Reusable coffee cups are all the rage at the moment, you’d be hard-pressed to walk into a Milton-Ulladulla cafe and not see someone sipping a takeaway coffee in one.
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However, one cafe owner believes they may be doing more harm than good, with several customers retelling stories of alleged bullying at cafes over forgotten reusable cups.
“I find it’s mostly women and mothers,” Craft Surf owner Glen Thurston said.
“I’ve had people who’ve apologised for not having their KeepCup with them - before they have even ordered.
I'm probably telling one in three people that they aren’t a bad person because they don't have it.
- Glen Thurston
“There is a real sense of shame for people who are using a takeaway coffee cup and it’s almost become a low level of bullying.
“Ultimately people feel very obliged to be reusing, and we should be, but we don't need to shame, we don't need to push down and we don't need to judge.”
Mr Thurston agrees people need to move away from single-use plastics and plastic takeaway coffee cups, however he said coffee drinkers need not fear because not all takeaway coffee cups are created equal.
“We use a BioCup here which can be composted,” he said.
“The cup and lid are both compostable. It's all PLA [polylactic acid]. It's a corn starch product that’s biodegradable.”
BioCup’s are produced by Australian company Biopak and are made from bagasse, the fibrous matter that remains after sugarcane or sorghum stalks are crushed to extract their juice.
According to Biopak’s website, bagasse is an extremely durable, lightweight and inexpensive product that “biodegrades in 30-90 days, once exposed to composting conditions”.
Once exposed to composting conditions, BioCup's degrade in 30-90 days.
- BioPak
“If these cups are going to go to landfill it's a step in the right direction,” Mr Thurston said.
“The reality is that most takeaway cups are going to end up in landfill and this is a far better than the plastic ones ending up there.
“Plastic takeaway cups fail because you can't recycle them. Even if you put them in your recycling bin they will end up in landfill due to their plastic lining.”
Mr Thurston said while reusable coffee cups are an improvement on the current plastic-lined paper cups, the reusable options have their flaws too.
“They say you need to have 15 coffees in the glass reusable cups to have counteracted the energy used to produce them,” he said.
“If you break your KeepCup, or don't use it 15 times, then you've had a greater environmental impact than your 15 takeaway cups.”
Mr Thurston said the overall goal should be people being mindful of minimising single use plastic.
“The process needs to be open and not forceful,” he said.
“There's a mob-like mentality that's getting stirred up here. It gets rude, it's judgmental and it gets to be bullying if you're not part of the mob.
“You don't need feel like you've killed someone if you pick up a BioCup. It will breakdown. It's not the goal or an answer. It’s just the truth.”
