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Giving and advocacy

It’s a strange world we live in that commercial activity, giving and advocacy are often separated into distinct and mutually exclusive activities.

Giving is a form of advocacy in that it delivers or seeks to deliver an outcome, consistent with what we stand for everyday as an organisation. Our giving program sits with a framework of doing business better - being responsible for the upstream and downstream consequences of corporate activity, paying tax and actively shaping a better future for people and nature.

Thank you for the support and custom that has allowed us to get to this amazing place of privilege and responsibility. We want to continue to do right by the support of those that got us here.

We’ve had lots of great partnerships over the years, and have donated over $2,000,000 to causes and campaigns that advocate against single-use, for a biodiverse planet. These include:

Joining 1% for the Planet has reinforced and formalised our commitment to environmental giving, for our team, our customers and our partners. 

Sea Shepherd

Meaningful and proactive collaborations between NGOs and business, such as that between KeepCup and Sea Shepherd, fuel innovation and help educate consumer behaviour. Through joining forces to reach a wider audience, our message on plastics is amplified and made more impactful.

Jeff Hansen
Managing Director of Sea Shepherd Australia and a Director of Sea Shepherd Global 

Sea Shepherd is an international non-profit marine conservation organisation. Since 1977 they’ve been fighting to defend, conserve and protect our oceans. From stopping illegal fishing to cleaning up marine debris, Sea Shepherd is on the front line of ocean conservation.

In 2016, we partnered with Sea Shepherd to create our range of licensed products, with 40% of revenue* from every Sea Shepherd KeepCup donated directly. We've raised over $250,000 for Sea Shepherd, supporting their Marine Debris Campaign, clean-ups run by local communities, as well as the Sea Shepherd crew.

Together with our customers, we’ve helped enable over 800 cleanups and the removal of 5 million pieces of waste from our rivers, oceans and coastlines, with our KeepCup team directly involved as part of our volunteering program.

*From June 1, 2022, the donation value has been updated to 30% of revenue from every Sea Shepherd KeepCup sold.

Bob Brown Foundation

KeepCup’s very significant donation to help with our strong Federal Court case for ending this logging is the counterbalancing and inspiring good news to the forest destruction bad news. It signals to environmental campaigners that the ethics of Earth care are alive in business and that we are not alone in wanting to pass on to future generations Australia’s cornucopia of wildlife. KeepCup are true friends of the Earth.

Bob Brown

We consider how we might contribute to carbon positive activities. It seems counterintuitive to commit to tree planting and restoration when land clearing continues at a rate that makes biodiversity collapse imminent.

Only 17% of Australia remains native forest, and the Federal government has disempowered forestry laws under Regional Forest Agreements (RFAs) - 20-year-old agreements which essentially exempt logging from national environment laws. Under these RFAs there are approximately 6 million hectares of Australia’s native forests that are available for logging. This includes old growth and rainforests and threatened species habitat.

The Great Forest Case, a project by the Bob Brown Foundation, is an ongoing legal challenge to the regulation of native forest logging and the legality of the RFAs, which don’t protect threatened species.

In Tasmania alone, over a million hectares of forest are under threat, including Australia’s largest temperate rainforest and home to species such as the Tasmanian Devil, the Masked Owl and the critically endangered Swift Parrot.

The future of forest products and industry lies in already established plantations. Almost 90% of the wood produced in Australia comes from these plantations, which support the vast majority of timber industry jobs. There is no excuse to continue logging the vast tracts of carbon and wildlife storehouses that are Australia’s native forests.

If the Great Forest Case is successful, and culminates in a ban on native forest logging in Tasmania, it will add to a strong history of environmental groups in Australia winning court cases that challenge the RFAs that fail to protect our native forests. Bob Brown won the right for a peaceful protest at the Tasmanian High Court in 2017, both the Wielangta case in Tasmania and the Leadbeater’s Possum case in Victoria have been successful in 2005 and 2020 respectively.

The Great Forest Case represents an opportunity to end the logging of Australia’s dwindling native forests - now and for all time.

Protect takayna 

takayna is the world's second largest temperate rainforest but it's under threat from logging, mining and off-road vehicle damage. To raise awareness of the Bob Brown Foundation's campaign to make this ancient forest a World Heritage listed National Park and see it returned to Aboriginal ownership, we've created special edition KeepCups in our Brew Cork and Helix ranges featuring a unique 'Protect takayna' design. A 30% donation from the sale of every takayna Brew Cork, Helix Cup and Kit will fund the Foundation's direct action to protect takayna. 

11,250 tonnes of timber are used to make paper cups in Australia every year.

