MANA! RAISES AWARENESS ABOUT HONG KONG’S COFFEE CUP PROBLEM
Hong Kong is throwing away 2.1 million plastic coffee cups & lids everyday…
HONG KONG (1 November, 2019) --- MANA! launched a campaign to raise awareness about Hong Kong's coffee shop & coffee industry’s waste issue and took steps back in 2012 to minimise waste by using fully compostable coffee cups and lids and putting forward a petition with over 64,000 signatures for the government to invest in composting facilities.
MANA! has a long history of pioneering efforts to raise awareness about the environment, including promoting a whole-food plant-based diet, using only compostable and biodegradable packaging, and developing and educating customers on its in-house recycling and composting efforts.
The 1 Billion Problem
MANA!’s latest campaign takes aim at the waste issue facing Hong Kong’s coffee culture and industry, where an estimated 2.1 million plastic coffee cups and lids are thrown away daily. That’s over 1 billion thrown away everyday globally. Coffee cups cannot be recycled as they are lined with plastic – they sit in Hong Kong’s landfills and float in our oceans and take hundreds of years to break-down into micro-plastics.
Cup Innovation
The race to get to a 100% recyclable and compostable coffee cup has recently been taken up by the world’s largest coffee chain when Starbucks announced in March 2019 that it would test recyclable and compostable cups across key markets from New York to London. Starbucks uses around 7 billion cups each year.
By January 2019, MANA! embarked on its own pilot programme in Hong Kong to turn all of its restaurants’ food scraps, customer leftovers, and compostable packaging – including coffee cups and lids – into soil. Each day, ‘waste’ is collected from its restaurants and brought to a private facility in New Territories, where the process involves a new method that grinds and breaks down the packaging and food before treatment with conventional composting methods.
Early Success
By the end of Q3 2019, the pilot programme demonstrated early success, resulting in MANA! redirecting more than 30 tonnes of compostable packaging and food waste from landfills. Monthly sustainability reports have been made publicly available on their website mana.hk/impact.
“We’ve aimed to be a zero-waste brand from the start, in 2012 we started with zero plastic packaging using paper & plant-plastic packaging. Although we had challenges and didn’t always get it right due to what was available, we never compromised.” said Bobsy Gaia, founder of MANA!. “Now that the plastic straw has become the villain we all love to hate, we strongly believe the ubiquitous HK coffee cup & lid should be tackled next with the utmost urgency because HK’s coffee addiction is growing and so are the number of plastic coffee cups & lids poisoning our environment. We’ve demonstrated that companies can take control of their waste and that there should be no excuses from business owners. Finally in 2019 we are now able to turn our packaging into soil. We now need the government’s support for large scale adoption.”
MANA! has prepared a petition calling for signatures from the people of Hong Kong to deliver to the Hong Kong SAR Government, urging officials to recognise the growing problem surrounding conventional plastics, and facilitate businesses to move to alternatives, including the composting of Plant Plastics at current and future government facilities. At present the petition has 64,000 signatures and, upon reaching 100,000 signatures, we will engage the Government.
From World Vegan Day (1 November 2019) onwards, in cooperation with Swire Properties’ plastic-free campaign, customers can bring an empty conventional coffee cup to MANA! Starstreet to get 50% off a signature V-Coffee (vegan coffee) served in either customers’ reusable cup or in compostable coffee cups.
For additional information:
MANA! Sustainability Initiatives
Coffee As Unusual - Bobsy’s Blog
-END-
About MANA!
Founded in 2011, MANA! is a fast-casual destination for plant-based, whole-foods, served fast, and packaged in an eco-friendly & responsible manner. We’re in the business of inspiring change by serving “food that doesn’t cost the earth”, that are “made with plants, not in them”, and “made by hand, not on assembly lines”. The Company’s original MANA! Central branch on Wellington Street has become a popular destination serving over 500 customers daily; while its second MANA! PoHo branch in Sheung Wan is a popular weekend spot for brunch, books, and V-Coffee; and the third 1,600 square foot flagship store, MANA! Starstreet, opened in July 2019.
! We're not on the planet for business, we're in business for the planet. - MANA! MANTRA No. 7
Media Contact
For more information on this press release, contact wendy@mana.hk