What was once considered a fad is now a massive industry, as Australians spend more than $500 million every year on bottled water, which comes out of a tap at the cost of barely a few cents per litre.

On top of that, the environmental impact of discarded bottles is immense. The Total Environment Centre estimates that of the 6.67 billion plastic containers Australians drink their way through every year, only one-third are recycled. The rest are landfill or litter. Environmental advocacy group Do Something estimates it takes between 1.3 and three litres of water to make one litre of bottled water.

For entrepreneur Simon Karlik, who began selling his Cheeki stainless steel drink bottles three years ago in a bid to reduce reliance on plastic bottles, the idea of drinking water from a disposable container is self-indulgent.

”For marine life it’s awful – rangers are always opening up birds and fish who have ingested 80 per cent plastic and 20 per cent food stuffs,” he says.

”Then there’s a selfishness about it. A plastic bottle requires about a third of that bottle in natural petroleum that’s been forming for 100 million years, and when we make this plastic bottle we incur all the energy and environmental impacts of shipping it around the joint and refrigerating it.

”Then we drink it for 30 seconds and chuck it out and it takes about 300 years to then break down.”

As a former outdoor educator and guide with World Expeditions, Mr Karlik is well aware of the impact plastics and other litter can have on pristine wilderness areas. But the inspiration to set up Cheeki with business partners Larry and Robyne Dimant struck him in a more urban setting.

”If you hang out on a Sunday morning in a popular part of Sydney, the garbage bins are overflowing with plastic bottles and coffee cups,” he says.

”I looked into it and found 2.7 million coffee cups are consumed every day in Australia. They are paper but have plastic coating and a plastic lid and I thought ‘this is just hideous’.

”Then I became aware of the health issues with plastic bottles … with BPA [a potentially hazardous chemical] and the leaking of toxins into the water.

”I’d come back from two years living in New Zealand and was looking for a new [business] opportunity and thought let’s build a brand of reusable stuff that’s better for the world – that was the primary motivation. It’s also better for your health and I thought let’s make it colourful and fun and a bit groovy’.”

Cheeki bottles and coffee cups are now sold in 2000 stores across Australia and the US, with plans to make them available throughout the UK.

Mr Karlik hopes his products catch off to the point where people will have their cup filled at the coffee shop near their workplace, and refill their bottle from the tap at work because drinking from stainless steel tastes better than from plastic.

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A NEW online petrol ranking system is making it easier for long-distance drivers to find the cheapest town to fill up.
NRMA’s Bowser Buster ranks the average price of unleaded petrol across 52 regional locations in NSW and Canberra.

Drivers will be able to use the rankings to see which towns historically sell petrol at a cheaper or higher price.

“Ranking data for a town could provide motorists with a good understanding of where the cheaper and more expensive places are to fill up,” said NRMA president Wendy Machin.

Ms Machin said Albury ranked in the top five cheapest towns to fill up for less.

“The centres that consistently appear in the top 10 cheapest places to purchase unleaded petrol are Albury, Ballina, Canberra and Moama,” she said.

Places that charge the highest prices include Bega, Cooma, Hay, Moree, West Wyalong and Yass.

Bowser Buster ranks towns based on their weekly average rather than real time prices.

The NRMA said a town’s average unleaded price could also occasionally rise or fall in the rankings for no specific reason.

“Aggressive competition, old petrol stock brought at a higher or lower price, and transport costs all play a factor in price setting,” said Ms Machin.

Bowser Buster is updated every monday.

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You think that if you put in extra hours and meet your deadlines, you’ll eventually be considered for a promotion or a raise.

But being productive doesn’t guarantee you a promotion and it can actually work against you, especially if you’re too good.

Jeffrey Pfeffer, author of Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don’t, says that performance matters less than you might imagine because it “has many different dimensions” and “what matters to your boss may not be the same things that you think are important.”

In the book, Pfeffer offers a scenario where bosses were not willing to promote their employees because they see them as “extremely effective in their current position” and don’t want to lose them in that specific role. Furthermore, they might not want to “to do anything that would bring [you] to the attention of others and thereby, risk losing [you].”

