Perth Plastic Cup Ban: Should You're Coffee Shop Start Accepting Keep Cups Again?
?Do you throw away 800 coffee cups a year, I do.
The Western Australian Government banned plastic cups in January 2022, and is considering banning single use coffee cups later in 2022. I'm a huge coffee drinker, easily downing 3-4 cups a day, so I did some research to know if I'm going to need to lug around and clean a keep cup everyday now.
If you thinks its not important, plastic cups are a huge problem - 93.5 million cups went to landfill last financial year alone!
I always get my coffee in a paper cup anyway, surely that's not going to be banned?
Some paper coffee cups have a plastic layer to stop the paper going soggy.
These plastic lined paper cups are just as bad as normal plastic cups. There are also some paper cup options that don't use plastic as a lining and instead use another biodegradable film. It's not clear if these new cups types will be ok or not as the law hasn't been made yet.
Even if you can legally buy them, its not great for the environment to throw away so many cups.
Can I even bring a keep cup? I thought that was stopped due to COVID?
Yes, in an open letter from medical professionals (see references below) stated that it is ok during COVID.
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Their main argument is that most COVID transmission has been through aerosols. As long as the cup is cleaned with soap and water then it will be safe to use. This assumes that they are taking other COVID safe precautions such as masks and hand washing.
If I can avoid throwing away 800 cups a year by bringing and washing my own cup, I think that would be a good thing.
Would it be a problem if everyone brought a keep cup?
It would solve the landfill, but it would be logistically challenging for the coffee shop.
Imagine if a large group of people came in all with the same model of coffee cup. You need to make sure they are clean and then make sure that you give the right identically looking coffee cup to the right person. Coffee shops might even need to clean and store the keep cups of regular customers, adding to their overhead.
There is opportunity for innovation in managing keep cups, how would you do it?
Sources and References
Senior Data Engineer
3 年I definitely need to find myself a new keep cup. I don't see a big issue with identical cups as the paper cups are already identical. I have previously just put my initials and coffee type on the top of my keep cup. Nice and easy!