A charity serves refreshments in coffee cups and plastic cups and per annum this maybe could equate to 15,000 cups.  All are used on site and mainly end up in landfill.  It simply isn’t practical to use china cups.

What I’m interested in is whether any of you have been to any establishments where you can purchase an inexpensive reusable coffee cup.  Would you consider doing this if it was printed with a charity logo and profits went to the charity?  Just to be clear, this would be for a small size coffee cup.  What cost would you think is acceptable?

I’m thinking that when purchasing the reusable cup it could include the coffee as well, would this encourage you?

Views welcome!

Just about to introduce a eco tax to our sports club where its £1 for a tea or coffee but 50p if you bring your own reusable cup.  Hopefully we’ll then cut down on the disposal cups that we use at the moment.

Personally I think it’s a no brained, however I’ll let you know how it goes in a few months 🙂

In my experience most cheap, reusable cups are not of great quality and are so not often reused enough to justify their existence. If the mug is too cheap is will not be valued and will be treated as disposable.

The only people I know who consistently reuse cups are those that buy a coffee on their way to work making it part of their daily routine. Most of these have spent £10+ on a good quality mug. The Bodum seems to be a favourite in my office.

https://www.johnlewis.com/bodum-vacuum-travel-mug-0-35l-stainless-steel-black/p2405058

The only place open to buy a coffee when I start work is the place a lot of STW users love to put down.

Gregg’s opens at 6.30am and I start just after ,the cup was £2 and as per the OP’s suggestion it comes with a free coffee you then get 10p of a refill. Not adding to landfill anymore with my morning coffee feels like a step in the right direction.

twistedpencil thanks for your reply and interested to know whether you did any “market research” first.  I would be very interested to know how you get on especially as regards the uptake.

Cletus thank you and you’ve made a very good point re quality, unfortunately I’ve not come across any so very much in the dark.  Are there any particular makes that you’ve found to be OK, PM if you prefer?

Is this something that those of you with families are particularly keen to embrace?

carlosg thanks, is your cup lasting well would you say?  Whenever I see Greggs I always think of Binners!

These are default non-disposable coffee cups over here in oz:  http://au.keepcup.com

I’m not super keen on them myself, but they are hugely popular.  I think you can get them printed for your coffee shop/charity whatever.

A large coffee here in Sydney is $4 (aud) and some places have started offering a 20 – 50c discount if you bring your own cup.

It simply isn’t practical to use china cups

Can you in any way wash up? It seems we have set up many systems and ways of doing things now based around disposal of things. Can you use a restaurants or hotels dishwasher? Have your own small kitchen? Etc. As a charity you would get funding for such things, or a donor kitchen it is ‘free’ giving…

Cinnamon_girl , the cup is lasting very well no signs of wear but it is made from a fairly heavy duty plastic. I wash the cup more or less as soon as I’ve finished it so it doesn’t get stained , the people working in the shop often remark that some customers don’t seem to wash theirs out at all

What we need are edible coffee cups.

Drink the coffee, eat the cup.  Make them out of biscuits?

Personally I think it’s a no braine[r],

This. It is possible to over think things. Announce the changes in advance, let people buy their own cups of preference. Crack on – have a 1 week grace period with disposables available.

batfink, thanks.  I’ve seen that brand mentioned and seems to be premium.  We do sell merchandise but am unsure how much folk would be prepared to pay especially as many visitors are families.

matt, thank you.  Yes I agree that convenience can override but simply we do not have a kitchen or the space for one, nor gas, electricity or running water!  A generator is used plus calor gas.

Thanks carlosg, I may have to visit Greggs.  Disgusting though that some don’t wash them.

I’ve got both plastic & glass keepCups which are very good but not so great insulators.

I also have a stojo which is a bit more pocketable and a clever design https://stojo.co/

A motorway services Pret I stopped at was knocking off 50p if you used your own cup so it soon pays its way.

I think disposable mugs are only worthwhile if your customers are regulars, random visitors will just result in loads of unwanted reusable mugs sitting in cupboards.

15000/260 working days is 60 mugs a day, you’d only have to wash up using a big washing up bowl and a pan of hot water a few times a day to keep on top of that, and overnight you’ve completely eliminated all your cup waste.

I also have a stojo which is a bit more pocketable and a clever design

That looks neat, though the animation makes it look like a sex toy…

Sniggers at Cougar’s comment!  Yes, I’d looked at those earlier but they’re £10 each.

Is a financial incentive enough to make people bring or buy their own?  Is saving the planet not enough of an incentive?  My thoughts were that if we could find a reasonable quality and nicely printed cup (souvenir plus fund raiser) then it’s a gentle push in the right direction.

