As a fast-casual restaurant in Nicosia a high volume of our food and drink does not get consumed or disposed of in our stores.
The result of this means that our menu is packaged for our customers’ convenience.
Since its first opening our doors in 2008 sustainable packaging has always been an integral part of our philosophy.
We have always chosen to pay a little more for peace of mind and to feel good within ourselves that we are doing our small part to help sustain the environment as opposed to harming it and our planet.
We have always strived to avoid single-use, non-recyclable plastics. Our aim has always been that all of our food packaging when handled correctly can be recycled, composted, or is biodegradable. The materials chosen have a prolonged life, not just single-use.
Materials currently used in our line of packaging vary from PET, rPET (recyclable) and Paper, Pulp, Wood (compostable/biodegradable).
As this has been an ongoing task for us in an ever-changing climate, over the past couple of years we were able to move away from the plastic straw. This was helped by the availability of alternatives such as PLA (renewable resource, corn starch).
Now due to the EU SUP directive even materials such PLA and avocado stones have been banned due to the chemical process that they are put through making them unsustainable.
With this in mind, we are again making changes to how we operate in relation to our packaging. Here are some of the steps we will be implementing:
- Reusable Cups, Straws, and Cutlery Sets are to be sold in store
- Re-introduction of cutlery for in house customers
- Glass water dispensers available on our bars or our customers, therefore cutting back on plastic bottles in house
- Introduction of paper straws and wooden cutlery (compostable/biodegradable)
- QR code menu’s as opposed to large paper print runs
- Internal use of disposable packaging by our teams is now also strictly forbidden
These are the main steps we are currently taking but we’re not stopping here. We will continue taking into consideration the 3 R’s (Reduce – Reuse – Recycle) with all our future actions.
