Reduce Your Waste

In a work environment, addressing waste and recycling can bring about positive staff engagement and an opportunity to demonstrate the benefits of collective action. We all notice the harmful impact of plastic pollution for instance. Waste is a great entry point to action on climate and sustainability and may be the very place your start in your net zero journey.

Waste is an important part of reaching net zero and climate resilience. The disposal of organics and paper from our offices to landfill produce methane. Additionally, our resources are precious and material production is energy and resource intensive. Lastly, understanding your waste is an easy step to later understanding your scope 3 emissions.

Manage waste using the waste hierarchy: avoidance is most preferable, then re-use, recyclability, recovery, then lastly disposal. An office waste management plan will evaluate all items consumed by the tenancy and seek to minimise the creation of wastes according to the waste hierarchy. By necessity, the plan will often involve engagement with multiple stakeholders, from procurement to building occupants, cleaners, building managers, waste contractors, and waste facility operators.

Key resources

Coffee cup toolkit - overview and introduction

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:

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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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CitySwitch Signatory of the Year and New Signatory Awards - category judging criteria

  • Delivering outcomes as demonstrated by an improved or maintained current NABERS Energy rating and achieved energy savings* (up to 28 points)
  • Implementing one or more energy saving initiatives (up to 10 points)
  • Demonstrating leadership by undertaking innovative, creative or progressive office energy efficiency activities (up to 10 points)
  • Engagement of staff/ customers/suppliers and/or stakeholders to educate and create market transformation (up to 10 points)
  • Participation in CitySwitch local program activities (up to 10 points).
Note, new Signatories submitting for New Signatory of the Year Award need only complete an indicative rating – all other submissions must be accredited.

CitySwitch Partnership of the Year Award - category judging criteria

Eligibility Criteria

Submitted projects should:

  • Involve more than one registered company 
  • Demonstrate that they are  innovative and over and above “business as usual”
  • Demonstrate that they catalyse “market transformation” and or “address a market barrier”
  • Deliver a reduction in energy consumption and carbon emissions within the built environment 

Judging Criteria

  • Delivering outcomes as demonstrated by an improved or maintained current NABERS Energy rating and achieved energy savings* (up to 14 points)
  • Implementing one or more energy saving initiatives (up to 10 points)
  • Demonstrating leadership by undertaking innovative, creative or progressive office energy efficiency activities (up to 17 points)
  • Engagement of staff/ customers/suppliers and/or stakeholders to educate and create market transformation (up to 17 points)
  • Participation in CitySwitch local program activities (up to 10 points)
  • The submitting entity MUST be a CitySwitch Signatory
Note, Signatories submitting for the Partnership of the Year Award may submit an accredited NABERS tenancy, whole building or base building rating.

It’s easy and free to join the program. Your good-will commitment to the program is an acknowledgement of the business sector’s role in
contributing to environmental sustainability and your intention to reduce your own energy consumption and associated carbon emissions.

As part of this, Signatories to the program commit to achieve an accredited NABERS Energy tenancy rating (between 4 and 6 stars) and
work with CitySwitch to improve their tenancy’s environmental performance.

Find out more about how obtaining a NABERS Energy rating ensures you can benchmark your performance, better manage your progress
over time and promote your star rating achievement.