Cups are bought in bulk and take up a lot of space, also someone physically takes the cup containing rubbish bags home and, believe me, there’s plenty.  There’s no way that china cups could physically be washed as sometimes there’s 2,000 visitors through the door in one day plus I can’t see anyone rushing to do it (I definitely wouldn’t!) and we don’t have the space.

We do have a fair number of regular visitors, to be honest if it wasn’t so busy I’d canvas for visitor opinions.

Comments have been appreciated so thanks.

matt, thank you.  Yes I agree that convenience can override but simply we do not have a kitchen or the space for one, nor gas, electricity or running water!  A generator is used plus calor gas.

Our old church ran a soup kitchen now and again – they had a small van with all the diswasher trays in. All the (plastic) plates and cups were loaded back in, and a large local hotel allowed the time to bung 20 loads through, straight back in van for the next week…

Ban disposable cups, if that’s too unpalatable for  our consumer economy, burn them to generate electricity.

If I don’t have time to stop in the café and drink my coffee out of a proper cup that can be washed up and re-used I would have a long hard look at my life.

In my experience most cheap, reusable cups are not of great quality and are so not often reused enough to justify their existence.

Nah – a decent metal one will last forever; the £1 plastic non-thermal ones you get from Starbucks that look like a paper cup are also very durable, and dishwasher safe.  We have one, been used loads still looks new.

If I don’t have time to stop in the café and drink my coffee out of a proper cup that can be washed up and re-used I would have a long hard look at my life.

You’re looking at it the wrong way round.  It’s not that we don’t have time, it’s that we want coffee when we are doing other things, or we want to buy it from a favourite place and then take it somewhere else (such as work) to drink.  I do these things, but I also make time to ‘sit in’ and drink from china on other occasions.

Is a financial incentive enough to make people bring or buy their own?  Is saving the planet not enough of an incentive?

Sadly, I’d imagine that the majority of people won’t give a toss about “saving the planet” when the cost is their own convenience.  After it’s “only” a cup, they don’t see the 2,000 others you go through that day.

A financial incentive might well be more effective.  20p off your coffee if you reuse a cup, a couple of quid for a branded travel mug (first fill’s free) will soon pay for itself with regular visitors.

You could trial it using a “bring your own mug” policy, see how it goes down without the initial outlay of ordering a load of mugs no-one buys.

Aside,

I’m sitting here drinking a mug of tea, and all this talk about coffee is making it taste funny.  Odd things, brains.

I’d ban disposable stuff if I were in government.  People would whine, but they could adapt.

Problem is of course that those making, distributing and selling disposable cups also make  money and contribute to the economy.

What I’m interested in is whether any of you have been to any establishments where you can purchase an inexpensive reusable coffee cup. Would you consider doing this if it was printed with a charity logo and profits went to the charity? Just to be clear, this would be for a small size coffee cup. What cost would you think is acceptable?

I think most coffee shops offer re-useable cups but I’d never buy one since I’ve got my own Klean Kanteen insulated tumblers. I don’t like the idea of yet more plastic, there’s the leaching of chemicals into the beverage and just the overall step up in quality and durabilty you get from something steel. I’m not sure if that helps you or answers the question….I suppose if I didn’t already own something like that I’d maybe buy a steel tumbler if it was cheap enough because it would seem like something worth keeping. Personally I’d be less inclined to buy something emblazoned with a charity name or logo than just a plain finish.

The Real Food Cafe (Chip shop in Tyndrum) have sold mugs for years, offering a discount on drinks if you use one of theirs. That only addresses part of the problem; you don’t want to be travelling about the country with a stock of cups for different cafes. If everybody carried a Stojo or similar, that would work. A few other thoughts:

Disgusting though that some don’t wash them

if people take their own mugs travelling, they probably don’t have an opportunity to wash them until they are home or at a final destination. Since I don’t put milk in any drinks, it wouldn’t worry me, but it could be a hazard otherwise.

someone physically takes the cup containing rubbish bags home

Most people wouldn’t object to a charity putting their rubbish in domestic bins – but some council jobsworths aren’t most people, and there’s a risk they’ll consider them commercial waste and issue fines.

Why not consider disposable clay or terracotta mug like in India?

You don’t have to follow the their mug design but something more modern?

Obviously those being sold here in UK are extortionately expensive as usual.

I refuse to drink hot stuff in all those takeaway plastic regardless. In a year I think I have only consumed one or maximum two take away coffee.  🙂

Information here.

try these guys  https://www.vegware.com/ 

They do a range of products which we sell – they are much more expensive than dispo stuff but so they should be, we also began selling Bamboo cups earlier this year and sold out of the first two batches within weeks, we have just placed an order for around 1500 cups and have them on back order.

PM me if you want to chat.

I’ve got a bamboo cup that I use. A decent size but it only cost about £3 I think. Waitrose do a similar thing and encourage you to buy a reusable mug, admittedly plastic but still.

