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Australians continue to get behind War on Waste with huge spikes in reusable cups sales and usage.

Announcement posted by frank green 15 Jun 2017

Three part abcTV series War on Waste that aired a month ago highlighted that our waste is growing at double the rate of our population with 52 mega tonnes generated a year. Australia is ranked 5th highest for generating the most municipal waste in the world.

 

News for many from this series was the knowledge that most disposable coffee cups (i.e. 98%) are NOT recyclable due to a coating of polyethylene plastic and therefore ending up in landfill even when well meaning consumers recycle them. So with 1.2 of the 3 million coffees sold daily from cafes around Australia being poured into disposable cups, this is equal to close to half a billion disposable cups in landfill every year, in Australia alone.

 

What is encouraging to see, however, is the speed of action Australians appear to have taken in light of this new information with reuse manufacturers such as frank green in Melbourne noticing huge spikes in purchase of their SmartCupTM and SmartBottleTM directly following the airing of this series.

 

“The positive momentum this program has created is fantastic” says Ben Young, Founder and CEO at frank green. “We have seen sales for our frank green SmartCupTM increase more than ten fold in the last 2 weeks alone”.

 

“Furthermore, we are hearing from our café partners that reuse at the point of purchase in café’s is also on the rise as Australians get behind this “war on waste”. Mr Young estimates that typically only around 1.5-2% of all coffees sold are poured into reusable cups v 40% into disposable. Most recent estimates, however, show that reusable figures have risen to anywhere between 5% and 6% of all coffee sales.

 

Mr Darren Tiang, owner at Tom Thumb café in Melbourne’s CBD says “The impact this tv show has had on our customers behaviours is incredible. We sold out of our stock of frank green SmartCupTM within a week and we are filling all kinds of reusable cups in much higher numbers on a daily basis. It’s great to see our customers react with such positive change”.

 

When entrepreneur and reuse campaigner Ben Young couldn’t find a reusable coffee cup that had everything he needed – he made one. The frank green brand of reusable products began in 2014 with a desire to drive greater reuse among Australians with better product design, style and functionality. The multi-award winning frank green SmartCupTM and SmartBottleTM are both 100% Australian designed and made with a unique push button spill resistant lid.

 

“Our key challenge now” Mr Young states, ‘is to ensure this momentum continues through product innovation, by keeping the conversation going, and development of systems (such as CaféPay) that encourage and reward regular usage of reusable cups”

 

CaféPay, developed in partnership with frank green, is a payment system moving fast into cafes all around Australia.  In partnership with the leading café POS system Kounta, CaféPay reads the chip embedded in the frank green SmartCupTM, SmartBottleTM or SmartBandTM to take your order, make secure cash payments, store value on your cup and reward your loyalty with free coffees and special offers.

 

“The intention of CaféPay is to keep the need to reuse top of mind, everyday and why not reward reusers for their behaviour.”  Mr Young says.  “And given the rates of growth we are having with CaféPay, our café partners couldn’t agree more”.

 

The abc’s war on waste 3 part tv series is still available to watch on iview.

frank green products are available from  www.frankgreen.com.au and selected cafes and retail outlets nationally.

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Find out more at #waronwasteau #byocoffeecup  #reuserevolution #responsiblecafes