How your daily coffee can make an IMPACT

For the wattsnext team, 2017 is all about IMPACT. How we impact our clients, how we impact our community and how we impact each other. Now as the resident office health nut and waste reducing Nazi, it was also very clear to me that we could also make a serious positive environmental impact, just by making one simple change.

Without boring the socks off my colleagues, I gently reminded them that waste is still a HUGE problem (especially in offices) and plastic bottles and takeaway coffee cups are the two most common things found in landfill. They are also the two items that take the longest to break down and the easiest things to replace with reusable alternatives.

The wattsnext Brisbane office is lucky enough to be in walking distance from an incredible local coffee shop, but after a quick calculation I realized that between the eight or so people in that office, we were adding up to 40 (sometimes more) takeaway coffee cups to landfill every week! Think about those numbers over a year…

Most people think that because they are cardboard they are recyclable, but unfortunately only about 5% of them are able to be properly recycled due to the heat protectant coating that covers the outside of the cups.

With this in mind, the team have now started bringing in their own BYO coffee cups and takeaway containers to reduce the number heading straight to landfill and to also reduce the exposure to potentially harmful plastics (usually found in the lids). Many have also started doing this with plastic water bottles and reusable food containers.

Though this initiative seems small and obvious, if your workplace can reduce your wastage- even just by the number of disposable coffee cups, then you are absolutely making a positive impact on our environment.

And to me, that’s what the bigger picture is all about.