Humber Polytechnic hosted a nature walk with Bird Friendly coffee in the Arboretum on Feb. 4.
The Smithsonian website says Bird Friendly is a rigorous certification created by their scientists in the 1990s to fight climate change and preserve the natural habitats of birds and other wildlife. Certified products follow strict growth standards that provide quality habitats through tree height, foliage cover and biodiversity.
Jimmy “Beaver” Vincent, manager of the Arboretum, and Marilyn “Minnow” Campbell, the communications and marketing officer for the Arboretum, led the nature walk through the conservation area that abuts Humber Polytechnic’s North campus.
The walks provide coffee from Birds and Beans Coffee Roasters, a local business in Etobicoke founded by David Pritchard and his wife, Madeleine Pengelley, in 2003.
Birds and Beans also sponsors monthly bird walks in either Colonel Samuel Smith Park or Humber Bay Park West, Pritchard said.
The Birds and Beans website says that before opening their sustainable business, Pengelley worked in information technology for 20 years, while Pritchard had a career in biotechnology.
Pritchard said they didn’t enter the business as coffee connoisseurs. Rather, their backgrounds made them interested in the ecology of coffee sourcing and the impacts on bird migration.
He said the inspiration for Birds and Beans came from their desire to do something local that aligned with their values.
Originally, they thought they would open a café in the early 2000s serving Bird Friendly coffee, when the Bird Friendly coffee program had just started, he said. However, they could not source the coffee in Canada, which led them to partner with farms and co-ops in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras and Peru, Pritchard said.
He said part of their reason for starting the company was to pay farmers who want to protect their local environment livable wages, so they could do that.
Their coffee is not only shade-grown, to preserve trees for habitats, Pritchard said, but is also specifically validated by extensive certifications that ensure their coffee is “good for birds and we can prove it.”
He said they started roasting on a very small scale, in the back room of where the Lake Shore Boulevard West café is now and selling online and at the Dufferin Grove Organic Market. Pritchard said 18 months later, they opened their first café.
He said part of the reason for their business was to show business owners could “do the right thing” and be profitable.
“That I believe we’ve done,” Pritchard said, by proof of staying in business since the inception, through sales without substituting income.
He said money has never been the overriding motive, that their motive was to show people can be ethical and make a living.
Pritchard said there are hard days as a business owner that can be frustrating, but that he and Pengelley “don’t have any regrets.”
Birds and Beans donates 10 cents per pound of green coffee to the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Centre, Pritchard said their donations average over $10,000 yearly.
“We feel that we’re doing something that we care about and that has really helped increase the life satisfaction,” he said.
Pritchard said part of their message is for people to support local sustainable businesses, “and that will help make the world better.”
There will be another walk on Feb. 18, at 9 a.m., at the Centre for Urban Ecology at the Humber North campus.
