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Kia ora!

Welcome to the first Conscious Consumer monthly email. Here you will find tips and tricks to help support your ‘conscious consumer’ lifestyle and guilt free deals for consumers and cafés.

This month’s theme is eco-packing. And because the festive season is upon us we’ve also added some tips on how to have a more ‘conscious’ Christmas!

  

Primo Prize Pack winner!

 

Congratulations to Natalie Jessup from Auckland. You have won our primo prize pack! A BIG thank you to Hungry Bins, Ecostore, Ideal Cups, Trade Aid and Kokako who donated the prizes:

Thank you:

• Ecostore – for a bucket of environmentally friendly products
• Ideal Cups –for two NZ made reusable takeaway coffee cup
• Trade Aid for fair trade chocolates, sugar, and drinking chocolate
• Kokako for fairtrade organic coffee

Plus a special thank you to Hungry Bins for donating the “best worm farm ever.” As well as being used by several Conscious Consumer cafés in Auckland, Hungry Bins are fast becoming the new must have gardening accessory and also won a Judge’s Commendation award at the November Sustainable Business Network’s national awards. New Zealand designed and made, the self-contained system makes composting food waste clean, simple and innocuous – ideal for anyone wanting to compost, even if you don’t have a garden.

 

Minutes on the lips...Lifetime in the tips!

Takeaway coffee is a daily ritual for many Kiwis. 10,000s of takeaway coffees are sold in NZ each day! Unfortunately most takeaway coffees are sold in disposable cups, which are laminated with a plastic resin called polyethylene, making the cups tricky to recycle.  Most of the cups end up in landfills and produce leachates and methane that pollute our beautiful environment. But there are ways you can help reduce the amount of waste heading for landfills.

To help reduce coffee cups, and other takeaway packaging, entering landfill we promote BYO cups and eco-packaging.

To earn our BYO cup badge, a café must allow its customers to bring their own cups for takeaway coffee.  All of our CC cafés allow customers to BYO cup, and some even offer discounts off your coffee if you BYO! If you don’t have your own BYO cup there are now several brands on the market, including the New Zealand-made Ideal Cup.  Many Conscious Consumer cafés sell usable BYO coffee cups, which retail at around $15 - $20.

To earn our eco-packaging badge, a café must use ‘biodegradable’ packaging for its takeaway coffee cups, food containers and cold drink containers. Biodegradable packaging is made from renewable resources, such as corn starch and bamboo that will biodegrade (meaning the material breaks down into natural components) if disposed of correctly. 

Unfortunately disposing of ‘biodegradable’ coffee cups correctly can be tricky! Biodegradable coffee cups are lined with a corn-based plastic known as PLA (poly-lactic acid). PLA requires the heat of a commercial composting facility to biodegrade properly. If they end up in landfill they will not break down any faster or more thoroughly than standard disposable cups. 

Thankfully Commercial compost facilities are available in our three regions: Auckland, Hamilton and Wellington. However collection services for biodegradable cups are not well established and extra effort is required to help ensure cups are disposed of correctly.

Here are some tips to help you dispose of coffee cups correctly:

• All Conscious Consumer cafés displaying the eco-packaging badge use compostable coffee cups.  Search our website to find cafés.
• If you’re unsure whether your local café uses compostable coffee cups ask.
• Ask your local café if they have compost facilities available that you can use to dispose of your compostable cup.
• If your workplace has compost bins it’s likely you will be able to dispose of your compostable cup in it.
• Check your coffee cup lid. Many coffee cup lids are made from number 5 plastic, which can be recycled in most regions throughout New Zealand. PLA lids are also available and are becoming more common.
• Do not throw your PLA-lined cup or lid in a recycling bin as PLA contaminate mainstream plastic recycling.

Work is also in progress to recycle standard disposable coffee cups throughout New Zealand! VISY in Auckland can process standard cups as a mixed grade recyclable paper.  VISY is working with LoveNZ and Huthamaki to investigate the viability of collecting standard coffee cups for recycling through public place recycling bins and other collection pathways. We will keep you updated on these developments.

  

Good Ideas for a conscious Christmas!

The festive season is upon us! Most of us will spend more and consume more than usual over the next month. There are ways to embrace the Christmas spirit whilst being conscious with your consuming.

Here are some tips for you:

• ‘Wrap’ your gifts in re-usable shopping bags, scarves or cloths. That way your loved ones get two gifts, plus you avoid unnecessary paper wastage. Or, if you have a budding young artist in the family who regularly brings home their ‘work’ from kindy, those colourful works of art that don’t fit on the fridge make wonderfully personalised paper gift wrap for friends and family!
• Choose a live Christmas tree – they are locally grown, can be composted and smell like Christmas! 
• Donate food and gifts (or your time as a volunteer) to your local food bank or charities like City Missions to help those in need.  Giving really is as good as receiving.  
• Buy organic and/or free-range produce for your Christmas dinner.  Search our supplier directory to find your local organic and free range suppliers. Note: many smaller-scale suppliers need your xmas orders booked ahead of time to manage the rush.
• Head to your local farmers’ market for fresh, locally grown fruit and vegetables for the Christmas table.
• Decorate your Christmas tree with edible treats, rather than plastic decorations. Click here for some great ideas from Good magazine.
• Swathe your tree in LED Christmas lights – they use almost 90% less electricity than standard bulbs and last up to and beyond ten years.
• Use reusable, recyclable or compostable packaging for your Christmas picnics and events – Search our supplier directory to find suppliers of compostable packaging plates, cups and cutlery.

Conscious gift ideas:

• Give services and experiences (eg. massage vouchers or tickets to an event) rather than objects.
• Edible gifts - homemade baking or chutneys, or a box of seasonal, organic fruit and vegetables search our supplier directory.
• Virtual gifts that help save people and the planet like Oxfam gifts and  Greenpeace giving.
• Ethical gifts from Trade Aid or Fairtrade coffee from one of our Fairtrade suppliers.
• Local NZ made gifts – including gifts from Hungrybin, Ideal Cup,  EcoStore, Green House, Commonsense Organics.
• A café voucher from your favourite Conscious Consumer café.

  

Farewell Nadine and Welcome Anna

Farewell to Nadine Wakim our Auckland coordinator. Nadine has done a fantastic job representing and promoting the CC movement in Auckland this year.  Conscious Consumers successfully launched in Auckland at the end of June and now has over 20 cafés in central suburbs, and over 25 Auckland-based suppliers on board. Nadine will continue to offer her time to Conscious Consumers on a voluntary basis but returns to her part-time role at Waste Not Consulting and caring for her now very café-conscious toddler, Oliver.  

We warmly welcome Anna Lowe who takes over the Auckland Coordinator responsibilities this month. Anna is looking forward to meeting all our current café and supplier members soon and organising events in the new year.

 

Sign up a cafe!

We are keen to get more cafes signed up! We are currently signing up cafes in Wellington, Auckland, Hamilton, Cambridge and Raglan. If you live in one of these five centres, you can help by dropping off this letter to your local cafe. Check out the bottom of this page to find which suburbs in these centres are eligible to join.