nourish team Suffolk coffee firm Paddy & Scott’s has found an innovative new way to save its compostable cups from the bin by using them as the perfect pots for planting as part of a new project designed to get green-fingered youngsters to develop a passion for plants.
With 1000s of its paper coffee cups destined for recycling bins every week, Paddy & Scott’s has teamed up with local plant geek, Michael Perry, to get kids – and their parents, carers, and teachers – involved in its summer planting competition.
Paddy & Scott’s Hadleigh and Ipswich branches will give away free wildflower seed balls to takeaway coffee buyers with an under-five child interested in taking part. It is also working with Hadleigh Community Primary School to encourage more children to grow flowers and plants this summer and share their successes online.
“Although our cups are compostable, they often end up in the general recycling so we’ve thought long and hard about what we could do to give them a second life,” says Rachel Hutchings, Community Engagement Guru at Paddy & Scott’s. “We’ve worked with Michael before and he’s full of great ideas so we’ve teamed up with him to offer some inspiration on what could be grown in hope that it’ll inspire a new green-fingered generation to get growing.
“The competition is open to reception and nursery aged children and we’re hoping to see lots of great growing going on throughout the summer, while also encouraging kids to reuse and recycle our coffee cups in fun and useful ways.”
Michael Perry comments: “Wildflowers are an excellent source of nectar for bees and beneficial insects and couldn’t be easier to grow with seed balls and an easily compostable cup from Paddy & Scott’s!”
Michael has created a video on how to plant up in a compostable cup and kids will be able to share their progress and final plants to @paddyandscotts
The competition is open from now until 18 July 2022.
- To find out more, search for #JuniorPlantGeeks
