Part of taking care of our people and our place means making better choices and creating a sustainable environment. With this in mind our Sustainability and Procurement team recently did a review of our staff kitchen supplies to explore how we can ensure we’re choosing the most sustainable options.
They also looked at where they could make contributions to our cost saving drive. The team came up with several positive changes to our tea and milk supplies and our kitchenware – all providing more sustainable options and cost savings:
New more sustainable tea packaging
The brand we’ve been stocking in our staff kitchens are all single plastic foil wrapped tea bags, so this was a key environmental focus as across campuses we consume over 100,000 Sir Thomas Lipton tea bags per year. The wraps they come in do not decompose and are not recyclable so the environmental impact of finding a more sustainable alternative was a significant fix.
After some testing, and approval from Health & Safety, we have decided to move to the Chanui tea brand, as the tea bags are contained loose in packs of 50 or 100. You will see the new supplies gradually appear in the staff kitchens at the end of this month as our current stock runs out.
Flavours stocked will be Black, Earl Grey, Green and Peppermint teas.
Milk – bigger is better
We use 16,000 litres of milk per year – this creates a significant amount of rubbish which could be reduced if we moved back to using only 2 litre milk containers.
Changing to 2 litre milk also creates a cost saving – a litre of milk costs 25 cents more, if it’s in a 1 litre container. So we’ve moved back to our original standard order of just 2 litre milk containers and three milk options – blue, light blue and green top.
If you find that your milk delivery is leaving you short or over-supplied, contact procurement@unitec.ac.nz so your supply can be adjusted.
What’s with the plastic cutlery and paper cups?
Why do we have plastic cutlery in some staff kitchens? Good question and isn’t metal cutlery easier to use and sustainable?
Let’s get rid of the plastic, paper and polystyrene and start using metal cutlery and ceramic mugs. If you’re happy to make the change to ‘old skool’ mugs and cutlery, you’ll find these can readily be purchased from most charity shops. Maja from Sustainability has a (small) budget for buying second hand metal cutlery and may be able to quickly help you with this.
Some kitchens have a surplus so you could also check-in with your colleagues from other areas, or you could even bring in your own favourite mug and cutlery set to keep at your desk, then you’ll never go short!
So what about the more ‘environmentally friendly’ plastic cutlery? Maja tells us that this still takes decades to decompose. Just because it’s made from plant oil instead of mineral oil does not make it any better, the end product is still unnecessary waste!
Sustainability and Procurement would really love to take plastic cutlery off the list of approved supplies for our kitchens, but that would require the support of every kitchen user at Unitec. Please let us know how we could make this work!
Got an idea or a suggestion?
You can either post a message below if you have a questions or would like to make a suggestions. You can also contact procurement@unitec.ac.nz about kitchen supplies or Maja Zidov about making our kitchens more sustainable.
I’m a little confused as to why removing plastic cutlery from the approved supplies list requires the support of all. Just make it an unapproved item. There is no need for plastic cutlery is staff kitchens.
It would also be good if Unitec would support the purchase of non-dairy milks, for those who don’t/can’t drink cows milk (soy/almond etc).