Our community survey results are in!

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and habits around takeaway coffee and reusable cups. We received fantastic engagement with 976 responses from the public across the eastern Waikato and a high response from our local cafes businesses too.

Big shoutout to Rachael from Matamata, the lucky winner of the Prezzie card for completing our Takeaway Cup survey! ☕

Thanks to everyone who took the time to share their feedback, here’s what we found:

✅ 95% of our cafes allow you to bring your own cup for takeaway drinks. Yet, only 13% of those drinks leave in a reusable cup. Let’s perk that up!

☕ 84% of you own a reusable cup, but only 24% of you are regularly use it when grabbing your coffee. The top reason for using reusable cups? To reduce single-use waste (63%). The most common reason people who own a cup don’t use it is pure forgetfulness.

📊 The majority (86%) of you buy between 1–5 coffees a week. Did you know that 5 coffees adds up to 260 single-use cups per year! That’s a lot of cups hitting the rubbish bin.

🤔 There’s also some confusion about recyclability; many think takeaway cups can be recycled or composted, but that’s not the case. These paper cups have a thin layer of plastic added to the inner in order to create a waterproof layer between the beverage and the paper, making them non-recyclable in your kerbside recycling bin.

🔍 Our Cafes also noted that many takeaway cups come with a bit of greenwashing—misleading “eco” claims that leave both cafés and customers scratching their heads about their true environmental impact.

💚 Let’s pour some love by brewing up a habit of bringing our reusable cups when we get our caffeine fix, or take some time to enjoy that hot brew at your favourite cafe. It’s a small action that can have a big impact.

We’ll be speaking to our local cafes in the near future about our focus on this, and sharing further information with our communities via social media and our websites.