A local ice cream shop has gone green.
Don’t worry Cone Castle, at 5 Fir Street near Bower Ponds, isn’t offering broccoli or spinach flavoured sundaes, but instead the shop is using more recyclable and compostable items to serve sundaes and other treats in.
Wooden spoons made of 100 per cent recycled birch wood, paper towels made from 100 per cent recycled paper and napkins made from 90 per cent sugar cane fiber and 10 per cent recycled paper are among the things being used to become more environmentally friendly.
Milk shakes, sundaes, sodas and ice cream floats will soon come in 100 per cent compostable PLA containers, derived from corn, when the bowls arrive next week. PLA, or polyactic acid, is made from cornstarch but looks like a plastic container.
Vern Lowe, self proclaimed King of Cones and owner/manager of Cone Castle, said the shop decided to go this route after he attended the National Ice cream Retailers Association convention in Scottsdale, Arizona, last November and many businesses were switching to the more environmentally-friendly products.
He said he thought he could serve a niche market and set the store apart.
“I think the market is ready for that, especially younger people,” Lowe said. The containers cost a few cents more, but Lowe feels people are ready to pay for something that is better for the environment.
The store opened on Saturday and a few customers have already told Lowe they appreciate the environmentally-friendly choices he is making.
He has also placed signs up in the store, saying things like: Eat a cone, save a tree.
Lowe wanted to own an ice cream shop for thirty years. In the late 1970s, a man Lowe knew in Regina had an ice cream stand by the road. Lowe first rented the Cone Castle and then purchased it last spring. “People come in in a good mood and leave in a better mood,” he said.
Now semi-retired, Lowe owned a car care product business for more than seven years and before that worked in the agricultural parts business.
Until the summer when the store is open earlier and later, Cone Castle will be open from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays and from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. on weekends.
sobrien@www.reddeeradvocate.com