Customers chastised for coffee cup crisis

If you’re anything like me, a typical millennial, you probably grab an overpriced coffee on the way to work. You very rarely bring a travel mug because, despite knowing you will get that coffee every day, the thought of paying £3.50 for a coffee and then having to wash your own cup up…um well that’s not fair. Unfortunately, this lazy habit of ours is incredibly harmful for the planet, we throw away a disgusting 2.5 billion disposable cups every year. The toasty coffee cups that keep your hands warm and never go soggy are coated with a thin layer of plastic on the inside. This makes them incredibly difficult to recycle meaning they cannot be recycled at a normal recycling plant. In fact there is only one specialist recycling plant in the whole of the UK that can recycle them.

 

 So what can the likes of Starbucks do to combat this disastrous waste of our worlds resources… introducing the ‘Latte Levy’. That’s right, they will now be charging you more for your coffee in the hope that you bother to bring your own cup. You won’t. 48% of people said they would bring their own cup to avoid the new 5p Starbucks cup charge. Well we all have the best of intentions but when was the last time you forgot to take a reusable bag to the shop? The marketing surrounding this new ploy to charge customers more whilst making absolutely no changes to the environmental impact of their business has been sickeningly presented by those clever PRs as an environmental shift when it is actually a complete disregard of the problem.

 

Frugalpac, a Suffolk-based company, has created a coffee cup that combats this disastrous waste whilst costing no more to manufacture. The cups inner plastic layer is attached in a way in which it can be removed easily by a normal recycling plant. Now this is the solution we are looking for. It is about time environmental sustainability was a responsibility held by the companies, not something thrust onto the customers as they scrabble around in coffee withdrawal on their morning commute. That being said, let’s try and remember our cups tomorrow.