The only way to ensure that your competence in your job will be fairly evaluated is if you get noticed and are able to manage your own superiors — without them knowing it.

“You need to be noticed, influence the dimensions used to measure your accomplishments, and mostly make sure you are effective at managing those in power — which requires the ability to enhance the ego of those above you.”

This is because your relationship with those in power is critical to your own success, and you should worry about this relationship as much as you worry about your job performance. In fact, you should be careful when delivering bad news to your manager, so that they don’t associate the negative feeling that follows that news with you.

Pfeffer says that by broadening your influences and “managing up,” you are displaying your own powers over your superiors.

“Your driving ambitions and even your great performance are not going to be sufficient to assure success in a typical hierarchical organisation. The people responsible for your success are those above you, with the power to either promote you block your rise up the organisation chart. And there are always people above you, regardless of your position.”
Business Insider

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SAVVY shoppers have surpassed forecasts for how much they can save through Coles’ new my5 loyalty scheme, choosing products that will cut their supermarket bills by nearly $250 a year – 23 per cent more than anticipated.

The first data from the discount offer plan – which offers 10 per cent off five preferred grocery products – reveals Coles-brand two-litre milk is the most popular choice. Bananas are second, followed by minced beef, Helga’s bread and Coles brand three-litre milk.

Other items which feature prominently on my5 lists are 24-packs of 375ml Coke, or its sister soft-drinks, and Kleenex 12-pack toilet rolls.

Assuming the typical customer bought toilet rolls, one size of milk and 24 cans of Coke every week, the likely saving would be $4.75 – or $247 a year. When Coles launched my5 as part of a revamped FlyBuys scheme, it predicted customers would save about $200 annually.

Under the new scheme shoppers spend $50 and earn 50 FlyBuys points worth 25c. Previously they only received 20 points worth 16c.

The reforms follow criticism from disenchanted shoppers who have taken years to redeem meagre vouchers for small items such as toasters.

Coles CEO Ian McLeod said with the cost of living on the rise, Australian families were looking to save money where they could.

“It’s clear from the products Australia has chosen that customers are looking to save on key staples and the things they buy for their families every week,” Mr McLeod said.

CommSec chief economist Craig James said FlyBuys were becoming more popular as people became cautious with their spending habits.

“The thing is, most people have the money to spend, it’s just they don’t want to spend,” Mr James said.

“There is so much uncertainty about the carbon tax and utility prices going around right now it’s forcing people to shop around for bargains.”

Consumer watchdog Choice spokeswoman Ingrid Just urged customers to always look for best value.

“Any reward program is designed to get you continually back to their store, so while any savings are great, it’s always good to see if there are even better savings available out there,” she said.

Woolworths is offering discounts of at least 20 per cent across 1200 items.

SUPERMARKET giant Woolworths is promising to slash grocery prices as much as 50 per cent in a revamp of its rewards program to fight back against Coles.

The initiative, to begin today, comes less than a month after an overhaul of the rival Flybuys scheme which saw shoppers given a 10 per cent discount off five handpicked products at Coles.

Woolworths has struck back by offering discounts of at least 20 per cent across 1200 items, including meat, cereal, tinned food and beauty products.

These include brand and private-label groceries, but “Extra Special Extra Simple Savings” don’t include fresh milk, fruit or vegetables.

Items subject to the offer will be marked with an orange tag and shoppers receive their discount when they swipe an Everyday Rewards card.

Unlike Coles my5 Flybuys’ discount, which requires shoppers to spend at least $50 to receive a discount on five favourite products, there is no minimum spend, nor is there an end date for the Woolies promotion.

An independent analysis had recently awarded Coles bragging rights in the loyalty card stakes, finding Flybuys could save savvy shoppers spending $156 a week just over $6 each time they shopped.

Before its revamp Flybuys claimed to have more than five million active cardholders, while Woolworths said its program had more than seven million members.

CHICAGO – As fuel consumption continues to decline, “The future of the convenience store industry will depend on foodservice,” declared Dean Dirks, founder and CEO of c-store and foodservice consulting firm Dirks & Associates, speaking at the 2012 National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago this past weekend.

