Barista Alice Jones with the board on which In-Stone Café tracks the number of cups they have prevented going to a landfill.
Despite Kermit the Frog’s protestations, it might be easy being green after all – as Cambridge’s In Stone Café has discovered.
The Victoria St café has been offering customers the option of having their takeaway coffee in reusable New Zealand-made Ideal Cups with disposable, biodegradable tops. For $10 on top of the cost of their coffee of choice, customers keep the cup and bring it back the next time they visit the café.
In doing so, In-Stone has saved 3250 disposable cups from ending up in a landfill.
“We think it’s a great idea … the customers like it. Everyone’s happy,” said the café owner, Angela Bezzant. “It’s been quite easy for us to keep count of them, so we know we’ve saved that many from going into the landfill.
“The idea came from a girl who worked for us, Kim Van Dorsten. She had seen it online and thought we should give it a try. It was a little slow to start, but then it really took off … it’s been going well ever since.”
Waipā Local companies were among the keen supporters, Bezzant said. Several had purchased cups for their staff and little notes on the wall next to the coffee machines lists employee coffee preferences.
New Zealanders reportedly go through about 295 million cups of takeaway coffee a year, with most of the cups they use ending up in landfill.
