'Sit in and slow down': Cork women behind campaign to curb coffee cup waste

The morning ritual of a cup of freshly brewed coffee sipped on the go is universal. While we may still consider ourselves a nation of tea drinkers, there’s no denying our embrace of coffee as our beverage of choice for life on the go.

Such is the appetite for coffee to go that we have created another problem: it is estimated that 200 million used paper cups are thrown away a year in Ireland alone - a staggering 22,000 paper cups binned every hour.

At the end of the 2010s came a drive to make all single-use coffee cups from compostable materials. In 2018, then Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Denis Naughten TD, praised Supervalu as the first Irish retailer to only use 100% compostable coffee cups for their Frank & Honest coffee brand.

In 2022, the Government announced plans to create the so-called ‘latte levy’ on single-use cups as part of wider sustainability plans. Four years on, there’s no levy, and the use of single-use cups continues to rise.

But why is this a problem if the cups are compostable? Surely that’s a good thing?

It is, and it isn’t, Cathy Fitzgibbon of Sustainability in Cork Alliance tells me.

“Most non-reusable cups are coated with a plastic lining which makes them difficult to recycle through conventional recycling systems,” says Cathy.

“We predominantly use those cups when we’re on the go, and when you’re finished and passing a bin, it may go into the wrong bin if it’s not obviously a compostable one, and then the cup is not going to be recycled as it should be. That’s the problem with them.”

Discarded coffee cups are already a littering blight, and highlighting their recycling issue isn’t a reason to stop binning the cups. Instead, it’s to encourage us to not make use of them at all.

Sustainability in Cork Alliance is a collaborative network of sustainability advocates working together to inspire positive reinforcement across the county of Cork. The Alliance was established earlier this year with a founding committee of female entrepreneurs working in sustainability across multiple sectors.

Imke Range, Ailis Crowley, Orla McAndrew, Sofia Kalfa, Cliona O’Halloran, Katherine Fitzpatrick, and Cathy Fitzgibbon are the first in the door, but the Alliance is open to all.

In identifying the scale of the problem with single-use coffee cups, the Alliance has made this the focus of its first campaign. In launching Real Cup, Real Cork, they hope to make an immediate and lasting impact for businesses and consumers at zero cost to anyone.

“This is our first campaign. We didn’t want it to be another cup return or deposit scheme,” Cathy says.

“When we looked at putting the campaign together, we did case studies looking at similar projects in Killarney and Ennis to see what they had done, what worked well or not. We asked about challenges and opportunities and did a lot of deep diving initially before we decided on the campaign as it is. We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel, but equally we wanted ways to create more impact.”

So, what is Real Cup, Real Cork, and how is it hoping to help solve the problem of single-use cups?

“The scale of the problem is huge globally, but in Cork we have a lot of outlets using these cups we can look at and say, how can we make small changes in our own local area?

“Personally, I don’t like the concept of recycling. I get there are advantages, but I feel it has made us lazy. We get our waste collected, it gets collected, and that’s job done - we’ve recycled.

“We’re very unfamiliar with the process after, and in Ireland, facility-wise, we’re not set up to be able to fully recycle. I could separate everything into different bins, but if my neighbour is not doing it right, it affects the whole recycling system.”

The single-use coffee cup is an example of this. Although compostable, the cups can’t break down in a domestic compost bin nor in general waste because of the plastic coating. Yet many cups end up in landfill or the wrong recycling bin.

“We all have good intentions,” says Cathy, “but when outlets are providing compostable cups as an option, it’s enabling that system as such. That’s where things started off for us. We wanted something practical, knowledge sharing and based around behavioural change. My background in advertising is all about behavioural science and communications - important keys in designing a campaign that would work.

“Real Cup, Real Cork is Sustainability in Cork Alliance’s first campaign, and it has two key messages,” explains Cathy.

“The first is to sit in and slow down. That’s about not drinking from a takeaway cup but drinking from a proper ceramic cup or mug within the café. The second is if taking a coffee to go, remember your own cup. We all have cups that are reusable, so make good use of them. It isn’t about perfection, it’s about making reuse easy, normal, and a part of our everyday lives for lasting impact.

“For cafés and coffee shops, participation means they’re part of the solution and being practical about sustainability in action. Their customers are a vehicle for the change.”

