Each month at the Gate, we set ourselves a monthly Green Gate Challenge.
Green Gate is what we call our sustainability policy and we like to embark on monthly challenges.
These challenges are about changing how we think in the long term (and not just for that month), but we’ve found that giving each month a focus helps us keep sustainability and our Green Gate Policy at the forefront of our thinking as an organisation.
This month we decided to ditch the disposable coffee cups!
We embarked on this challenge before but with winter drawing and exciting coffee flavours popping into our local coffee shops, one-use disposable coffee cups were beginning to creep back on desks, and so we took the plunge once again.
Why not take on the #GreenGate challenge?
As always, here’s how we found it!
I love this challenge, because it really does remind me to curb my habits. I slipped up a few times but on the whole, I made the switch. I either made coffee in the office with Fairtrade coffee (we’re now only purchasing Fairtrade tea and coffee for office use!) or I took my mug to our local coffee shops for my caffeine fix. Not only does this reduce waste, but you get a discount too. Win, win.
Chrissy Angus, General Manager
I drink A LOT of coffee. And, as a self-confessed coffee snob, A LOT of coffee shop coffee. Cups littered my desk on day 1 of this challenge and I reminded myself why it’s so important as I was forced to bin them and couldn’t even recycle them. Inspired by seeing Chrissy carrying her mug to our nearest coffee shop and back, I reacquainted myself with my reusable mug and made a commitment to use it. I’ve slipped a few times but I estimate I’ve saved 20 non-recyclable cups in that time which feels huge for such a short space of time. I’ll be saying no to disposable cups now with renewed vigour.
Fiona English, Development Manger
When I was about 15 it was peak LA, celebrity, Starbucks culture. Britney Spears was the movement’s champion, in juicy couture tracksuit and scruffy pony tail, toting a coffee cup full of sugar and syrup. Me and my friends would proudly wander around our local town (which had just got a Starbucks) spending a considerable amount of our supermarket checkout earnings on the latest status symbol – coffee. Yeah, we were that cool. Now, it seems so ridiculous, and so unnecessary and such a waste! This challenge is so easy to pick up, breaking that lazy habit of grabbing a cup of something convenient, by simply sticking a light and reusable cup in my handbag each morning. I’ve had slip ups, but really out of all the challenge we’ve set ourselves, this one has been the best as it’s so easy, and will stick once the month is over.
Daisy Cooper, Producer
