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.
I recently visited Killarney and I thought it was a great system. As a tourist, the €2 was no big deal to have a cup for the whole week. Then I just returned it before I left and got the money back. They do this all over Germany and have branded cups for each town. It would be cool to see it more widely done elsewhere too.
I visited about twenty years ago, it’s definitely worth a visit.
branded cups for each town
€2 is also a pretty cheap souvenir of a trip. my mom would have collected one of each.
Yeah I’m 100% not giving that cup back and am collecting as many different ones as I can.
Admittedly I’ll probably bring them home and never use them and throw them away in a few years because omg I have way to many cups I can’t handle this anymore. But still.
Very good system. We all need to get into the habit of bringing our own bottles/cups and reusable bags when we’re out and about.
…as used to be common in the past.
Hindsight is 20/20
and now it is 20/23
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That honestly seems like a hassle. Long trips and stuff I understand, but if I’m just hanging with my friends with nothing on me I don’t want to carry a bag just to put a cup in it.
The deposit system they’re using in that town seems much better to me, as long as that’s an option I’m on board.
The deposit system would be great to see for take away/ delivery food as well. Here in Germany we have it for coffee cups and bottles/ cans you buy from the supermarket. Works great and is really easy to adapt to, just the garbage from Take away food is still a pain in the ass.
Yeah, it would be pretty cool, especially since recycling isn’t even an option for Pizza boxes.
Although I can imagine that a reusable pizza box is actually worse in terms of CO2. Production and cleaning might be worse over the projected lifetime than the current system.
it’s a return to tradition. few hundred years ago you’d have your sword and your tankard on your belt as part of your daily carry
Tiny inconveniences in our lives are far less important than the billions of tons of pollution we create every year…
Sure, but the deposit system doesn’t create pollution either and is also a much smaller inconvenience.
I have a collapsible coffee cup made of silicone, works pretty well and barely takes any space at all in my bag.
I understand a 100 percent. Most shops here switched to something like recup, but I really like taking 10 minutes to drink from a decent cup. And, of course, italians always had al banco, where you drink a quick caffe` (espresso) while standing at the bar
Looks like a good idea
I live in Ireland and litter is a major issue. Bottles, cans, cups, discarded food, trash dumped in country lanes and worst of all fly tipping. I think a lot of these issues are easy to remedy and while reusable coffee cups are a positive there is a lot more that could be done.
As a former barista, getting rid of single use cups would easily cut a coffee shops waste in half, if not more.
Oh, and if your local coffee shop has a recycle bin/slot, chances are whatever goes into it goes into the regular trash. People are stupid and think everything they put in there is recyclable and workers don’t have the time to sort through it.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
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.
Eliminating single-use cups sounds a relatively modest goal but only a handful of other towns, such as Freiburg in Germany, are known to have tried similar initiatives.
“We were looking at options for community projects, and we thought, ‘Oh, coffee cups, that’ll be quick’,” said Louise Byrne, a sustainability manager for the Killarney Park Hotel and The Ross.
The campaign sought to enlist all of Killarney’s 21 independent cafes, a lengthy process of individual face-to-face meetings, research, negotiations, a town hall-style gathering, a video, and more discussions.
In addition to environmental benefits, the organisers said cafes could save money – each disposable cup costs 20 to 30 cents – and enhance Killarney’s brand.
He had no objection to paying a €2 deposit for a takeaway cup that could be returned to any cafe in Killarney or 400 locations across Ireland, including Dublin airport, that are part of a wider campaign.
The original article contains 736 words, the summary contains 178 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
The tl;dr at the beginning of the post was shorter than the auto tl;dr and was enough info.
I personally did this like a year ago. Its extremely easy because almost every coffee machine out there will have a refillable pod that you load with your own grounds. So instead of putting in a pod you just load a scoop and put in your pod. Oh and it’s way cheaper and honestly tastier.
They’re talking about cups, not pods
:(
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.
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.
