We are passionate about sustainability at Maxie B’s!
We have launched this page to share what we are doing in our daily operations to lessen our footprint on Planet Earth.
You’ll learn some of our favorite vendors, products, and processes and we hope that maybe some of it will be helpful to many of you. We are all connected and what we do collectively can have a wonderful story.
Our Role.
We see ourselves as an environmentally-committed business that can serve as a mentor to others in Greensboro and beyond. Please reach out to us at info@maxieb.com with any questions, ideas, suggestions that you may have.
We can also schedule private small-group tours to discuss sustainable operations in a hands-on manner upon request.
We are tickled and thrilled to announce the launch of our PLANET LOVER REWARDS PROGRAM!
This is a different type of loyalty card than what you might be accustomed to. As you all know, we make every conscientious decision we can that promotes a better planet and a better version of ourselves, all the way from our packaging decisions and our efforts to compost and recycle as much as we can. We aim to be stewards to the community to help sustain the world we live in.
So, how does it work? We reward you for each planet-friendly action you take by receiving punches. You will receive punches for opting out of a bag, reusing your own mug, opting out of forks and napkins, and reusing your reusable cake or cupcake carriers. When you fill your card, let us treat you to dessert! Your choice of a slice of cake, a slice of pie or two cookies! We want to get you all thinking about your decisions and to become a steward to the environment as well because together we can all make a difference!
In addition, you can bring your clean reusable container and lid with you when you come and we will refill it for you and give you a discount! $1 off your cake slice and $0.50 off your pie slice.
This program has been a long time coming and we couldn't be any happier to finally see this come to fruition!
Test your knowledge about where waste goes and in the process build a cool park! To give the game a try, click here!
We compost!
This is the single biggest sustainability move we have made … and we will share much more on that later on this page.
We are so fortunate to have our partnership with Gallins Family Farm to pick up the bakery’s compost weekly. Since Gallins is an industrial composter, we are able to send them ALL of our certified compostable items … not just coffee grounds and strawberry caps or apple peels. This means we can send them our unbleached, soy-waxed paper liners from baking cakes, any spoiled dairy items as well as all compostable take-out containers like our coffee cups & lids, utensils, napkins, and plates…plus much, much more! Eggshells, toilet paper spools, cotton twine, old florals out of our vases...or stems that were not useful.
This is huge for us … and it returns all of this organic material into rich, dark, compost on a family farm that then gets put back into our community to make our food web stronger!
Gallins Family Farm is now servicing residential areas in Winston Salem, Kernersville and Greensboro!
(Click their farm name to learn more!)
Click the image above and find out what would happen if we diverted the 60 billion pounds of mineral-rich food materials that go to landfills each year in the U.S. alone and turned them into compost. This impactful 6 minute video is from Kiss The Ground.
We use 100% certified compostable items
… for anything that does not go in a reusable container. (Cups, lids, spoons, forks, napkins). 95% of these items are also Made in the USA.
~ Our napkins are both 100% recycled and unbleached.
~ We use Made in the USA 100% recycled paper bags for customers who need a bag for their items.
We RePurpose
Feeding. Not Wasting.
We proudly partner with A Simple Gesture Greensboro ( ASG Food Recovery Program ) to donate any of our perfectly edible ingredients or baked goods to feed people, not landfills!
How this works:
Sometimes we receive the wrong ingredient from a supplier … honest mistake, but if they take it back, they will put it in the landfill. In other instances we may have a cake that just does not get picked up by a customer, slightly over-baked or oddly-shaped cookies or we have cakes that were made for a photo shoot for our website.
We can offer these items to ASG where they will be used to feed people through fully-vetted nonprofits. These are items that are truly edible and should be fed to people, as opposed to food scraps that need to be composted! With a simple phone call or email to them, they send a driver to pick up from our bakery at no cost to us and with practically zero effort. We get an email receipt for the donation that includes the carbon offset as a result of feeding this food rather than landfilling it (or even composting it!). Learn more here.
