Friday 8 October 2010

Coffee Club's image turns to water......


The Coffee Club, which tries to promote a sustainable image with its UTZ certified brews, gets a dressing down in this letter to the editor published in The Daily Examiner yesterday:

Water wasters

I was disappointed the theme for one of the Coffee Club's Franchise of the Year events was a "water fight", which asked customers to buy a bottle of water and encourage their friends, work colleagues and family to do the same.

Don't they know bottled water is one the most wasteful products sold in Australia, particularly in towns like Grafton which have an excellent water supply?

Bottled water is expensive and is not worth the cost, either to the consumer or to the planet.

It has a high environmental cost at all stages - during its production vast amounts of oil and water are used, during its transportation more fossil fuels are burned, and then there is the problem of disposing of the discarded bottles.

All up, the amount of oil required equals about 20 per cent of the bottle's volume.

Australia's annual use of bottled water generates more than 60,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases - the same amount as 13,000 cars.


Bundanoon became the first town in Australia to ban the sale of bottled water a year ago due to concerns about its environmental impact.
I presume there is no Coffee Club franchisee in that town.

A much better stunt for the Coffee Club would have been to ask its franchisees to sell reusable bottles, which could be filled for free from the tap.

JANET CAVANAUGH,
Secretary,
Climate Change Australia (Clarence)

1 comment:

Cheryl said...

Yes great article. Come on Coffee Club, you ought to know better! Great blog on minimising plastic is "Fake Plastic Fish" http://fakeplasticfish.com/plasticfreeguide/ I took their one week challenge to keep all plastic waste and was quite amazed and am now educated on how not to end up with so much!