Get a coffee discount

Here's another way to profit from your good actions. Keep Cups are reusable coffee cups specifically designed for takeaway coffees.

Many coffee shops give you a discount for using a reusable cup - even your own mug from home. After all, you're saving them money and helping the environment.

Responsible Cafes shows you where these shops are - so you can get your discount. Check the map for your closest option.

If your favourite coffee shop offers a discount for bringing your own cup, suggest they register on the website.

If they don't offer a discount, suggest they do. It's good for the planet but it also good for business to be listed on the site.

PS. The reason this is a big deal is because of the enormous waste of disposable coffee cups. This tram contains 50,00 coffee cups. Australia throws away a billion cups a year. That's 20,000 trams full. To put it another way, we would fill this tram every 30 minutes with our trashed coffee cups.

Bringing plastic back

In December 2012 I first blogged about the soft plastic recycling at Coles Supermarket (then a trial).

In all those years I've never seen it overflow so massively as today.

It's so exciting to see people recycling their soft plastics instead of sending them to landfill.

I'm guessing this was because of the publicity in the ABC series War on Waste.

Help the planet, help feed people

Sometimes I get feedback that doing things for "the environment" isn't really worth it. That human convenience is more important. But there are so many real human impacts of our high-emission high-waste low-efficiency living.

This is one example. Episode one of War on Waste showed the enormous food wastage that occurs before food even get to the shelves. For example millions of bananas get thrown out before a customer ever sees them. Meanwhile, Foodbank gives these stats on hunger - even if a wealthy country like Australia.

The last stat is probably the saddest.

Definitely food for thought (pun intended).