During an educational session titled “How to Do World-Class C-Store Foodservice,” Dean stressed the importance that foodservice will play on convenience store profits, stressing it must be “done right.”

“You must do your due diligence to make sure that it’s going to work,” he said, offering up an example of a situation with one small c-store operator where it didn’t make sense to offer a QSR. For those to succeed, “you must have at least 1,500 people a day in your store,” he said. Anything less won’t be able to turn a profit.

The panel session included insights by Dr. Jack Cushman, executive vice president of foodservices for Nice N Easy Grocery Shoppes, and Jim Bressi, director of food research and development for Kwik Trip, Inc.

Cushman began by laying out three essential considerations for succeeding with a foodservice program:

Maximize the foodservice real estate by providing customers what they want. To do so requires a thorough understanding of the customer psychographic.

Maximize gross margins by choosing distributors wisely, engaging in menu engineering to add value, and viewing labor as a variable cost.

Differentiate your business by continuously reviewing and implementing foodservice and convenience store industry trends.

Bressi said that foodservice is “a daily challenge,” one that requires a near fanatical attention to detail, especially cleanliness — paramount as convenience stores try to change consumer perceptions as to the quality of c-store foodservice.

For more on how to offer world-class foodservice, see the NACS CAFE foodservice training program.

Wayne Swan has thrown a lifeline to small businesses that are battling against the high dollar and weak consumer spending in an attempt to limit the pain of the two speed economy.

From July, loss-making small businesses will be able “carry back” their losses, allowing them to receive a refund from taxes paid in the previous year.

The change, which is forecast to cost $714 million over the next four years, is intended to help firms in the economy’s slow lanes by giving companies a source of income amid the suffering. And it comes into force at the same time as previously-announced tax breaks that will allow small businesses to claim hefty write-offs on new equipment or cars.

The government says the loss carry-back scheme should also encourage businesses to invest in innovation because companies will receive tax relief for large investments that drive them into the red.

“This will support business when they need it – providing an injection of funds to invest in new ideas, equipment and markets,” Mr Swan said.

“So a cafe on a tourist strip can get the funds they need to refurbish or keep on valuable staff, so they’re ready for when conditions pick up.”

The maximum refund of previously paid taxes that small businesses will be able to receive is $300,000, as eligible losses will be capped at $1 million.

While business groups have backed the measure, they point out that it will only assist a minority of small businesses, because it applies solely to companies, not partnerships or sole traders.

According to Treasury estimates, the change will benefit up to 110,000 companies. This is less than 5 per cent of the country’s 2.7 small businesses.

Separately, Mr Swan also highlighted a new tax break that will allow small business owners to write off any new business asset they purchase costing up to $6500 from this July. For cars or utes, the write-off will apply for assets worth up to $5000.

Funded by the mining tax, this write-off will be available to all of the country’s 2.7 million small businesses and is expected to cost $1 billion in its first year.

Together, Mr Swan said the measures were a “huge” package that would help redistribute mining wealth to weaker industries.

“Those two things combined are a huge package for all of those small businesses out there who are not in the fast lane of the mining boom,” Mr Swan said.

Despite the help for businesses in the economy’s slow lanes, small companies will miss out on a cut in the company tax rate from 30 per cent to 29 per cent, after the government abandoned its pledge to cut company taxes in the face of political opposition.

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SMOKERS have been hit like never before, with a clampdown on duty-free cigarettes and tobacco police to enforce new plain packaging laws.

From September 1 the government will reduce the inbound duty free allowance for international travellers to 50 cigarettes or 50 grams of tobacco.

Scrapping the duty free perk will rip an extra $600 million from smokers’ pockets over four years.

The measure will raise $115 million in its first year rising to $175 million by 2015.

The move followed a call by the Heart Foundation and National Stroke Foundation.

They called for the extra revenue to be pumped into health programs aimed at preventing heart attacks and stroke.

Under existing rules, in-bound travellers aged over 18 are allowed to bring into Australia 250 cigarettes or 250g of tobacco products tax-free.

The duty free rise comes as the Government is set to increase its take in tobacco tax revenue by $60 million to more than $5.8 billion.

