Today I accepted I am useless at not buying coffee in disposable cups. I owned up to this bad habit in the first few weeks of this blog – and since then I have not improved. Being aware of the potential negative social and environmetal impacts of coffee, at home I minimise this impact by enjoying fair trade organic East Timor coffee made in my stovetop coffee maker. When out and about I try to resist coffee, unless I have time to sit down and enjoy my coffee in a non-disposable cup. However, if I want a coffee when away from home it is usually because I am busy and need a caffeine hit to keep me going. Sitting down is just not going to happen.
I’ve also tried taking my own ceramic mug – but like reusable shopping bags – unless the mug lives in my bag I forget. So despite my good intentions, far too often I end up buying coffee in a disposable cup (sometimes I even accept that ugly plastic cup cap as well). So today I decided to accept my failings and bought a very cute KeepCup to keep in my bag.
Photo source: Cobalt niche
If you are a greenwashing suspecting sceptic like me, you would dismiss such a cup as a gimic that would take more energy to produce than the sum of the disposable cups used. But apparently, the KeepCup (which by the way is an Australian invention [edited to add: AND MADE IN AUSTRALIA - Yay!]) is estimated to use less energy than a paper cup after only 12 uses. I’ve gone through more than 12 disposable cups in the last two months…so figure in two months time I can enjoy my coffee when out and about without the eco guilt about the disposable cup (i’ll still feel guilty about the coffee itself – but that is one luxury I'm not prepared to give up).
