Compostable cups & collection to reduce waste

03 October 2016

Compostable cups & collection to reduce the 180m cups heading to Kiwi landfills

Z has launched a unique solution to the nation’s coffee cup conundrum with the country’s first large-scale compostable cup collection.

New Zealanders use over 180 million single-use coffee cups every year and most are sent to landfill. Z sells nearly five million of these.

In a bid to stem this flow of waste, Z has had its new compostable coffee cups and lids internationally certified for commercial composting – and is going a step further and collecting them back to make sure they’re turned into garden food rather than landfill.

“Traditional takeaway coffee cups are actually devilish for the environment,” said Z sustainability manager Emily Watt.

“Although they’re made of cardboard, they’re plastic-coated on the inside, which makes them very difficult to recycle in New Zealand. Many people just don’t realise that their daily takeaway coffee, as well as being delicious and often necessary, is contributing to thousands of tonnes of waste in the country’s landfills every year,” she said.

Emily said the company sold around 90,000 Z Express coffees every week, so it had been working hard to find a more sustainable solution.

The new Z Espress compostable cups were made from sustainably sourced paper board and bioplastics and printed with non-toxic inks, and were certified to fully biodegrade in commercial composting conditions.

The company has installed cup collection bins at more than 70 Z stores across the country, in regions where commercial composting facilities were available. “And we’re keen to collect cups back at our other sites too, as soon as the composting facilities come online.”

“We wanted to be sure we did it right, so we’ve had our cups and lids internationally certified by Vincotte for commercial composting – even the plastic lids could be fertilising people’s roses 90 days after use,” Emily said.

ENDS

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