12.06.2025
‘Keeping it Green’ is one of our key values as a business, and is something we continuously evaluate to ensure that we keep up with new ideas and technology, and make sure we are doing what we can, where we can, to support our planet.
Over the last year, we recognised some areas in which we could do better and we’ve worked to improve on them. In the past year alone we’ve removed all plastic bottles from our Bath store, we source our milk from local dairies, and we’ve been on a huge mission to assess our disposable cup situation…but nothing had prepared us for the journey that this quest would take us on!
As a primarily take away offering, we go through takeaway cups pretty quickly, averaging roughly 8000 hot drinks a month at Bath Spa alone! As you can imagine, it’s incredibly important that we make sure that we are using the best possible options to balance functionality and green credentials. Cue giant rabbit hole…
After doing some digging and talking to various companies, what we found was pretty shocking. To cut a VERY long, complicated, tech-heavy story short, our most shocking discovery was that; cups labelled as “compostable” are only compostable if processed using the correct method, and only certain councils compost their food waste using this particular method. Therefore, if you live in an area in which this process is not used, putting a compostable cup into your home food recycling will only seek to contaminate the food waste and negatively impact the recycling process.
Off the back of these findings, we’ve searched high and low for a disposable cup which can be universally recycled in either home food or paper recycling, but so far, from what we have found, this solution simply doesn’t exist. We’re still working on various options to find the most beneficial solution for us, our customers, and the environment, but we’ve got a long way to go!
Ultimately, the less single use disposables that are used, the better. Therefore, alongside our disposable cup mission, we’re working hard to promote the use of reusable cups in our stores. We already offer double loyalty stamps to customers who bring their own reusable cups, and all of our customers get a free drink when they purchase one of our keep cups, but we’ve gone further and now ensure that the keep cups we sell bring an extra level of green goodness to the table – in come Ocean Bottle…
If you’ve visited one of our stores recently, you’ll have noticed these most recent additions to our merch lines. So let us take some time to introduce you to this wonderful brand and tell you a little bit more about how they’re doing their bit for our planet:
Ocean Bottle are a are a BCorp certified company that are actively working to do good (not just do no harm), by giving more to the world’s natural resources than they take (legends). Here are a few Ocean Bottle facts:
- For every bottle purchased, 11.368kg of plastic (equivalent to 1,000 plastic bottles) is collected globally, in coastal areas where plastic pollution is worst.
- They work with plastic collection partners like Plastic Bank, Plastics for Change and Repurpose Global to actualise the collection of plastic before it ever reaches our oceans.
- 20,613,713kgs of ocean bound plastic has been collected so far.
- Ocean Bottle look beyond plastic and carry out work such as restoring vital mangroves, championing NGOS, ensuring collectors’ social inclusion within their communities. This is where their ethos of ‘DoGood over DoLessHarm’ comes in.
We have personally been using Ocean Bottle drinks bottles and their award winning Brew Flasks for the last few months and they are fab! Keeping hot drinks hot, cold drinks cold and they fit perfectly in car cup holders… they are everything you need out of a reusable bottle or flask! An ideal, long term, alternative to single use disposable cups. To find out more about Ocean Bottle and the GOOD they ARE DOING, visit https://oceanbottle.co/pages/ocean-impact.
So, while we continue to work towards a greener disposable cup solution, we encourage you to do your bit and use a reusable cup as much as you possibly can…and, in our opinion, Ocean Bottle is a pretty darn good reusable solution!
