Industry insights

What Thirsty Work Is Doing to Help Reduce Plastic

By Will Vickery |  Published

Since the first day that Thirsty Work was started in 1995, plastic has been a topic, that we have taken very seriously. Therefore, we have continued to create new solutions and implement systems to help reduce our use of plastic. But, with the aim of reducing plastic use, becoming ever more important Thirsty Work has decided to invest heavily in helping us and our customers reduce their plastic use. So, to put your minds at rest, I thought I would write this blog article to show you, what Thirsty Work is doing to help reduce plastic.

Thirsty Works Solutions to Plastic

Bottle Deposit Scheme 

We first introduced a bottles deposit scheme back in 1995, which encouraged our customers to save and store their empty bottles rather than chucking them away, in order to receive their deposit back. This scheme has significantly reduced our plastic waste, and has allowed us to continue, collecting and putting our bottles through a full sanitisation programme, which allows us to reuse them. This system has significantly reduced the company’s waste.

Regarding our cup and cone range that we currently supply, we have always sourced these products that conform with the Save a Cup and Simply Cup recycling guidelines, but the challenge has been finding recycling plants locally that can recycle these products.

Fully Biodegradable and Compostable Cups 

To solve this challenge, we have been working on our new range of plant-based products which are 100% compostable and Bio – Degradable and will be certified as such. This will allow our customers to continue buying cups, without producing any plastic waste. The first orders have been placed and we expect to see the stock in-between 8 to 12 weeks’ time.

We are very aware that plastic currently offers the customer a good value alternative to P.L.A and we are in late stage talks with recycling plants on how to ensure these used cups get recycled by offering a service to our customers where we will supply recycling bags and a collection service for all their Thirsty Work plastic cups. This service will help minimise plastic cup waste and will ensure these cups get recycled.

Mains Fed Water Cooler 

The team at Thirsty Work are also working hard to promote the use of Mains Fed Water Coolers as this will remove the need for plastic bottles. With are current customers who also use bottled, if it is a viable option for them, we are doing free upgrades from bottled watercoolers to mains fed water coolers. This strategy will help shift a large majority of our customer base to mains fed water coolers and hot water boilers, and will result in Thirsty Work significantly reducing its use of plastic products.

By implementing these solutions and strategies, Thirsty Work believes that we can reduce our customers and our own plastic usage.

I hope you found this blog helpful, but if you have any other questions or queries, please do get in contact with us, as we would love to help you out.