The SustainaCafe coffee shop is a test-bed for campus sustainability and a demonstration site for innovative technology and programs. It directly reduces USC's consumption of water and energy and production of waste and empowers the campus and neighboring communities with information about sustainability and strategies for reducing your own impact.

The SustainaCafe incorporates both direct mitigation of environmental impact and an extensive educational campaign, resulting in a thorough effort toward sustainability. Were all sustainability projects to incorporate technical impact and outreach in such an interactive and powerful way, perhaps they would have more of an impact. The SustainaCafe is also unique in its philosophy that simply providing the community with information and tools regarding resource flows will induce a sense of connection and responsibility. Empowering the community instead of merely bombarding it with information means more support for the project and, eventually, better understanding of sustainability.

The SustainaCafe is about intimacy between the citizen of the global community and their environmental impact. Patrons of the cafe interact directly, face-to-face, in a dialogue about their environmental impact and what they can do to improve it. Providing hands-on information and tools gives individuals an incredibly unique experience.

The SustainaCafe is also unique as a test-bed for future university exploration into campus sustainability. In the past, USC has been reluctant to adopt innovative technologies and policies due to financial or other risks involved. But the cafe provides a space to test out those ideas, in a way holding the university's hand as it engages in increasing sustainability. For example, if the university was considering trying out non-toxic eco-paints made from food-grade materials but was worried about the paints comparability in look, feel, quality, and durability, it could test them first in the cafe to see how well they worked. Simultaneously, information about the paint would be displayed in the cafe, educating visitors about how the paint is different and the environmental impact of using that paint throughout the campus.

Our project will not only directly impact the campus' consumption of water and energy and production of waste, but will educate the campus community as to the campus' environmental footprint, thus hopefully inducing all visitors to contemplate the environmental impact of all their actions. The SustainaCafe will also provide visitors with information about simple things they can do to reduce their own impact, including a station at which they can calculate their individual environmental footprint and learn about ways to reduce their largest areas of impact.