PLANET protector

Use Your Own (UYO) founder Laura Cope doesn’t care whether she’s everyone’s cup of tea – as long as it’s a reusable one.

UYO is a not-for-profit, online responsible cafe directory, launched in late 2017, to highlight businesses welcoming reusable takeaway cups. Now with more than 1,000 venues listed in the directory, and 21.6k following the @uyo.nz instagram page, Cope’s mission to encourage sustainable hospitality is picking up steam. We caught up with her to ask a few questions.

You grew up in North London and moved to New Zealand when you became a parent. Can you talk a little about the journey that led you to start UYO as a migrant?

UYO is part of my rent for living in a land that doesn’t belong to me. I have no cultural claim on the space or the air. I really, strongly believe that if you move somewhere, you need to make yourself part of that society and contribute positively.

There are so many ways you could have contributed. Why did you choose to focus on takeaway cups?

My daughter Grace is autistic and we home-schooled all the way through. She started writing to David Attenborough and he’d write back to her. In 2017, he came to New Zealand to do a series of talks. At the end of his talk, a child stood up and asked the question, “What can we do?” His response was: support grass roots movements, list other people’s skills in your defence, make those conscious, constant changes in your life that build up and count on the actions of many to make wider socio-political change. When we were walking back to the hotel afterwards there was single-use sh.. everywhere and my daughter said, “Mum, we need to do something.”

Coffee cups, and packaging, have a huge symbolic importance to our attitude about our own convenience. I thought about how to communicate that. It needed to be something that opened the door for larger conversations at an industry level, a council level, a legislative level, as well as at an everyday level. So I thought right, I’ll make a café guide.

Through your work, you must come across people who disagree with you or refuse to participate. What have you learnt about having constructive discussions?

I haven’t learnt anything. I’ve got no learning curve. I’m not a team player. All my

patience, love, understanding, tolerance and sensitivity go into my relationship with my child. I don’t have those constructive, gentle conversations. There are a lot of people in zero waste who are really good at that. I’m not. I’m just like don’t f…... do it, because it’s the wrong thing to do. I have been vegan for 20 years, so I’m used to having these kinds of conversations, but I just don’t have time for it. It’s a climate emergency!

The pandemic changed our behaviour around hygiene habits. What challenges did this raise and how did you overcome them?

The biggest challenge for us was getting clear information from authorities. The pandemic highlighted the fact that there was nothing in place to give guidance [about reusables] to the hospitality industry. My colleagues at Takeaway Throwaways [a campaign to ban plastic single-use disposable food and drink serviceware] and I engaged in conversations with the Ministry for Primary Industries, the Ministry for the Environment and all our cafés. Once we had that definition of what the rules were for “no contact”, we asked the industry for their solutions.

The climate crisis doesn’t stop when we’re having a pandemic. Everything is so interconnected. I think we [New Zealand] were also empowered by getting the job done, and that has probably made us a little more able to make change.

You refer to yourself as a “pro activist”. What does this mean to you?

Yeah I love that. But actually, I see my role more as a facilitator – that annoying extrovert that will walk into a space and make people collaborate. I don’t see that I do that much, but what I can do is connect people who can do the job better than I can. It’s the cafés that are being pro activists and using their voices.

What’s something you’re excited about in the future?

I’m excited to see the industry and the public change the perception of branding. Plastic Free July Aotearoa’s messaging this year had two hashtags. One was #inaotearoawechoosetoreuse and the other #noloveforlitter. We try to get brands on board and pledge publicly for the month of July to show no love for litter. We can create an environment where reuse is normal and single-use is unacceptable. I’m really excited about that.

Visit uyo.co.nz to find a responsible café near you or visit takeawaythrowaways.nz to support the campaign.