We use non-toxic
cleaning products …
Branch Basics & Sal Suds are our “go to” cleaners for most of our cleaning.
And we don’t use wasteful paper towels … rather we use E-cloths for glass and cotton towels for everything else. The towels are washed through a linen service which reuses the water in their facility … which is actually much more eco-friendly than our doing laundry at the bakery like we did for many years!
We have HEPA- filtered hand dryers in the bathrooms …
… instead of paper towels for staff and customers.
And we use “Who Gives A Crap” toilet tissue in our bathrooms because it is made of 100% recycled fibers (not virgin pulp from our beloved trees) and it also helps provide toilets to those who don’t have them in other countries.
We use LED lighting
… at the bakery to save on energy use.
We utilize Nest Thermostats to program our energy use for heating and cooling and to alert us if something is not right with one of our systems.
We purchase our florals from local growers
… and primarily focus on selecting native plants even for our vases ( to prevent the accidental spread of non-native seeds into our community.). Learn more about our floral partners here: Stemz
We nurture a
Certified Wildlife Habitat
Our patio is a haven in the midst of busy, busy Battleground Avenue!
Our native plant garden provides all the resources wildlife and pollinators need to thrive:
~ Food (from native plants … not just from bird feeders!)
~ Shelter (from the elements and a place to raise their young)
~ Fresh water replenished daily for our birds, toads, and pollinators, too! (even for an occasional random baby opossum!)
~ Safety from chemical pesticides or herbicides … we don’t spray and have asked our property management company not to, either!
Since we added our raised beds in April, 2021, we have watched pollinators galore! In fact, we saw nearly 30 monarch caterpillars on our swamp milkweed and several swallowtail caterpillars on herbs this past fall! More pictures will live in a gallery at the end of this page!
You, too, can learn more about this important step to restore our local ecosystems and how to certify your very own garden. No area it too small or in too challenging of a location to matter as is obvious by the enormous amount of pollinator activity right here in our raised beds in the middle of an asphault parking lot!
Learn more here:
Read here, from North Carolina Native Plant Society, what’s happening on our patio!
We bake with as many organic ingredients as possible!
From produce to flour, to coconut oil … we want to bake with organic ingredients in our products both for the health of our customers as well as the health of the soil, water, and air that is impacted by the growing of these crops!
We use all natural, mostly organic ingredients, foregoing artificial ingredients and preservatives. The only exception to this is food color used to tint icings for writing on or decorating cakes or in tinting our Red Velvet, Pink Lemonade, Dreamsicle, and 7 Up cakes.
Our ingredients are locally sourced
… whenever possible (eggs, fruits, flours, milks, veggies, jams, oats, & pecans to name the broad categories!)
Local, free-range eggs (not caged, factory chickens) delivered straight to us from their pastured farm in McLeansville!
We don’t use any palm oil in our bakery
We learned of the devastating impact of the production of palm oil through our relationship with Carolina Tiger Rescue in Pittsboro, NC.
As a result, we promptly revamped all of our ingredients to make sure that we are palm oil free due to the large-scale deforestation and habitat destruction that has been occurring to produce this single ingredient. (Learn more here as to why palm oil is bad for our environment)
We are big into recycling
We recycle as much as we can … the last resort is what goes into the landfill.
We have a private recycling dumpster for our paper, aluminum, and recyclable plastic items.
We recycle all cardboard. (After collection by GFL, Greensboro’s cardboard goes to Green Day Recycling in High Point)
We also use: Terracycle … which helps us recycle items that would otherwise go into the landfill as there are no local recycling options for them:
Terracycle:
~ for office supplies (even staplers that break!)
~ for pet food/treats packaging (from all of our staff!)
~ for plastic waste (items we can’t recycle locally … like chip bags, granola bar wrappers, etc.)
~ for beauty supplies (again from staff…old makeup containers, etc.)
~ for coffee and tea packaging waste (our large coffee bags from buying our beans, plus any from staff)
We collect a few random items that can’t be recycled in Greensboro, but that we accurate a lot of such as waxed paperboard containers (milk cartons) and other miscellaneous plastic items (like fruit clamshells) to take to Forsyth County for recycling.