The tobacco industry is under assault from health care providers trying to get Australians to stop smoking and the Federal Government’s determined campaign to introduce plain packaging.

Canberra will spend $3 million over the next year policing its new plain packaging laws, including snap inspections of cigarette retailers including supermarkets and tobacconists.

Beer drinkers won’t escape the Budget pain, contributing an estimated $2.183 billion to Federal Government coffers over the next 12 months.

The $75 million tax revenue rise comes despite a fall in the number of Aussies enjoying a pot to the lowest level in 65 years.
Canberra is looking to steadily increase its take from the amber fluid by another $200 million by 2015.

Australian Hotels Association chief executive Brian Kearney said Australians who enjoy an ale were once again copping it in the hip pocket.

“The continuing tax grab by government directed towards drinkers whom Canberra sees as basically just a soft target is disappointing from our point of view,” he said.

Mr Kearney said the bucket of money flowing from drinkers in the form of taxes was particularly disappointing, given great strides have been made in responsible alcohol consumption and the impact on drinkers’ health.

“The days when Australia was top of the international drinking table are long gone,” he said.

Mr Kearney was particularly critical of the twice yearly automatic tax rises applied to alcohol.

“The creeping CPI-based tax increases year by year results in the price of a pot over the bar increasing by 20c per annum,” Mr Kearney said.

AFTER four Budgets playing Father Christmas, this is Wayne Swan’s Robin Hood Budget.

Now he’s not only handing out money with one hand, he’s also taking it back with the other.

The Budget has new spending that adds up to $22 billion over the five years, including this one.

But it also takes back $34 billion over those years.

The $12 billion in net savings, over five years, is the rather modest measure of this Budget’s “toughness”.

The Treasurer could have reached his surplus by slashing much less – if he had not opted for new spending.

But the Robin Hood bit is precisely what this Budget is all about. And why it is an intensely political exercise.

Swan is taking from the well-off – like the superannuation hit to high-income earners and abandoning the company tax cut – so he can redirect money to lower-income families and the disadvantaged.

It’s not only Robin Hood in the old-fashioned Labor way. But a desperate attempt to compensate, indeed over-compensate for the carbon tax.

There’s also a new age edge to the Robin Hood flavour. Swan is stealing from the fiscal future, and indeed the past, to “give” to the present – this Budget’s 2012-13 year – where he’s hostage to the promise written in fiscal blood of a surplus.

Spending is shovelled into this current year which finishes at the end of June; and also into the 2013-14 year which starts in July next year. And spending is literally taken out of the all-important 2012-13 year.

Total spending increases by a very healthy 4.8 per cent in real terms in 2011-12; then will purportedly fall by 4.3 per cent in 2012-13; then spring back to a 3.7 per cent growth rate in 2013-14.

The actual dollar numbers are even more stark.

Spending goes up $25 billion this current year; falls $7 billion next year; and then leaps by $23 billion.

Unbelievable.

Put that together with a similarly super-charged lift in revenue, surprisingly (not), in the 2012-13 year; and hey presto, Swan is playing Robin Hood AND Merlin – able to conjure a dramatic move from a $44 billion deficit this year to that $1.5 billion surplus next.

That forecast is very new age. It’s a virtual reality surplus that exists only in the cyberspace of a Treasury computer. In the real world, it’s a nonsense.

The one thing we can say with absolute certainty is the actual Budget bottom line in 2012-13 will not – repeat: will not – be a $1.5 billion surplus.

There’s a tiny chance it will be a bigger surplus; the near certainty that it will end up in deficit like all the previous Swan Budgets.

Just look at the current year which is nearing an end.

A year ago the forecast was for a $23 billion surplus; last night the figure was “adjusted” up to $44 billion.

It’s a racing certainty the final figure will be something different again.

And the year’s got only two months to go.

Swan’s is half-right that the Budget will “make way” for the Reserve Bank to cut interest rates further.

And he’s likely to be “rewarded” by another rate cut at the next RBA board meeting in early June.

But it’s more the case that the Budget doesn’t stand in the way. The RBA is cutting because the economy is not growing as fast as both it and Treasury believed last year.

The Budget-rate link actually works more the other way; that the Budget is hostage to what the RBA does with rates.

