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Leonardo puts sustainability into their daily coffee

Leonardo is viewing its use of materials and generation of waste through the lens of sustainability, right down to employees’ daily coffee.

The company has launched a new reusable coffee cup scheme that has seen a 71% reduction in the use of disposable cups at its Yeovil site.

The trial of the new scheme drew on recent research by Zero Waste Scotland, which confirmed that selling disposable coffee cups separately could ‘significantly increase’ the use of the more sustainable drinks option.

In June, Leonardo in Yeovil started listing the price of the disposable cup separately alongside the cost of the hot drink being purchased. In addition, 400 reusable cups made of sustainable materials were given away, to help employees transition to a more eco-friendly choice of drink receptacle.

Within a matter of weeks, employees demonstrated a marked change in their daily habits.

Head of Sustainability Ben Knight said: “Across Leonardo in the UK, we are aiming for a 15% reduction in waste by 2030, so we have a sharp focus on finding new ways to eliminate waste and reduce the amount of materials that we are consuming. One of the most common sources of waste that our colleagues see day to day on our sites is disposable coffee cups.

This is of course only one of our waste streams, but even small changes can have a wider impact and our café teams have helped us promote this initiative. People have been amazing at responding to this opportunity to reduce waste.”

Beyond the cost savings, the Leonardo team wanted to highlight the environmental impact of the use of disposable cups, so they circulated a video sharing statistics that brought the facts to light.

It featured Caroline Beaumont, Head of Culture and Transformation at Leonardo UK’s helicopter facility.

Caroline said: “Every year, three billion hot drink cups are used in the UK and it’s estimated that less than 5% are sold to people bringing a reusable cup. We sell 15,000 hot drinks every month across our main sites and typically these are in single use coffee cups.

This is enough to fill a small meeting room every month. Here in Yeovil, we’re passionate about reducing our impact on the environment, so we are encouraging all of our staff to bring a reusable cup each time they buy a hot drink.”

As part of its journey towards net zero, Leonardo UK is committed to net zero for Scope 1 and 2 by 2030 and has already made good progress in reducing emissions by 68% from 2018. By 2050, the organisation is focused on reaching net zero for its Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions (Scope 3 emissions as defined in PPN 06/21) against the baseline year.

Leonardo gave further impetus to its climate-related strategy, by committing itself to the Science Based Target initiative (SBTi), to define an ambitious target to reduce direct and indirect CO2 emissions, in line with the objectives set in the Paris agreement.

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