Will Eley, Green Jobs Program Manager at PEA, interviewing Blake Stewart, co-owner and operator of Fair Witness.
WE: Blake, I think we should let our readers know how you and I first met.
Long story short: We both live in the Sunnyside neighborhood of WInston-Salem; I have been enjoying Fair Witness for years; and my wife, daughter, and I have been pretty-much walking past your house every other day since 2020. But we didn’t actually meet until this past year, after I pulled your phone number from the voter file and shamelessly texted you about your rooftop solar array and your electric car–both visible on those walks past your house.
So, with solar energy and electric cars being the sparks behind this Green Business Network partnership, tell me more about how, and why, your personal environmental commitments became core sustainability business principles at Fair Witness.
BS: For me personally, I got tired of waiting for change from above. I decided to take every reasonable step to ensure that my impacts and that of my business and family were minimal and possibly even aspirationally regenerative. That started with looking into advancing our recycling, analyzing what our waste was, changing our shopping habits and diet, and changing the nature of our energy consumption.
We also personally support several biologically diverse tree planning operations as we have funds on hand to do so. This estimably comes out to around 28,000 trees and counting.
WE: Can you speak to a few roadblocks that Fair Witness has encountered on the sustainability front? And I ask because PEA encourages a lot of zero-waste and zero-emissions planning via our Green Business Network scorecard, but we know that individuals, businesses, and governments face so many structural challenges in these respects. But that’s why PEA created this network, so that we could make lasting change as a collective.
BS: Running a bar means a lot of glass and paper waste and a fair amount of produce waste. At the time that we opened, our city had no recycling downtown except for corrugated cardboard drop off at the local fire station. Part of running a bar is acknowledging that you recycle to the state authorities. There was a third party vendor but he was spotty about pickup and the price was high. We decided to undertake our own recycling program by pulverizing the glass into mulch for use in community gardens and in our own natural areas.
WE: There is a lot of misinformation out there about sustainability, especially that making good on such commitments costs too much money. I can sympathize with some of that, but overall, I disagree. And thanks to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, so many more avenues are now wide open–from heat pump rebates and electric vehicle tax credits to hundreds of billions of dollars for local governments to make major investments that reconnect communities and drastically improve public health. But it takes a lot of public education.
What are some easy commitments and investments that you think PEA members and other businesses should know about, based on your experience as a sustainable business owner and community-focused person?
BS: First, Duke energy offers a program whereby, for $60 a month, you can sponsor 5000 kW hours of renewable energy. For a lot of businesses that's achievable. Our government may not force utilities to capture the externalities of their products but we know there is a cost. And a very real way this program merely lets you opt to choose what Duke should be charging to rapidly move over to renewables.
We currently have three power bills and spend $180 a month to purchase 15,000 kWhs of renewable energy.
We always buy and rehab used refrigeration equipment. A lot of it is serviceable, far cheaper, and creates far less waste than buying a brand new product. The same is true for almost all of our furniture. In fact, our bar and seating is largely built out of the previous tenants bar and seating. We reused all the lumber we could down to the last foot.
With the syrups that we produce for cocktails, we carefully manage our pantry to avoid waste. We also use an acid adjustment program for all of our juices which allows them to be shelf stable for 7 to 10 days. Normally citrus is only viable for about a day before the flavor starts to change. This juicing program cuts our citrus waste down tremendously. That saves us quite a bit of waste and money!
Choosing items that are recyclable in your municipality is important. We try to make sure that we capture as much as we can. We also use a portion of profits every month to plant trees to offset our opening costs and continued operations. We try to work with Treesforthefuture and onetreeplanted.com We are probably going to move over to tree card which is a loadable debit card offered through ecosia.com. It allows you to divert some of your fees to tree plantings.
Our new goal is mostly about spreading the knowledge that everyone can do so much better without any kind of maximal effort. It really doesn't take much other than consideration. It certainly is worth the effort!
If you are interested in learning more about Green Business Network members like Fair Witness, please click here.