Coffee waste is for mugs

PHIL DOYLE/Sunday Star-Times

REFILL: A personal mug used at Coffee To Go.

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Fancy a takeaway skinny latte with an extra shot? That'll be $4, thanks. And would you mind bringing your own cup?

Nelson's cafe and takeaway outlets are taking recycling to a new level by encouraging customers to bring their own cups and containers rather than taking away plastic and polystyrene ones from their shops.

They are part of the city's new Bring Your Own Container (BYOC) scheme aimed at reducing the mountain of waste dumped into the landfill each year.

Gifford Tait, of Divine Coffee Roasters in Wakatu Square, Nelson, was one of the first retailers to sign up to the scheme. "We encourage people to bring their cups into our coffee shop," Tait says. "What's the point in cluttering the town up with endless throw-away cups? This way everyone has less of a litter problem to deal with."

Luis Sabino, owner of Tasty Buggers in Hardy St, has also signed up: "To me it's a no- brainer. I want to see customers bringing their own containers in rather than seeing a stream of non-reusable plastic stuff going out from the shop and straight into the nearest rubbish bin."

The BYOC scheme is believed to be the first of its kind in New Zealand and is the brainchild of the Transition Nelson Waste Group.

"Both the environment and our pockets suffer as we are paying for packaging that we immediately throw away," says the group's spokesman, Chris Ward.

Nelson City Council sustainability co-ordinator Karen Lee says the BYOC scheme shows that being environmentally friendly did not mean being anti-business: "This project is a great way of demonstrating that both consumers and businesses understand the need to act more sustainably."

The BYOC launch last week coincided with retail giant The Warehouse's announcement it will charge 10c per plastic bag at the checkout from April 20, in the hope of taking 20 million plastic bags out of circulation in a year.

TAKE IT AWAY

* New Zealanders are in the top 10 takeaway consumers per capita in the world

* Recycling one aluminium can saves enough electricity to run a computer or a TV for three hours.

* New Zealanders use more than 22 million plastic bags each week - that's more than five per person.

* Plastic bags take hundreds of years to decompose, litter landscapes and waterways, release toxic gases when burnt, and choke whales, seals, turtles and livestock.

- © Fairfax NZ News