Corporate and Social Responsibility (CSR) at Rocket is integral to our business values and we are dedicated to understanding how we can make a positive contribution to our communities, be a good employer and minimise our environmental impacts.
We ran a sustainability workshop with our team to help identify small changes we could make as a business to start reducing our environmental impact. A great suggestion put forward by one of the team was that we should stop allowing takeaway disposable cups/bottles to be claimed for via company expenses.
Every minute one million plastic bottles are sold, and the number of sold in 2021 was a staggering 583.3 billion! We also discovered that worldwide half a billion straws are used daily, along with 16 billion coffee cups being used globally each year.
Whilst some takeaway cups might appear to be recyclable – they are mainly coated with plastic to laminate the inside and many also use plastic lids. In the UK alone we use 2.5 billion disposable coffee cups each year or 7 million per day – of these; half a million are dropped on the floor and less than 1% are actually recycled!
We acknowledged that if every member of Rocket Consulting had one takeaway coffee each working day this would accumulate to 10,000 disposal cups in ONE year!
We are constantly looking at ways to reduce our environmental impact, that is why we have decided to bring in a rejection policy on any expense claims which include these items. Instead we have provided our Rocketeers with reusable water bottles and coffee cups to ensure that we are doing our bit for the environment!
We can all do our bit one plastic cup at a time.