Another boon for businesses is not only is there no charge to take part, but taking part can reduce the costs to businesses while contributing to sustainable action in their local community.

“All a café needs to do to sign up is let us know they’re interested in being a participating café, and we have created free materials for businesses to promote their involvement in the Real Cup, Real Cork initiative to their customers. There’s no cost to a business, and we’re open to as many cafes as possible getting on board,” says Cathy.

Encouraging customers to sit in and enjoy their coffee out of a real cup or bring their own reusable cup for a coffee to go, reduces the cost of buying paper cups and their disposal, contributes to less waste going to landfill, and less littering too. A win-win-win!

“It’s looking beyond the cup to be part of a wider movement towards a circular economy – reusing rather than single-use consumption,” says Cathy. “A big part of this campaign is speaking with and helping cafe owners. Single-use cups are expensive, and cafe owners have invested hugely in them, but when they’re not recycled correctly, it adds a cost to their business for trying to do the right thing,” Cathy says.

So how does the Alliance know if their campaign is making an impact?

“With this campaign, we worked with participating cafes to track the difference. The week before we launched, we asked cafés that had signed up to participate to track what their takeaway usage was and used this as a baseline. The week of the campaign, they tracked takeaway usage again, and we were looking at a reduction of around 22%. That’s substantial, but it’s also just the beginning.

“They also noticed more people were sitting in, talking to each other, so it also had an impact in terms of community and connecting with other people for just five minutes a day.”

The campaign received funding for Cork County Council to develop messaging for social media and to create and deliver the materials for participating cafés to display at their point of sale.

The focus has initially been on securing take-up by coffee shop businesses operating in Cork’s towns and villages across the county. But given the scale of the opportunity for impactful change, Cork city also has a massive part to play in reducing the number of takeaway coffee cups used daily.

Although the Alliance has some city-based cafes participating, they would like to see more sign up.

“The uptake is good, but we would like more to get on board with it and have this as a new norm for cafes. That would be great,” says Cathy.

“This campaign is funded by Cork County Council, which enables us to work with local cafes across the county to make reuse more visible, accessible and achievable in everyday life. The funding has allowed us to produce videos to showcase our message, and that’s what you see on our socials.”

Cathy says there is more to the message than remembering to bring your own cup. It’s about giving yourself the time to appreciate a well-made coffee in a nice cup in comfortable surroundings.

“The way cost of living is, a coffee for some is now a luxury. If it is a treat for you, why not take some time to sit down and mindfully enjoy drinking that coffee rather than it being something that’s just gone in five minutes?

“It tastes better when you slow down too, because you’re savouring the drink and engaging your senses.

“When you sit in a café, you can hear the coffee grinder, the milk being frothed, the aroma of the coffee brewing – it’s all a sensory experience if we choose it to be.”

Businesses signing up is only half of this equation. The other is the consumer. “If you as a consumer want to be involved, two things you can do are bring your own cup and ask your favourite local café if they are participating; and if not, why not! Encourage them,” says Cathy, “it’s a two-way street!

“If I go into my local coffee shop and say I want them to take part, that’s the consumer being proactive about sustainability.

“Businesses may feel they don’t have to officially say they are participating, but they could be anyway. For us, it’s the more, the better - then it becomes a movement we can hook into.

“Also, there really isn’t any work involved for businesses that want to be a part of the initiative, and it’s so easy it is to get involved. We’re voluntary; we have funding, so there really is no catch!”

Any opportunity to reduce the cost of doing business is surely a good idea; and if participating means spending less on single-use coffee cups, why wouldn’t you?

Most of us have a reusable cup hiding in a kitchen press we can use for take-out. And if you sit in to enjoy your drink, a proper cup comes as standard, so there’s no cost for consumers either.

Real Cup, Real Cork is a simple initiative businesses and consumers can get behind and make real, impactful change in the process - and it doesn’t cost a coffee bean to do it, either!

“We are open to anyone, city or county, signing up. Let us know you are participating and have the point of sale in your café because it’ll mean we can show how effective the campaign is. Let’s keep building momentum and keep the conversation going!”

See @sustainabilityincorkalliance on Instagram and LinkedIn, or email sustainabilityincork@gmail.com.