The Cozy Corner Café has become the first Taupō business to achieve platinum stage of the Resource Wise Business Programme.
The café has been involved with the Resource Wise Business Programme, operated by Taupō District Council, since August 2020 and has worked its way through a four-stage journey of waste minimisation in record time.
The programme is free and focuses on behaviour change within a business through education and support to reduce waste to landfill.
When the café started the programme it was sending around 2653kg of waste to landfill each year. Over the course of two years and by implementing new practices, the team has reduced its waste to 965kg per year.
Taupō District Council environmental ranger – programmes Shannon Hanson says The Cozy Corner is the perfect example of a business that has been able to make a huge impact, with a few simple tweaks.
“When they joined the programme, they were diverting around half of their waste from landfill, which is still a great effort, but by improving recycling, collecting more for compost, and gaining staff investment they’ve been able to divert 89 per cent of their waste for the last year, and have systems in place that make it easy to maintain.”
Café owner Camilla Baker said that while they were already passionate about reducing waste and their environmental footprint, the programme gave them extra drive to succeed and find new ways to further reduce and divert their waste.
“We learnt that we could compost our paper towels and napkins, which we now send to the Taupō Community Gardens where they are composted.
“Our coffee grounds are available for local gardeners and our food scraps are collected by a local farmer.
“We try to avoid ordering packaging that can’t be recycled, we order in bulk where we can, stock glass-bottled drinks and have a reusable cup scheme for our takeaway coffee and juice.
“It has just become a way of life now, for our team.
“If we do have things that we can’t recycle, we try to find options other than landfill. We send various items to local primary schools for storage and craft activities,” says Camilla.
The café’s efforts go much further than just waste minimization though. It also takes measures to reduce its carbon footprint by sourcing local and using natural cleaning products.
Camilla said that the programme has really transformed the way that the team works and that they are proud to reach this milestone, though “there is still more we can be doing in this space, and we will continue on our sustainability journey”.
“I encourage other local businesses to look into this programme and see what measures they could take to reduce the amount of waste they send to landfill.
“It has become common practice in our café now and it doesn’t impact on the productivity of our staff - in fact the team really enjoy working in this way.
“Give it a go, small changes in the way you work can make a huge difference to our environment,” says Camilla.
As part of the Resource Wise Business Programme your business will have annual waste audits and received a detailed waste report, with tailored actions and support to engage your team in behaviour change. Participants also receive an achievement level to promote their waste reduction performance.
Visit taupo.govt.nz/wasteminimisation to find out more or email the Taupō District Council resource wise business coordinator Shannon Hanson at wasteminimisation@taupo.govt.nz.