Pret a Manger do discounts for using your own mug.

Bamboo cups? Isn’t it a bit awkward to drink from a long thin mug? Seriously, I was convinced of the benefit of using bamboo toothbrushes in place of plastic – til I saw the price! Hopefully your cups are a bit more reasonable!

Cinnamon_girl, no market research but tired of seeing how many we get through.  I would love to use china mugs, however we don’t have water at our cabins, everything is brought off site.

I do know quite a few local sports clubs have implemented this idea so not without precedent.

It met with some resistance initially but I think I’ve won the naysayers round for the time being, it’s not like our club will fold if sales of tea and coffee drop…

What we’re going to do is buy a small number of unbranded mugs and sticker them up. If these sell then we might look at branding some travel mugs. Ecobamboo cups (iirc) have some nice designs, but a bit pricey.

Next step recycling bins, and I’m not sure how the new disposable tax is going to hit us, I’d like to ditch plastic water bottles but will struggle until we get a supply…

Steve

Thanks all, more food for thought.  Seeing how the public embraced reusing plastic carrier bags (to save 5p) gives me hope that there is concern about the environment.  Will investigate the Greggs and Starbucks cups that have been mentioned.

Seeing how the public embraced reusing plastic carrier bags (to save 5p) gives me hope that there is concern about the environment.

As I said before, I expect there’s a greater concern about spending 5p on a carrier bag.

Price of everything, value of nothing?  Do you not believe that Blue Planet is influencing the public?

People do what they’re told to a large extent (see also diesel cars).

There’s plenty of good stuff to be said about plastic, for example the break even point (for greenhouse emissions) between polystyrene cups and a china mug is around 350 uses.  As long as the cups are disposed of responsibly that’s not bad. And you also have to think of the impact of all that detergent in wastewater which ends up in the rivers.

Paper cups are roughly 10x worse than polystyrene for greenhouse emissions too.

+1 for vegware, they do ‘disposable’ style cups which are plant based so can go in the compost.

Just bought a bamboo cup from ‘Home Bargains’, Ora Kiely print…..£1.99.

It has a cardboardy feel, but OK.

SWMBO has nabbed it within minutes.

Will have to pop in there tomorrow, and get another one. Only a few remaining though.

I’m yet to be convinced about this reusable cup concept both from an environmental and practical perspective. Yes, it works for folks who consume their commercially bought coffee in a routine and regular way; every morning on the way to work or at service stations on motorways and in those situations I can see how it would work. But not all of us live like that. My coffee purchases are far more ad hoc. I’m simply not prepared to carry a mug around on the off chance I may find myself wanting a coffee from a non china mug providing vendor. Then from an environmental perspective what is the impact of making a reusable mug measured in disposable mugs? As a household we have somehow accrued 8 of the things (some from similar concepts as CG is suggesting). Some of them have barely been used. If your charity coffee shop is only offering a refill service and many of your punters are new/unaware and come unprepared they are simply either not going to buy a drink or they will buy yet another cheap reusable that will never be used again as their reusable of choice is sat at home. They could have drunk it out of a ‘relatively’ low impact disposable, now they have a more significant amount of resource tied up in a mug shoved to the back of the cupboard

As a society I think we are looking at it the wrong way and focussing the blame on the customer rather than the business. Disposable culture allowed businesses to flourish where previously they could not because either they did not want the expense of washing their own reusable or didn’t have the ability to do so. It was never about consumer convenience. More effort needs to be made to make the reuse system localised or invent disposable cups that have a lower environmental impact. One idea I could see working in cities would be plain mugs that you could take away from vendors with a charge and then deposit in a machine in a variety of locations about the city to redeem the charge. All the cafes use the same mugs that get washed and redistributed back to the cafes. The credits could be electronic on your phone. Of course you would be free to use your own reusable mug too.

I think it is Italy where the take away coffee has not caught on and customers have stuck rigidly to wanting their coffee in coffee shops. Some mileage in that too.

Is a financial incentive enough to make people bring or buy their own? Is saving the planet not enough of an incentive?

Look at how many people needlessly use their cars for short trips of less than five miles, convenience trumps eco-warrior for many, sadly. Even though that short ride would improve the fitness of many, extend their life expectancy and reduce the burden on the NHS.

Can you find somewhere that will take the disposable stuff but guarantee it will be used for something else and not go into landfill?

At our local RSPB charity group meetings, we’ve started using compostable coffee/tea cups. These may be vegware.

C-G I am finding out more and more that a large percentage of our population don’t give a toss about the environment or the future of our country. It stresses me no end.

I think we need to take the ‘trend (I think from America) for carrying plastic water bottles and throwaway coffee cups around, unfashionable. I watch celebs and even top sports stars on the telly making it look cool.  It’s about education.