Story provided by Sandra Romero, Colegio Anglo Colombiano

At Colegio Anglo Colombiano teachers use a staff room, where they can also get a hot beverage, like coffee and tea. When new people start working at the school, they are all given a reusable cup for hot beverages.

At the same time, the school had disposable cups available for staff, so if by any chance one forgot or lost their cup they could still have a drink. The Eco Committee started to follow-up on the consumption of disposable cups and discovered that the staff was using 2600 cups in just a week! This meant that on average a single employee was using about 18 cups in that same period. All this ended up being waste.

The Eco Committee, terrified with this finding, decided to make a campaign to reduce consumption since one of the themes the school focuses on is waste management. They made posters they put in the staff room and circulated awareness infographics through the school screens about the number of cups being used. At the same time Fonanglo, the employee fund of the school, provided personalised thermos for every associate. This allowed the school to provide reusable cups for all the school staff and be able to cut the use of disposable cups.

As of 15 September 2019, there are no disposable cups available in the staff room!