As Saatchi & Saatchi New York continues our sustainability journey we want to share some creative solutions that help the environment AND save us and our employees money. We hope to regularly update you on our True Blue initiatives and improvements via Hudson/Houston. This post is all about our Coffee program. Every employee was given a mug at the end of 2009 and the Free Coffee For Life program offers our staff free coffee and tea till 11AM in our cafeteria and $0.25 at all other times of the day. 

Here are some numbers on the savings that the new coffee mug program has resulted in for the agency:

From an environmental perspective, just a simple switch away from paper cups and redirecting people to the 14th floor cafeteria will reduce our “footprint” in both paper cups and plastic lids by 36,020 units each per year, and will save the agency over $15,000 in 2010!

We compiled the 1st quarter free coffee saving for 2010. From January – March we served 9,005 free cups of coffee in the cafeteria. At a cost of .17 per cup, the total cost was $1,531. Coffee service for guests at reception cost $743, for the period. Based on historical cost and operating days, the cost of the former 16th floor AM coffee service would have been $6,511 for the 1st quarter 2010. We reduced the usage of paper cups and lids for the first quarter by 9,005. We saved approximately $4,237.

If we annualized the usage we would save 36,000 paper cups and lids, at a cost savings of $16,950.

Erin Lyons is the Blue Leader, Saatchi & Saatchi New York. Thanks to Doug Declerck for the numbers.

Home page photo: Daily Shot of Coffee. Post photo (above): Taken by Brian Davidson (SSNY – Toyota) , showing Shawonna Dykes (Flik) and Shweta Sachdev (Team One). Front page image from dailyshotofcoffee.com

And your pleasure knows no limits
Your voice is like a meadowlark
But your heart is like an ocean
Mysterious and dark.

One more cup of coffee for the road
One more cup of coffee ‘fore I go.
To the valley below.

Bob Dylan One More Cup of  Coffee, from the wonderful Desire album, 1995

Tags: coffee, Sustainability