In Hamburg sagt man Tschüss: OTTO führt Mehrwegbecher ein

Instead of cardboard, our takeaway mugs will be made of recyclable plastic. The manufacturer of these re-usable mugs is the multi-award-winning KeepCup company, founded in Australia and now active all over the world. These sustainable mugs can be purchased at a reduced price by OTTO employees in all the Bistros at the company’s headquarters – the first coffee is then even free of charge. Employees subsequently get a discount on every drink that flows directly from the machine into a KeepCup and not into a disposable one.

As a participant in the Hamburger Kaffeegipfel (Hamburg Coffee Summit) citizens’ initiative, OTTO is playing an active role in finding a sustainable coffee-consumption solution for the whole city, and is helping drive the current public debate on paper cups.

The sustainable alignment of its own business activities and reducing its local environmental impact has long been an integral part of Corporate Responsibility at OTTO. “For many years we have taken a pioneering role in promoting sustainability in Germany. Working to eliminate cardboard coffee cups is an effective step towards further increasing our employees’ environmental awareness and making a contribution towards the more careful use of natural resources”, explains Dr. Michael Heller, Member of the OTTO Management Board, Categories and Deputy Spokesman OTTO.

With this initiative, OTTO is continuing to drive forward its ground-breaking commitment to protecting the environment, and is setting a visible example in the fight against waste. Deutsche Umwelthilfe (German environmental aid organisation) calculates that a good three billion disposable cups are thrown away every year in Germany.

In environmental terms, buying a re-usable mug quickly pays off, as it has paid for itself in ecological terms after just 16 uses. This enables OTTO to significantly reduce its environmental footprint by eliminating as much as 390 kilos of plastic waste annually. This also saves large quantities of energy every year – in fact so much, that when calculated over the lifetime of a KeepCup, the equivalent of 20 households can be supplied with electricity for a whole year.