Coffee cups - 15 July 2010
Keep that cup!
As a teenager in a small Western Australian town, I had an after school job in a takeaway shop. If a customer asked for coffee, they got a spoonful of instant in a polystyrene cup topped up with milk, sugar and hot water. Then a new shopping arcade was built and in it, the crowning glory, was the town’s first real cafe. It sold cappuccinos made from a real espresso machine. Suddenly there was a new cool thing to do. While I continued to dole out instant to the passing truckies, the cafe was attracting nicely dressed ladies and their daughters. Going to have a cappuccino was an indulgence for weekends and slightly special occasions.
Fast forward to today, and the Bathurst CBD bears witness to the morning coffee ritual. You see people crossing the road with little cardboard trays of coffee to rival anything you might get in Leichhardt or Rome. It seems we’ve all become coffee tragics, with enough disposable income to support our habit. When we had our renovations done, the guys who turned up to lay the concrete slab had espresso coffees in their hands. A rather genteel way to start a day of hard labour, I thought.
This is all very well but what about all those used disposable cups? Apparently the world gets through 400 billion disposable cups a year. The carbon emitted in their production and disposal is significant. (Admission: I am one of Bathurst’s worst offenders. A glance at the wastepaper basket at my feet reveals a couple of used cups. A couple more are in the car.)
It’s clear that we should be taking our own cups for our baristas to fill. For those on the move, there are lots of insulated cups on the market, complete with their own lids. However, they can be hard for baristas to use because they are not a standard size. The other day, I was given a KeepCup. The KeepCup conforms to standard coffee cup sizes and it is beautifully designed. And you can get the silicone band printed with your own logo, so they’re a great option for fundraising or business promotion. They’ve got some at Country Fruit, or look them up online.