If it left rates too high for too long, growth in the economy would stay sluggish, and that alone would tip the Budget back into deficit.

In a more fundamental sense, the Budget – and the Australian economy – are hostage to what happens in China, Europe and the US.

In the wake of the elections in France and Greece, the chances of Europe tipping us into another GFC have increased.

The US recovery is going to be sluggish at best. And China, in the words of Winston Churchill, is a riddle wrapped in an enigma.
It’s economy has slowed. No-one really knows what mignt happen next.

The best thing to be said about Swan’s fifth Budget in this context of uncertainty is that it hasn’t really done anything major.

That is to say, it did no major harm. It didn’t do much good, either.

But it’s a plus that it only pretended to slash and burn.

The two biggest cuts were abandoning the small cut in company tax.

And the so-called “reprogramming” of defence spending, more normally known as pushing off spending to manana.

It managed to give Wayne Swan – and Julia Gillard – a surplus.

But that surplus has got to survive the Budget update in December, and then the Budget next year.

Good luck.

THE internet may be wreaking havoc among bricks-and-mortar retailers, but it seems the old-fashioned paper catalogue is resisting the onslaught.

Despite the rise and rise of e-commerce, more than one in three shoppers still relies on the humble catalogue before they make a purchase, according to the latest survey by AMP Capital Shopping Centres.

And it’s not just older shoppers.

About 28 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds and 30 per cent of 25 to 34-year-olds prefer to thumb through catalogues when making up their minds to buy.

“Catalogues are very popular among consumers,” catalogue distributor Salmat’s chief executive Grant Harrod says.

“They are the most pervasive and effective form of advertising.”

Harrod says catalogues are a passive medium and consumers love them because they are not under any pressure to buy.

“They can pick them up at their leisure and flick through them even if they have nothing specific to buy,” he says.

“Consumers do not want to be constantly sold at. And many shoppers simply cannot resist specials.”

Salmat distributes a mind-boggling 5.2 billion catalogues a year, up from 1.2 billion in 2002. They vary from the annual Ikea 60-page catalogue and weekly specials from Woolworths and Coles to the local plumber spruiking his business.

Unsurprisingly, toy catalogues are popular among children.

Belinda Daly, AMPCSC’s head of shopping centre marketing, says shoppers like the look and feel of catalogues and magazines when buying clothes, despite the avalanche of websites, smartphones and apps.

“They enjoy browsing through catalogues and shopping centre magazines to look for the latest key trendy looks,” Daly says.

AMPCSC produces its own “magalogue” three times a year. It’s delivered to 400,000 homes across Australia.

The 36-page magazine features 400 products and is “very popular among shoppers”, Daly says.

Television advertisements remain popular, of course. Thirty-four per cent of those surveyed depend on them for their buying decisions. compared with 30 per cent for letterbox drops.

“These long-established marketing techniques remain persuasive,” the survey says.

And while traditional media advertising still prevails, modern shoppers are increasingly turning to online research as an additional tool.

The survey of 1000 shoppers found that 24 per cent looked at search engines, 19 per cent relied on retailer websites, 17 per cent on email alerts and 17 per cent on product review websites before making purchases.

“To really engage with the omni-channel shopper, retailers must create superior customer experience and exhibit consistent brand values across all touchpoints,” says Peter Kelly, managing director of Directional Insights, which conducted the survey for AMPCSC.

“It’s a demanding environment fuelled by consumers who seek the best, whether it’s service, price, product or experience.”

If retailers want to capture the next generation, they’ll have to ensure their social media presence is robust while continuing to invest in traditional media, Kelly says.

Daly says today’s savvy shoppers are demanding a “seamless” combination of online and traditional media before decided on a purchase.

“For a retailer to be successful today, it’s essential to invest in the magic of the bricks-and-mortar experience while also replicating this magic in the online world,” Daly says.

“Australian retail has been slow to adapt to the new omni-channel consumer, but we are increasingly seeing big-hitters like Myer, David Jones, Big W, Target and Coles invest in e-commerce.

“The message is clear: while shoppers want a seamless experience, catalogues are also here to stay.”