Choose.Reuse. Coffee Cup waste behaviour change
Campaign overview
What’s Choose.Reuse.?
Choose.Reuse. is a behaviour change toolkit for one of the most visible problem waste items: disposable coffee cups. It contains a suite of communications and tracking materials which any business can use within its office as part of a campaign to encourage staff to take reusable cups when buying coffee. It’s designed to make wasteful takeaway coffee cups a last-resort option.
As the generators of waste in an office building, occupants have a critical role to play in the quest to reduce, reuse, recycle. While not the biggest impact in terms of weight, coffee cups can take up a lot of space and volume in office bins. They are one of the most accessible and frequent decision points for a large number of office staff and our society more generally, with three billion takeaway coffee cups used in Australia every year. While there are some options for recycling in the market depending on location and contractor, research shows that the majority of these cups end up in landfill, and they contaminate recycling streams Great facilities and best practice waste streams in your office are largely pointless if your staff don’t know what should go in the recycling bin versus the rubbish bin, or think about what they consume and throw away.
This campaign challenges everyone to Choose.Reuse. Measure your office’s current coffee cup waste using our simple Waste Assessment tool, set a goal, download the elements of the toolkit you need, brand them if you like, and start the Choose.Reuse. campaign.
How does Choose. Reuse. work?
The Choose.Reuse. is a behaviour change toolkit campaign material has been developed within a values and identity-based theory of change framework, and includes a range of positive and negative messages, and a clear provocation: what does your cup say about you?
We want people to consider what their choice of coffee cup communicates to others; are they conscientious and diligent, a big picture thinker, or a team player, or are they careless, or disorganised and unprepared?
Habit-changing challenge
The campaign is designed to work best as a challenge to staff. By setting a clear goal for your office and giving everyone a simple action to take over a set period of time, the behaviour of taking a reusable cup should become individual habit, as well as the way we do things here for your office.
To get the most out of the challenge, we recommend you:
- Measure
Kick things off with a waste assessment, using the DIY CitySwitch Waste Assessment Tool. This will create a benchmark to measure your progress, and see exactly how much these cups are contributing to your office waste.
- Set a goal
Get senior management buy-in, so your organisation is leading from the top, and setting the bar high with a disposable cup reduction target.
- Roll out messaging
The toolkit will help get everyone on board. The downloadable graphics, posters and email templates will encourage positive change over the campaign period.
- Reward efforts
Workplace or building-wide competitions can be run using the toolkit’s reward punchcards. You might do a weekly draw with some fun prizes. We have some punchcards that will help you track participation, and you can run cross-department or floor-war competitions using them as well. Get in touch if you’d like some.
- Track success
At the end of the campaign, use the CitySwitch Waste Assessment Tool again to measure your results and communicate these back to staff. We think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the difference one small change in habit can make. And your team will be proud agents of change.
- Let us know!
Please get in touch and report your successes so that CitySwitch can tell your story, and demonstrate the collective efforts across the CitySwitch network.
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