COMPANIES AND ORGANISATIONS

Just as Cafes can join our campaign, so too can organisations large and small!

All across Ireland we have been supporting organisations to reduce their use of disposable cups with many becoming disposable cup free. The journey to get there often began with two like minded employees having a cuppa over lunch and wanting to bring about a change in their organisation.

We support those individuals to create Green Teams where they work and the wonderful part of the story is that those individuals don't stop there, they go on to introduce many other sustainable practices to their fellow teams.

What is becoming more evident is that employees want to work for organisations who also have sustainability at their core.

Pressure is mounting for corporations to move away from the linear take, make, throwaway system towards a Circular Economy where we extract all the value from products before their end of life.

Circular Economy

Your organisation will benefit from cost savings through reduced disposable cup/lid expenditures and it will help reduce your litter and landfill, cutting long-term waste collection costs.
It will help reduce your organisations environmental impact.
We will post your participation on our social media to promote your organisation or cafe.
Please ensure you display the reduction/incentive on your price displays. The more visible the incentive the more likely people will notice.
It can make a significant addition to your Corporate Social Responsibility through community and employee pride, public awareness of waste and litter.

If you offer compostable cups then you will need to provide on-site compost bins. They will only compost if disposed of in a compost bin that is sent to an industrial composter. If they are put into the general waste bin they will produce methane gas (20 times worse than CO2) if sent to landfill.

It is equally important to explain in your organisation that reuse is always best as compostable cups are still single use items

HOW TO INTRODUCE A CAMPAIGN IN YOUR WORKPLACE OR ORGANISATION

Behaviour breeds behaviour so the more of us that use reusable cups the more likely there is going to be a positive outcome.

Set up your Green Team by making contact with other departments in your organisation such as Procurement, HR, Marketing and CSR there are always people who are interested in environmental issues. A team from a cross section of the organisation can bring a lot of unique skills to your campaign.
If your organisation is going to supply reusable cups then do not give them away for FREE. In our experience the most successful campaigns involve subsidised cups as people value their cup when it comes with a price even if it is low.
Once you have a few people on board your committee then you could issue a newsletter/ezine to educate people about our campaign and the issues about disposable cups. At least two weeks in advance of your launch ensure you have posters in the canteen and communicate to employees what you are doing. Good visuals will really help, use the support your Marketing/Advertising department. The success of your campaign depends on the pre-awareness and the conversations you create.
You could do some research in your workplace to see how many disposable cups are consumed. Have a week where everyone has to dispose of their cups in a certain area and then at the end of the week the visual impact of this will be evidence of the waste generated.
Organise a lunchtime event to highlight the campaign, ask people to sign a pledge to carry a cup or use a ceramic when sitting in. Make it fun, taking photos and having a competition (see if your organisation will fund some cups).
If you have a tendering process for catering services in your organisation then you could suggest to the procurement department that in future it includes a policy on.
- Joining the Conscious Cup Campaign
- Using only ceramic cups in your canteen and ditching the disposables
- Insist that if they supply compostable cups they come with an extra charge. Your campaign will have instant success if you have a reduction for reusables and a surcharge for disposables.
- Composting their spent coffee beans