We’re aiming to cut our single use cup waste in half by May 2018.
Through our collective caffeinated brainstorming, we’ve arrived at a handful of initiatives, which we’re excited to get underway.
The first is our new additional coffee service, ‘Short Stay’. Exhibit A photo above, Short Stay is inspired in part by the standing espresso culture of Italy. (Not the dark roast, bitter, cheap commercial grade part.) We provide the Short Stay bar, the Malcolm Greenwood designer ceramic, make the coffee and do the washing up. You just stand for a few minutes to drink it, channel Al Pacino or Sophia Loren and help save fish from Sydney Harbour to the Amalfi. If you’re in a hurry to rush off in your Ferrari, we have created the ‘50 Degree Latte or Flat White’, made a touch cooler so it’s a touch faster to drink. Alternatively, for speed, ‘Spros are the go, as always.
GET YOUR HANDS ON OUR ‘BREW KEEPCUP’
If you can’t spare a few minutes but can spare space in your bag for a reusable travel cup, great. We’ve launched a glass KeepCup with “Single O” laser etched into the cork band (a KeepCup first, thanks guys!), and to laser etch into people’s minds that the cup needs to be used 15 times before, in energy terms, before it starts to outperform takeaway cups. We want to see them well loved, like worn-in leather jackets. Plus of course, reusables of all brands and types are welcome, and show us your mugs too.
Great to have seen plenty of mugs out and about at Carriageworks with our new CafeCups @ Carriageworks Farmers Market project letting customers borrow a ceramic cup to roam the markets. We’ve had a full tub of washing up after each Saturday which is a nice problem to have, and fear not, eyes are on efficient dishwashing, which from our Google-ing equates to half the energy use of single use cups, so we’re out in front.
So back to those single use cups. We’re determined to leave no lid unturned. If you can’t quite give up the disposable cup, are fairly coordinated and don’t ride a bike or skateboard on your commute, try going lidless, to cut down on some of the waste.
Then what to do with the cup? Now there’s a 1-billion-cups-a-year-in-Australian-landfill question! The cup we use, Biocup, is proven recyclable, with the corn starch lining dissolving in the recycling process, leaving a paper product. Problem is that coffee cups are made out of multiple material types, confusing the daylights out of recycling facilities as to which ones for what streams. Either that, or they’re just being lazy. So there currently is no answer to single use cup disposal. Which is why we’re asking you to take a stand against coffee cup waste. Pronto.
• Waste fighting is a serious past-time at Single O. Through the co-creation of the Juggler Milk On Tap System, we’ve helped save over 6 million 2 litre plastic milk bottles from the waste stream since 2012.
• Roaster-branded coffee cups sold to cafes for revenue stream and brand exposure has never been a past-time at Single O. We can think of better things to do than make desirable a single use cup that has no waste management solution.
