010
The Transformation Issue | Idealog.co.nz
c
offee is New Zealand’s go to drink of
choice. But while our standards are high
for the caffeinated drink, they are
unfortunately lower when it comes to
delivering the hundreds of millions of
coffee cups into landfill.
Enter the new cups-as-a-service system for takeaway
coffee, Again Again. The social enterprise implements a
circular model, where reusable cups can be purchased by
the customer, then returned to any café involved with the
system for a new one, enabling less waste from both the
user and the café.
Founded in 2018 by Nada Piatek and Melissa Firth,
both founders have used their background knowledge
in manufacturing, sustainability and retail to create the
perfect system for our coffee cup wastages. Firth says
changing behaviour is always the hardest part, so the team
has tried to position Again Again as the most convenient
method for change.
The system is designed to make reuse as normal
as convenience when it comes to the world’s takeaway
coffee habits, while being designed for mass adoption. The
way the system is positioned counterpoints the current
common problems with our coffee habits, says Firth.
“Everyone wants to be good, but change is hard.
Again Again is unlike biodegradable disposable cups, most
of which are never recycled or composted, or personal
reusable cups, which are great but which most people
never remember to have with them. There are few people
who faultlessly manage to have them in hand every singleWe gave Melissa Firth
a little longer than
an elevator ride to
pitch Again Again, a
sustainable coffee cups
on-demand system
which has recently
been introduced in
Auckland, following its
Wellington launch.AG
AIN
A
GAIN
time you spontaneously want a coffee. Our research
showed less than five percent of takeaway coffees are
purchased in a reusable cup. In Australia, where personal
cup usage is higher, they’re still sending one billion coffee
cups to landfill every year.”
Firth stresses the fact of how much coffee cup waste
actually clogs our land. In Aotearoa, we throw away 295
million disposable cups every single year. Global estimates
sit at 88 billion hot cups, with the broader category of
disposable cups sitting at 500 billion. Each cup contains
plastic that contributes to environmental degradation.
The system started, as Firth puts it, when Piatek
was on the leadership team for Wellington-based social
enterprise Sustainability Trust, and the idea for Again
Again came to her.
“We spent our days at the Trust looking for new ways
to give people sustainable options in the way they lived,
and I was learning a lot about waste,” Piatek says. “I’m a
coffee drinker, and one day, holding my latest disposable
cup, I had a lightbulb moment. It started with ‘My god, we
should do this, this could save the world’. I finished up at
the Sustainability Trust, convinced Melissa to join me, and
over the last year, we’ve developed that kernel of an idea
into the system that it is today.”
Cafes pay a subscription to be involved in the cups
on-demand system, licensing the cups for a lower cost than
if they purchased them outright. The costs are then covered
by the savings from not having to purchase large quantities
of disposable cups. For example, using the Again Again free
cost calculator, an average café that serves 200 cups perABOVE:
Again Again's
coffee cups
in action.