We separate our glass out to take to the Kathleen Clay Edwards Family Branch Library for recycling.
We collect plastic bags, plastic wrap, and bubble wrap to take to plastic bag recycling sites at local grocery stores where they are picked up by Trex Decking company to be turned into new materials!
We collect styrofoam to take to the Tiny House collection center.
We collect E and Hazardous Waste (batteries, electronics … even iPhone charger cords that break) and take to the hazardous waste drop-off at Ecoflo on Patterson Street.
We collect for Reconsidered Goods … items that could have another life as a craft, etc. Reusing is the best option, always!
We regularly share among unused items amongst our staff (both clothing and home items!) and collect the unclaimed items to donate to charity.
We don’t sell or internally use :
~ Bottled water (we used filtered water instead)
~ Plastic straws (but we do offer metal ones for sale or use by staff)
~ Acetate Ribbon … not any more, we switched to simple cotton twine that is compostable or easily reused for many things
~ Plastic gift cards (we use recycled paper ones instead)
We use Made in USA reusable take out containers
… that can easily be washed and reused for so many things! From food leftovers or food prep, seed collecting, organizing craft supplies, etc.
Our Planet Lover Discount is back! When you bring in your clean, containers (ones you have saved from prior cake purchases or Tupperware of your own) you will receive a .50 discount per slice. This solely applies to cake and pie slices, and 9 packs of pupcakes.
We use burlap bags
… instead of plastic ones for greenery bundles that ship out with our cakes or for customers who purchase greenery for decoration on cakes locally.
We also use our burlap bags over and over for our daily bank deposits, saving us literally thousands of plastic bags each year.
Our cake boxes are FSC certified paper
… and have compostable cellulose tops (not plastic) that show the yummy contents of each box.
We designed our shipping program to be very green.
Our boxes are printed with soy ink and are made from 100% recycled cardboard by EcoEnclose. Our “cooler” inserts are designed (by Green Cell) to be backyard composted or washed down the sink. All other materials, such as the ice packs, are reusable or recyclable.
We offer reusable bags
Insulated cooler bags, heavy jute bags or lightweight grocery bags that hold two full cakes; should a customer decide they want one, they are available for purchase.
We are soon launching a program to truly encourage our customers to BRING THEIR OWN BAG when they are shopping with us and hope this begins a movement toward carrying bags into any place of business that you plan to shop at, not just grocery stores!
Did you know that even 100% recycled paper bags have a larger greenhouse emission component than flimsy, lightweight plastic bags? They all need to just go away!
We use EcoChit receipts
~ Paper from sustainably managed forests
~ Cardboard Cores
~ 100% BPA & BPS FREE
Through verified partnerships, EcoChit has built a model that enables every case of receipts to contribute to the regeneration of critical ecosystems.
Take a peak at the story behind the receipt and visit EcoChit.com for further information!
Some of the Ways we internally create a culture of sustainability among our staff :
~ We reuse boxes from deliveries for moving, etc. just about every week it seems like! Someone of our staff will usually need them for something or will have a friend who does!
~ We reuse our glass honey and jam jars to be refilled by our local farmers
~ We reuse our egg cartons and cardboard case boxes by giving them back to our local farmer each week when they deliver to be refilled and delivered again next time
~ We send berry containers back to local farmers to refill and use again whenever possible; The rest get recycled in Forsyth County or reused to as tiny little greenhouses for starting native seeds over the winter.
~ We use 100% certified compostable baking liners that are unbleached and have a soy wax coating that can readily be turned back into the earth. Our bakers get the most life out of each liner by flipping them over and reusing them several times.
~ We use compostable foodservice gloves instead of disposable latex gloves; We have a Terracycle box for gloves for our thick rubber gloves that are used at the sink area
~ We converted from using plastic bags for our staff’s tip sharing to reusable cotton ones that are personalized for each team member
~ Our espresso machine creates lots of great espresso compost and we encourage our staff to use our ceramic mugs and to encourage customers to bring their own for us to brew into as well
~ We wash and reuse the plastic cake domes that we use to hold our cake layers and finished cakes until they are either sold as whole cakes or sliced for the cafe. We are not single-use plastic fans around here!
