Sep 11, 2020
On the third episode of Seed To Cup, James Beard Award-winning journalist and Sprudge co-founder Jordan Michelman interviews Abigail Forsyth, the co-founder, and CEO of KeepCup, based in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 2007 by Forsyth and her brother, Jamie, KeepCup was designed to address an intrinsic issue in the specialty coffee industry: reliance on disposable cups. "Today, KeepCups are used in more than 65 countries around the world. KeepCup users divert millions of disposable cups from landfill every day, and through their actions inspire others to do the same," says the company. Abigail Forsyth continues to direct the brand from its new headquarters in Clifton Hill.
2020 has offered an unprecedented set of challenges to the reusable movement, as cafes around the world convert to takeaway-only and struggle to keep up with an ever-changing set of information about the transmission of COVID-19. This moment feels especially desperate from where we're sitting right now—Sprudge is published out of Portland, Oregon, currently engulfed in smoke from the largest wildfire event in modern history. But it's also an opportunity, a defining moment for the human race to address the reality of environmental destruction. "COVID-19 is a frightening glimpse of what is to come," Forsyth told Smart Company earlier this year. "Zoonotic diseases, which spread from animals to humans, climate change, loss of biodiversity, plastic oceans—they are all facets of how we co-exist with the natural system. This is a wakeup call to bring our economic and social systems back into line with earth's finite resources." All this and more is addressed in our interview with Abigal Forsyth.
This season of Seed To Cup is sponsored by La Marzocco and Seattle Coffee Gear.