Environmental Responsibility at Tim Hortons

To:  Tim Hortons President & CEO Don Schroeder

As patrons of Tim Hortons, we appreciate the quality food and coffee offered by your many outlets. However we are concerned with the environmental impact of the following practices in your restaurants:

• Not all Tim Hortons outlets offer reusable mugs, plates and cutlery for in-store consumption.
• Even when available, reusable mugs must often be requested.
• Even when a mug is requested, the coffee all too frequently appears in a disposable cup anyway.

As well, it is disturbing to see the quantity of Tim Horton’s coffee cups littering our streets. The amount of garbage our society produces, and the amount of energy we consume, are very serious problems. We know you are in the process of implementing an in-store recycling program, and we applaud this move. However, reusing comes before recycling in environmental principles, with good reason. We therefore strongly urge you to make the following changes:

• Ensure that all Tim Hortons outlets have reusable mugs, plates and cutlery for in-store consumption.
• Make reusable items, including mugs, the default offering for in-store use, rather than disposables. Train your staff not to use disposable items unless they are requested.
• Undertake a concerted and highly visible campaign to encourage take-out customers to 1. bring their own mugs, 2. dispose of their Tim Hortons trash responsibly.

We understand the tradition of the Roll-up-the Rim-to-Win contests, which require paper cups. However, even long standing traditions must sometimes change when the situation demands. For in-store consumption, please explore an alternative to using a full cup for the contests; perhaps a much smaller piece of paper made to look like the upper portion of a cup with its rolled rim. This will generate much less waste.

Why not take this opportunity to demonstrate environmental leadership and re-evaluate your processes with the goal of reducing waste as much as possible? This will in all likelihood save you money and increase your customer base.

If we are to make the changes necessary to avoid environmental disaster, we must all take our responsibilities seriously. We thank you for your attention to this matter and your care for our environment.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

The Environmental Responsibility at Tim Hortons Petition to Tim Hortons President & CEO Don Schroeder was created by and written by David Kalant (david.kalant@mcgill.ca).  This petition is hosted here at www.PetitionOnline.com as a public service. There is no endorsement of this petition, express or implied, by Artifice, Inc. or our sponsors. For technical support please use our simple Petition Help form.