashing what that actually means.

Our target is one million cups. We'll keep counting, and we'll keep sharing the numbers. Transparency is the floor, not the ceiling, of what we owe this community.