Killarney used to accept it as a price of being a tourist town: ubiquitous disposable coffee cups spilling from bins, littering roads and blighting the area’s national park.
The County Kerry town went through about 23,000 cups a week – more than a million a year – adding up to 18.5 tonnes of waste.
Not any more. Three months ago, Killarney became the first town in Ireland to phase out single-use coffee cups. If you want a takeaway coffee from a cafe or hotel, you must bring your own cup or pay a €2 deposit for a reusable cup that is returned when the cup is given back.
They are pretty convenient though. Are there any sustainable alternatives?
Like with straws, I know for fact that there are non-paper biodegradable ones.
Also, with discovery of plastic-eating bacteria, how is the definition of biodegradable shifting?
Edit: Obligatory mention of industry regulations being more effective in helping the environment
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
These are in order of priority. You want to recycle as a last resort, and reduce or reuse instead, if that works.
There’s been plenty of recent developments on plastic-free coffee cups. Even ones that have very thin layers of biodegradable plastic. A few years ago someone came up with fully carton based cups that hold coffee.
But I think that reusable cups are probably more viable. The €2 deposit sounds pretty hefty, so it’s going to strongly encourage people to bring their own cups and actually return the reusable ones. Mini-thermoses are cool, I like them.
2 euros isn’t a lot in Ireland
If anything, I expect the measure to encourage people to not drink coffee at all, or to wait until they’re home instead.
Simple fact of the matter is that that sounds really inconvenient, and needs justifying. If there are readily available biodegradable options right there, why on earth wouldn’t you use them?
Because that’s still trash. From the teaser above:
Apparently they got sick of disposable coffee cups, so suggesting a cup which biodegrades is not exactly a solution to their problem.
As a resident of another town, I find filled bins, littered roads and trash in nature really inconvenient. Happy to see it justified.
What’s inconvenient about it? That you have to return the cup? Seems pretty lazy.
I mean you could even return the cup at the airport so if you forget to return it in town you could deposit it when you leave.
It’s just like bringing your own bags to the store, sorting your trash for recycling or returning bottles and cans to the store.
Just return the cup and get your deposit back.
It will require rethinking business models. On-site consumption will have to be in ceramic mugs or other reusable dishware, and people looking for anything to-go will either have to bring their own portable coffee mugs and pay by volume or the business will have to sell their own reusable portable mugs and continue to charge fixed quantities.
I would be afraid of the company to sell their own reusable mugs because, if the problem boils down to mostly tourists, most of those would still end up in landfills.