~ We also extensively and exclusively use durable air-tight storage bins with snap-on lids for other baked goods thus eliminating the need for wrapping items (cupcakes, brownies, cookies, pumpkin bars, etc.) in plastic wrap to keep them fresh
~ We encourage our team to bring their own personal compost and hard-to-recycle items into the shop for us to take care of along with the bakery items collected and processed
~ We keep a ready supply of ceramic mugs, plates, and silverware in the bakery for staff to use for meals and breaks, thus creating a community culture of reusables!
As a team, we conduct daily “ sorting audits ” on the many receptacles that we use for collecting items …
from general trash to plastic bags, compost, general recycling, etc. It is important to make sure that all of our team is on the same page and fully understands where each item should go when it is no longer of use in our bakery.
We are not perfect, but together we all try our best to get this right!
How can you be kinder to the planet when visiting our bakery?
~ By bringing in your own reusable mug for your beverages … from ice water to hot chocolate … we are happy to put it in your reusable container!
~ By skipping napkins and utensils when you are going home or to work or somewhere that you already have access to real flatware!
Please, please move away from the habit of using disposables!
Full disclosure: The fork and/or spoon that we would give you is compostable in facilities that use industrial composting (like us); however, if you take it home … you are going to wind up putting it in your trash … so it is headed to the landfill. Let’s all think about ways we can eliminate trash from the waste stream. This is an easy step to take to cut out waste!
Advanced move: carry a set of flatware and a washable cloth napkin in your car for those last minute indulgences throughout your week!
Note: We prompt our customers to tell us that they need utensils and a napkin … we will not automatically give them to you. Further, you will hear us say, “Are you headed home or do you need utensils?” to encourage you to think about that a moment before just automatically saying you need them!
~ When dining with us on site on the patio or in your car even, simply select the option of a compostable sugarcane plate as an option so that the dining experience can be waste free. We will collect your plate, napkin, and utensils to compost on site! Voila … Zero waste! Good for you!
~ Be sure to use our special compost and waste collection bins for anything left over after dining with us … please don’t put Maxie B’s items in the regular shopping center trash cans! We will take your items inside for sorting and proper disposal through our compost and or recycling system.
~ Please please bring your own reusable bag instead of taking a paper one (FYI: Did you know that New York City has implemented a city-wide mandate that if a customer takes a bag from an establishment, there is a $.25 cents charge?!!). Durham is also in the process of implementing a similar plan.
~ Bring back your reusable containers for us to put your items in for a discount off your next purchase. It’s back … our Planet Lover Discount! This time it is a $.50 discount for each clean, container you bring in for us to refill. This solely applies to cake and pie slices as well as 9 packs of pupcakes.
Note: It will take us a few extra moments to fill your order when we are refilling your containers … we appreciate your understanding as we get back in this groove with our team!
And finally … stay tuned for a new “PLANET LOVER PUNCH CARD!”
We will reward you for making eco-friendly behavior changes when shopping with us and hope that you will use these new routines everywhere you shop or dine!
Connecting, learning, & Giving Back
Charitable Giving: As a company, we regularly support a great many environmental organizations as well as some other local charitable causes that are near and dear to our staff. These wonderful nonprofits are honored here on our charitable giving page.
Volunteering / Environmental Education : We regularly offer opportunities to volunteer in the community or to participate in assorted environmental education activities that enrich and broaden the scope of understanding of the importance of our role in stewardship for our planet and all who inhabit it. All of these “extra curricular” opportunities are paid to our team by the company. Examples would be our weekly visit to the Guilford County Animal Shelter where we go to feed the dogs Pupcakes each Tuesday afternoon, or a litter clean up, taking a hike with Piedmont Land Conservancy to learn about woodland habitats in the Piedmont, or watching an environmental movie such as “Kiss the Ground” at home and then emailing a few thoughts and comments about the film to share with management afterwards.
