How Contactless Coffee is moving Single-Use into Touch

“There are so many sustainable alternatives you can reach for” The fella who plays Aquaman

The Road to Reuse

Before the full impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic rooted itself into every aspect of Irish life in March 2020, the march towards a reusable and environmentally sustainable future within the hospitality sector was gaining momentum. Many independent businesses in all communities were adopting approaches and innovations that reduced their environmental impact and encouraged a reusable culture.

Drivers of Change

A blend of intrinsic purpose from shops, cafes and restaurants, along with customer feedback and encouragement, helped drive this. Environmental organisations, like Conscious Cup Campaign and VOICE were instrumental in supporting this movement too with places like Cashel rocking a Zero Waste vibe and communities in Clonakility embracing environmentally responsible practices.

Deposit and Return schemes had started to grow in popularity with Huskee and Keep Cup swaps offering reusable solutions for customers wanting to avoid using a throwaway cup but didn’t have their own cup on them. We use Irish-based 2GoCup’s deposit and return approach in our coffee rig for this, along with donating 30cent to charity everytime an alternative to single-use cup is used (You could use your shoe if you want but we don’t recommend it). This, along with Squid Loyalty app, has helped us cut down on our disposable monthly orders.

The shortcomings of compostable packaging were also laid bare with Ireland lacking the correct facilities to dispose of it properly and the point has been made that it still requires substantial energy and water to create these cups too. Regrettably, it could be argued that some popular organisations seemed to use compostable packaging as a marketing ploy, decidely overlooking its limitation. However, opting for reuse as part of our daily routine had still become an easy change to make.

Diversion down a Disposable Cul-de -Sac

This momentum slowed to a crawl with the first wave of Covid-19 awashing the country with understandable fear, confusion and anxiety that will likely remain within the nation’s psyche for decades to come. There was an artificial surge in the demand for single-use once again, with a skeptical eye cast on how safe it was use your own cup and containers.

Information campaigns and promotions have fought back against this uncertainty, with academics and industry experts making the case for reusables in a joint statement. The Irish Food Safety Authority have also made the point that “using disposable crockery and cutlery can lead to a false sense of security and can mean staff are not as conscious of hygiene practices when handling these items.”

Contactless Coffee Reroute

The Contactless Coffee initative might have the midas touch in reviving the campaign against single-use with it being even safer than receiving a disposable cup from your local barista. The short video below shows how a cafe in Wanaka, New Zealand managed to pull it off, adding some gusto to a cappuccino.

This way has been adopted here and been encouraged by The Conscious Cup Campaign to help get cafes back on track by giving everyone the confidence to use reuse while feeling safe. A video of our first effort at it is below. We’ve gotten better and beardier since then, although Rusty the dog hasn’t aged a bit.

There are plenty of great cup options around. We favoured the rCup from Circular and Co as they’re made from disposable cups and is produced in the UK, meaning its carbon footprint is lower than other alternatives. The important point is to keep using them, so they meet their full environmentally-positive potential.

It had been estimated that 22,000 coffee cups were being used and dumped every hour in Ireland. We, as businesses and consumers, have an opportunity to limit this by asking for the alternatives and making it mainstream.

Find out which nearby cafes to you move to a reusable swag.

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