POTTSTOWN, Pa. - With Earth Day right around the corner, you may be thinking of ways to do your part for the planet. A coffee shop in Pottstown is giving its customers their caffeine fix, in a "zero-waste" space.

Earth Day may be a few days away. But at Espresso Yourself Book Café in Pottstown, every day is Earth Day.

"Climate change was front and center in a new way this year," Twila Fisher, who instructs Entrepreneurship and Social Enterprise at the Hill School in Pottstown, said. "Realizing how bad it's getting and how unaware a lot of people are about it."

She and her students came up with a nonprofit, where folks can feed their caffeine needs, while reducing their carbon footprint. The coffee shop is a place where everything gets reduced, reused, and recycled. Even the coffee grounds and tea bags are composted in the school's community garden.

Fisher, who also directs Community and Economic Development at the school, says discussions with her students about the status of the planet led to this vision.

"The students right away said to me, 'wait how can we be zero waste, that sounds so dramatic,'" Fisher said.

For the sake of the business, Fisher stresses to her students the "five Rs."

"Reduce, reuse, recycle, refuse and rot for compost," Fisher said. "So refusing is just like saying no to a straw in a restaurant."

The coffee shop hires workers, but Fisher's students run the business end of the shop, getting paid in credits.

"It's just become a really fun place where students get to learn from start to finish how a business is built," Fisher said. "They get to see the finances, they get to order inventory, do market research."

And the shop offers up more than just cafe staples, like zero-waste laundry detergent.

The school hopes to extend the shop's lease for another year, before requesting more grants and attempting to branch out further.

So grab a mug, or better yet, bring in your own, for a discount. And get your caffeine on, while pitching in to protect the planet.

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