Our support doesn't stop there. In March 2023 more than 100 runners will take part in the Foundation's annual takayna Trail. We are proud to not only be a race partners, but also to be championing the cause from the start line with one of the KeepCup team signed up to tackle the trail. Help us raise more vital funds to protect this beautiful wilderness. You can be part of the KeepCup support team by donating here

Sea Shepherd

Meaningful and proactive collaborations between NGOs and business, such as that between KeepCup and Sea Shepherd, fuel innovation and help educate consumer behaviour. Through joining forces to reach a wider audience, our message on plastics is amplified and made more impactful.

Jeff Hansen
Managing Director of Sea Shepherd Australia and a Director of Sea Shepherd Global 

Sea Shepherd is an international non-profit marine conservation organisation. Since 1977 they’ve been fighting to defend, conserve and protect our oceans. From stopping illegal fishing to cleaning up marine debris, Sea Shepherd is on the front line of ocean conservation.

In 2016, we partnered with Sea Shepherd to create our range of licensed products, with 40% of revenue from every Sea Shepherd KeepCup donated directly. We've raised over $220,000 for Sea Shepherd, supporting their Marine Debris Campaign, clean-ups run by local communities, as well as the Sea Shepherd crew.

Together with our customers, we’ve helped enable over 600 cleanups and the removal of 2.9 million pieces of waste from our rivers, oceans and coastlines, with our KeepCup team directly involved as part of our volunteering program.

Plastic Free Foundation

We were delighted that KeepCup joined us as an inaugural partner for Plastic Free July 2019. It was important to us to align with a company that shared our vision of a world without plastic waste and was focused on doing this at the source and ‘turning off the tap’. Through the support of this partnership we were able to grow the Plastic Free July challenge to engage 250 million participants around the world and support them in practical ways to reduce single-use plastic. As a BCorp company and 1% for the Planet member working with a company that was a ‘good business’ as well as doing business for good was important to us.

Rebecca Prince-Ruiz
Founder and Executive Director, Plastic Free Foundation

In 2019 we partnered with the Plastic Free Foundation, the organisation behind Plastic Free July, to help shape a world free from unnecessary single-use plastic.

Over 250 million people globally take part in the challenge, avoiding more than 825 million kg of plastic waste, including millions of single-use coffee cups, straws, bags and more. But the campaign isn’t just about a single month. It’s the conversations it sparks and the long-term action it leads. Plastic Free July participants are 16% more likely to reduce waste long term than those who haven’t participated in the campaign.

Although our offices are free from most single-use items, the July challenge spurred us to go further, getting boxes of fruit for the office to shift snacking away from packaged treats, and milk in returnable glass bottles. Plastic Free July brought our teams together for communal lunches and sparked great conversations with customers, suppliers, and in our homes, about the challenges and opportunities of living single-use free.

In Los Angeles our US team also co-hosted a Plastic Free July event at LARABA (the Los Angeles River Artists and Business Association) featuring panellists from KeepCup, the Plastic Pollution Coalition and Plastic Free Foundation.

Plastic Free July is a fantastic exercise to demonstrate the almost impossible task of living without single-use plastic. Let’s be clear, the responsibility for reducing and eradicating single-use plastics belongs to the corporations making the products, not just individual consumers. Plastic Free July helps us all zero in on the issue and highlights the global call for action on plastic waste.

Abigail Forsyth
Co-Founder and Managing Director, KeepCup

1% for the Planet

In 2019 we became a member of 1% For The Planet and committed to donating at least 1% of our global revenue to environmental causes. Our pledge to provide 1% of revenue, in cash and in kind, sits within our broader commitment to do business better.

In becoming members of 1% for the Planet we’ve joined a global movement of businesses - over 2,000 organisations in more than 45 countries - committed to donating revenue, not just ‘profit’, to deliver good environmental outcomes.

1% for the Planet screens and ratifies the environmental organisations we support, providing a third-party tick of approval that confirms we’ve put our money where our mouth is.

Planet Ark Circular Economy Hub

KeepCup is a globally recognised leader in the design and delivery of circular business models. Its early financial and moral commitment to the Australian Circular Economy Hub lends credibility and much welcomed industry support to what will be Australia's primary resource for businesses and industries to fast track their transition to a circular economy.  

The Australian Circular Economy Hub exists because our current linear business models are failing. In order to expedite Australia’s transition to a circular economy, it is imperative that all elements of Australian society collaborate to reach our common goal – the KeepCup and Planet Ark relationship is a strong demonstration of that. We thank KeepCup for their courage and leadership and look forward to co-creating a future where all people live in balance with nature.

Steve Morriss
Head of Circular Economy Development, Planet Ark

We’re the founding business partner of the Planet Ark Australian Circular Economy Hub. Launched in November 2020, the Australian Circular Economy Hub drives education, advocacy and partnerships in striving for a circular economy in Australia.

We will use this partnership to champion uptake of circular practices and highlight the importance of reduction, reuse and repair in circular thinking, in particular, that recycling should be the last resort, not the first.