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Bring your own cup day

bring your own cup day

Did you think you would get free refills from 7eleven? Please bring your own cup day is becoming part of my life and hopefully yours too. Not that you get free coffee, but you will feel much better about consuming this delicious brew without contributing to the ever-growing waste single-use cups create.

Do you like coffee? It is well known that coffee is the most accepted stimulant in the world. Originated from South America and Asia, it has made its way in nearly every kitchen around the world, and for good reasons. It contains caffeine.

bring your own cup day
before coffee

me drinking my coffee
after coffee

I drink it every morning, and some days I have one in the afternoon too. Admitting to my addiction to coffee, I decided to give it a break for a month.

I didn’t make it. I lasted a week, and then I was back on it. I will rechallenge myself, just because I can. It definitely broke the pattern of me believing I don’t function without this black gold. Which was a nice outcome?

But what does this all have to do with going zero waste, you probably wonder?

The Problem

  1. Half a trillion disposable cups are manufactured annually worldwide; that’s over 70 disposable cups for every person on the planet.
  2. Disposable paper cups contain 5% polyurethane plastic, making composting and recycling of disposable cups extremely rare.
  3. Very little recycled paper is used to make disposable cups due to health risk concerns.
  4. It is estimated Australians use 1 billion disposable coffee cups each year. That’s approximately 2,700,000 paper coffee cups thrown out every day.
the liner of a coffee cup after the paper is rotten away
This is what a coffee cup looks like after the paper is rotten away.

Wow, crazy stuff right?

It looks like it can be easily confused with a jellyfish, the favorite food of sea turtles.

The Solution

Your challenge for today is to bring your own cup to work. If you don’t already have one, you can buy yourself a reusable cup from some suppliers that I listed here.

Although the Italian way to drink coffee is actually to have it like a shot at the cafe, it usually only takes a couple of minutes, and they are back to doing what Italians do.

This has changed quite a bit in our busy society. We want to take a coffee every where we go. Nothing wrong with that, just don’t forget to bring your own cup 🙂

Options

There are plenty of options out there, and depending on how you travel/ commute, you might need one that can seal properly.

Or you prefer the barista-style that you have in your car or office. Then you would opt-in for a keep cup.  

If you are on a budget, you can even use a mason jar and get a lid that will turn your jar into a coffee jar. Pretty cool, ay?

So that’s it, get a reusable coffee cup and make sure you get in the habit of using it and bringing it to your favorite barista. Most of them even offer you a couple of cents off of your coffee as an incentive.

If not, perhaps you can suggest this idea to your coffee shop to help reduce the amount of single-use cups in the world. Here is a picture of your disposable coffee cup after the paper has rotten away.

Do

Option 1: Buy yourself a nice reusable cup that you want to use every day. Option 2: Ask kindly at the café to drink the coffee there in a nice mug. The Italian way.

Keep Cup

Joco Cup

If you would like to learn a bit more about the impacts and 6 of my favorite cups, take a look here.

pinit fg en rect red 28

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