Enjoying your favorite cup of coffee? As you savor the enticing aroma of that roasted coffee beans and take a sip of the daily dose of caffeine that you need for you to last the day, have you ever wondered where your disposable coffee cup goes after? Just how sustainable and eco-friendly is your most-favored brand of coffee?
While it’s convenient to use those plastic cups – along with their lid, sleeves, and stir sticks – as you take them out, we all know the impact that they may bring to our environment, particularly to our oceans if not properly disposed of. That’s why tech-enabled coffee chain, Flash Coffee, is taking its commitment a step forward towards environmental responsibility by partnering with green start-up, CleanHub, in neutralizing its plastic impact.
In November 2021, Flash Coffee first embarked on a mission to neutralize its plastic impact in the past, present, and future by committing to recover over 80,000 kilograms of plastic waste in collaboration with CleanHub. This means that for every Flash Coffee purchase, the coffee chain – together with CleanHub and its global network of plastic collection projects – recovers the equivalent amount of plastic before it reaches the oceans.
From Plastic Neutral to Plastic Neutral+
Knowing how powerful working together is, Flash Coffee and CleanHub now move forward with more sustainable advocacy to create a long-term positive impact on the environment. In Flash Coffee’s latest app update, the consumers can now take part in the coffee chain’s sustainability project!
As all orders made at Flash Coffee are automatically plastic neutral, customers can choose to contribute $0.20 on the check-out page to enable the recovery of ten times more plastic than needed to neutralize the impact of a single plastic cup. By simply doing this top-up, the purchase made will become Plastic Neutral+, where 100% of the contributions will directly go to the funding of the selected CleanHub’s collection partner. In this new update, customers will also receive a notification of the latest volume of plastic collection they have enabled. This is made possible by the unique tracking technology of CleanHub.
Supporting GOT BAG and Green Worms through CleanHub
CleanHub works in global partnerships to recover plastic waste. The start-up company helps track, document, and verify the volumes of plastic waste collected and recovered by Flash Coffee’s collection partners: GOT BAG and Green Worms.
Situated in Damak, Indonesia, GOT BAG, developed the world’s first backpack made primarily of marine plastic. For years, plastic has been one of the biggest pollutants in the country. However, since October 2019, around 2,000 fishermen worked together to collect the plastic wastes along the north shore of Java. These fishermen were given additional income by bringing plastic bycatch back to shore or cleaning the mangroves and waterways leading to the ocean.
All wastes collected are then sorted into different plastic types. All PET is recycled and processed into yarn for the creation and production of the backpacks while the rest of the plastics are segregated according to their most suitable recycling solutions.
On the other hand, Green Worms is a social enterprise in Kerala, India that intercepts the waste before they end up in the natural environment. The group conducts door-to-door collection services for household wastes. They then transport them to the Green Worms Sorting Center where they get segregated into different material types.
The recyclable wastes are sold to recycling companies while the non-recyclables are sent to disposal endpoints. Aside from this environmental movement, Green Worms also supports women from self-help groups in Kerala by hiring and helping them become financially independent.
Flash Coffee aims to create more sustainability-focused campaigns and partnerships in the future to further minimize its impact, protect the environment, and harness the power of the collective to have cleaner oceans and the environment.
CleanHub Founder and CEO, Joel Tasche shared that aside from recovering over one million kilograms of plastic waste, they have also connected more than 100 brand partners to collection hubs in Asia. These brands are not only playing a major role in the environment but have also made a great social impact by providing dignified jobs to hundreds of people.
Going Barepack: Switching out Single-Use Plastics for Reusables
To further reduce the volume of single-use plastics in the operation of Flash Coffee Singapore, they have partnered with the largest reusable packaging system in the area to get the food and beverage items delivered in reusable containers. This initiative will be first implemented in the Oxley Tower and PLUS outlets – and hopefully get successfully rolled out islandwide.
Flash Coffee currently operates in seven markets across Asia-Pacific which include Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Japan. This 2022, the tech-enabled coffee chain is set to launch in a bigger market. To learn more about Flash Coffee, visit them at https://flash-coffee.com/.
