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Brilio.net/en - Its one of the most emblematic North-American traditions: the portable and disposable coffee cups! With such ease and practicality, adopted by millions of people not only in the USA and in Canada, where the massive trend comes from, and has pretty much become a global phenomenon.
Unfortunately, coffee cups seem to be an ecological disaster. According to a recent report conducted upon request of the Vancouver City Council, coffee cups are of the most difficult to recycle items.
The city of Vancouver (British Columbia, Canada) is currently an example in terms of recycling and cleanliness and is actually aiming to be the greenest city in the world by 2020, reducing half of his waste compared to the year 2008. The city's director of waste management and resource recovery explains that these single-use items (not only coffee cups but also plastic bags for example) are increasingly ending up in the city's public garbage bins. As a reminder, the average lifetime of a coffee cup is about twenty minutes, and Canadian people drink an average of 2.8 cups of coffee per day, which represents a lot of waste. As part of their waste reduction goals, the City council is currently considering to ban coffee cups from the city.
Nothing has been decided yet, and the first step would be to implement a voluntary program for coffee shops and restaurants to choose not to distribute coffee cups anymore. Which of course raises a lot of issues and before making any final regulation, the council wants to work on the different solutions that could solve the take-away problem.
Among the alternatives suggested, a take-back program such as the recycling system existing in Germany with cans, plastics bottles and any other recycle items. The customer would be refund the cost of the cup when bringing the cup back to the store or to a specific container for example. Another trend has become more and more popular in the last year is for customers to bring their own cup or thermos to the coffee shop.
Even if it seems difficult, the idea was warmly greeted in Canada. According to a survey by the popular media Vancitybuzz, 70% of Vancouverite are favourable to this action. Besides banning coffee cups, the city of Vancouver is also considering banningplastic bags and Styrofoam food containers.
(brl/tis)