Passing it on …
We want to be a leader in the community for sustainability and to teach our customers tactics for keeping their footprint light!
We are not trying to be offensive when we discourage customers from taking utensils from us when they are going home anyway! We simply know that our country’s current foodservice/consumer practices are not sustainable and that we all must change our behaviors ~~~ quickly!
If you think back to thirty years ago, we did not go about our days stopping in from one business to another buying single-use disposable items all day long … from coffee in the morning to doughnuts for mid-morning snack, take out for lunch or dinner, and dessert for afterwards! It adds up to more than our planet can support.
We hope that by placing this information both on our website and by making the film in conjunction with the City of Greensboro’s Kathleen Clay Edwards Family Branch Library that we will begin to reach more people with these important messages. Together we really can make a positive change for the better.
~ Robin Davis
Founder, Maxie B’s
References :
Recommended reading list - any of Doug Tallamy’s books. or watch Dr. Tallamy here. It was a talk from Sept, 2021, to the SC Native Plant Society, that also incorporates wisdom from E.O. Wilson’s book Half Earth.
Click on the images below to view video content by Doug Tallamy.
Recent Tallamy Press : Click here. (We LOVE this concept and we are on the map!)
As climate change accelerates, Americans increasingly turn to native plants - The Washington Post
a few more ways you can help our planet
don’t spray for mosquitoes
Instead, begin planting native plants to make your garden a habitat for the birds, bats and insects like dragonflies that will eat mosquitoes for you! Spraying for mosquitoes is harmful for your pets, for you, and for all of the wildlife that we need in our world. Read further here!
While you are working on cultivating your native plant habitat, you can simply apply an insect repellent on you if mosquitoes are out and are bothersome.
We recommend 2 safe insect repellents!
Both are made by hand in small batches and are available online or at Maxie B’s.
(Safe-to-use but effective!)
Bug be Gone
Otter Wax Mosquito Repellent
leave the leaves
Savvy gardeners know that keeping their fallen leaves on their property benefits wildlife and our environment ... not to mention their gardens!
Why You Should Leave the Leaves, Laura Tangley
Leave the Leaves, written by Paige Burns
Leave the Leaves, written by Matt Jones
Leave the Leaves! by Justin Wheeler
get involved
Get involved with local environmental groups to learn more and to volunteer in our community on projects that benefit nature.
You can also sign up for emails from Melanie Buckingham from the Kathleen Clay Edwards Family Branch Library for many environmental educational opportunities and hands-on activities like birding, nature journaling and more!
I wanted to share my personal recommendation for Lawrence Peterson of Compassionate Wildlife Removal.
Lawrence has helped me in a number of ways this spring and his services are so unique, detailed, and valuable that I wanted to share my experience.
Anyone who knows me knows that I adore animals of all kinds. However, this does not mean that I want them living IN my house! Nonetheless, I’ve had my share of uninvited guests … bats, snakes, mice, rats, opossums, groundhogs, raccoons, and bees! It turns out that animals are very curious and very smart. They can find any number of ways to get into a crawlspace, attic, vent area if the contractor did not seal it properly when building or remodeling a home.
Lawrence came out did an assessment of my property and gave me a detailed estimate of what he recommended to seal the entry points (I had approximately 16 areas that were available to anyone if they wanted to come on in!). He worked diligently and carefully, catching all live animals and escorting them outdoors on my property to live where they should be, just not in my house! He then cleaned and sanitized the areas that had been affected, leaving my home clean and secured.
As an added request, he installed some owl boxes, bat houses, and bird houses with baffles for me as well. Now the resident wildlife has wonderful housing as do I. We are all happy!
I really appreciate Lawrence’s wisdom, kind spirit, and level of expertise and experience. Finding an unexpected visitor in your home is often very stressful for both the animal and yourself. I’m so happy to have Lawerence on our team!
Robin Davis
Founder, Maxie B's
