I’m trying to cut down on the amount of single use cups I use when I frequent my regular (well known) tea/lunch stop. I realized just how wasteful I have been when one of my children pointed out the tower of cups in the car cupholder which I hadn’t emptied for a few days. As happens a lot, when you see things through a child’s eyes, you get straight to the point: in this case, I personally have been generating a lot of unnecessary waste without really realising. It’s often illuminating to try and see things through a child’s eyes! So, I’ve bought one of the re-useable cups from said tea shop and am trying my best to remember to take it with me. It has the added benefit of saving me 20p each time I buy a cup of tea – not to be sniffed at, given how much tea I drink!
We’ve given some thought to what we, as a business, can do to prevent waste. Michael and I had a chat (over a cup of tea, obviously!), and we are going to strive to do better when it comes to some of the things we use in our practices.
We can easily change the little bottles of spectacle cleaner that we sell. These are generally plastic and once they are used, they are designed to be thrown away. However, we will soon be offering a refill service, as we’ve found a supplier who will produce bottles for us that are designed to be refilled multiple times. Once you’ve bought your bottle of cleaning spray, not unlike the cup of tea scenario, it’s then going to save you money, as we will be offering free refills for the life of the bottle to our clients – you’ll just need to come into one of our practices and we’ll refill your bottle from our cleaning solution dispenser. We should have the new system for cleaning sprays up and running in March.
