We are very excited to announce that Responsible Cafes was recently awarded Highly Commended in the 2022 WasteSorted awards in the Community Waste Award category!
The WasteSorted awards are initiated by the Waste Authority WA and Government of Western Australia annually to ‘acknowledge innovative solutions to reduce waste and celebrate the champions whose efforts assist with achieving the targets in Western Australia’s Waste Strategy’.
The Community Waste category is awarded ‘for excellence in avoiding or recovering waste or protecting the environment from the impacts of household and community waste, resulting in positive outcomes in the waste sector’.
Responsible Cafes was excited to showcase our new team and initiatives as we came into 2022- and what a way to start! Highlighting our work in Western Australia, we were able to celebrate the 1,186 cafes responsible cafes and 18 councils RC have supported in that state alone. Through initiatives such as our newest campaign BYOFridays and our new stamp of approval, Approved by RC, we discussed our perception that waste reduction starts with behaviour change and proved that it delivers results! Since 2013, we are proud to have impacted the industry saving 63.8 million cups from landfill including 41,747 daily from our responsible cafes located in WA.
Western Australian Minister for Environment and Climate Action, the Honourable Reece Whitby, said in a statement, ‘the WasteSorted Awards recognise individuals and organisations that go the extra mile to reduce the amount of waste that ends up in landfill’.
‘The competition was highly competitive and each of the winners serve as an example of the gold standard in waste reduction initiatives’.
We are honoured to have been recognised in a category with so many other strong candidates doing inspiring things in the waste reduction space. Boddington RRR (reduce, reuse, recycle) won the overall award in our Community Waste category for their amazing work repurposing household plastic, giving it a new life as park benches or platter boards!
Such a recognition has served to strengthen our passion in community waste reduction, knowing that we are making a valuable contribution to environmental preservation and behaviour change. Inspired by all the amazing work from other award winners and nominees, our new Responsible Cafes team is ready to continue fighting the war on waste and produce even more results!
While we are proud of our efforts as a new team and all of the amazing RC pioneers before us, these results couldn’t have been achieved without our inspiring community of cafes, councils and keen beans! You are where change starts and continues. We are proud that you have all taken steps in making waste reduction a habitual practice in your businesses, LGA’s and daily lives; this award is just as much YOURS as it is ours! So congratulations!
We’d like to thank the Waste Authority WA and Western Australian Government for the opportunity to showcase our work and for your recognition. The WasteSorted awards are a positive coming together of innovative and inspiring groups and individuals and we’re grateful to have been a part of it!