This week we have not been buying coffee from chains and therefore not using those throw-away cups. This has been a relatively successful albeit a quite easy project. We are going to continue this in a sense by taking our thermos cups out with us and asking people to make the coffee in them rather than in paper cups, when a coffee stop is needed!! We will also be carrying our own spoons, although we already usually have one item of cutlery about our persons for lunch-box-eating needs.
A reason that we will not necessarily be continuing the no chain coffee is that a lot of them serve fair trade coffee, and that is something definitely to be supported, also because there isn't always a lot of choice as chains by their very nature are everywhere!
I think this project was slightly self defeating as, when I really wanted a cup of tea when walking the other day, I went to a newsagents that sells tea and was given it in a polystyrene cup with a plastic lid, possibly worse than a waxed/plasticised paper cup as used by pret/costa/eat etc. So I think that this needs to be redirected to being more about avoiding disposable cups than chains.
One of the reasons for this is well put by Michael Braungart and William McDonough in their book Cradle to Cradle (p27, Vintage books, last edition published 2009) "... you may be referred to as a consumer, but there is very little that you actually consume - some foods, some liquids. Everything else is designed for you to throw away when you are finished with it. But where is "away"? Of course, "away' does not really exist. "Away" has gone away."
So although we still sometimes fancy a coffee on the run, and often the easiest place to get one is in a chain coffee shop, we are attempting to stop contributing a cup, a sleeve, a lid, and possibly a stirrer to landfill each time.
B:)
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