I've just returned from a trip out west to spend time with my son, who lives in Seattle.  I feel both refreshed and exhausted from the activities of the week.   As with any return, I see things a bit differently and recognize how things change in small ways (and large) while I'm away.   

This fall has seen a return to many things that were knocked off course a bit by the appearance of the COVID19 virus in March of 2020.  We're seeing teachers and students back on a school-day schedule, meetings in person and musicians making public appearances.  With the end of construction along I-35W - we have had the return of entrance and exit ramps for highway access for our neighborhood.  We're seeing the return of building construction along Nicollet Avenue after a very quiet few years.  And after many years of living with a rebuilt Nicollet Avenue (2013), we're seeing road construction again...oh some things never change.

This fall I'm also landing on the theme of returning in an older way - using returnables.

The feeling of "returning" is a set of mixed emotions for me.  I'm not a great traveler so I always feel comforted by being back in my home and around familiar spaces.  There's always a bit of anxiety as a business owner upon returning to the shop, knowing that while I'm away, issues can and do have a way of getting out of control, and that the processes and procedures that weren't very stable before I left would likely not have held together.   I also find a bit of energy upon any return to make up for my "lost time" while I was away. 

When I was growing up, I remember trips to the North St. Paul Dairy to pick up milk in returnable containers.  We had a stack of crates that kept the empties and would load them in the trunk and make the trip each Friday with Dad.  We also made a trip to a soda store with our returnable bottles to pick out a set of sodas with my sister and I each getting a couple rows in the crate for our personal picks.  My grandmother would talk of the days when milk was dropped off at her house, with a swap of bottles that had been set out on the steps that morning. 

Those visits stopped when it had become much more difficult to make the trips after my father died and our transportation became more limited.  Eventually, too, it seemed that other conveniences of disposables and recycling made the return-ables less convenient.  

And yet, the desire to dispose of less materials, to make better use of "re-useables" has always been around for me.  I've done what I can to build it into much of how I practice sustainability, from small ways like carrying a water bottle and keeping tote bags with me, to larger ways of reusing construction materials during my many house renovation projects.

At Butter, the re-use of materials was built into our construction at 3700 Nicollet, including re-using utility poles for constructing the fences and screens that mark out our dining spaces.  We've created storage spaces for reusable bins and as Community Supported Agriculture hosts we have helped a new generation of neighbors learn to return the reusable boxes that transport vegetables from farms to our cafe and into homes.  We've encouraged use of personal tumblers/mugs for beverages since the beginning and over the past year have been creating the structure for offering returnable containers for all of our food purchases.

This all we are taking the next step by offering returnables from Forever Ware as our standard way of packaging items to go.  The Forever Ware team of Natasha Gaffer and Nolan Singroy have been learning alongside us and working tirelessly to provide a simple, affordable method of putting returnable containers into use.  For us at the cafe, we are very excited to be able to reduce the amount of disposable (even if they are compostable) items we need to purchase.  For customers, we hope the stainless steel containers will be a very solid reminder of their own part in creating a world with less waste.  

Still in its infancy, Forever Ware is available in a few Minneapolis and St Paul restaurants/cafes but is poised to grow! As they create an infrastructure for making returnables a "normal" operation for food services, they also hope that others will take up the cause and shift the balance for the entire food industry.   With the hope of making returnables convenient again, we're excited to be a part of culture shift that's good for people, profits and the planet!

Relationship building has always been a core part of the Butter mission, and as we develop the partnership of moving returnable containers to and from your home, it is my hope that the exchange will indeed help deepen our relationship with you.  As the Green Path stretches before me, I'm understanding that the color of stainless steel will be part of being green!