by Catherine Franks
Unfortunately we can no longer get our take away coffee cups composted. So what is going to happen to all those cups? I'd like to talk through what we need to be thinking about (and importantly what we can all DO) when we drink take away coffees.
Steampunk family, you know that we have worked hard over the years to try to reduce our impact on our planet in various ways. One of the areas that needs better solutions is packaging. We have written numerous blog posts on this issue and tried and retried different solutions. Fundamentally, the most environmentally responsible way that any of us can act, is to reduce our use of single-use/throw away/’disposable’ items wherever we can.
When it comes to our coffee packaging, we now sell all of our 250g* retail units in re-fillable tins. We offer discounted refills, they can be repurposed and at the end of their life the tins are easily and widely recycled with metals. (* 1kg bags are fully recyclable plastic, which although not ideal, offer the most workable solution for us for this size.)
When it comes to take away coffees however, we need to work together to find a better solution than disposable cups.
Take away coffee
Despite all of our trials and tribulations with packaging, one of the most wasteful aspects of being a coffee shop is the use of take away coffee cups. It is estimated that 388 million take away cups are used in Scotland every year! That is an almost unimaginable amount of waste. These items are used for 5 minutes and then remain on our planet (as litter, in landfill producing harmful methane, in our waterways and oceans) for pretty much ever.
This was not always the case. Our disposables problem is only about 50 years old. So despite the bad news about all of the harmful waste we have produced in that short period of time, the upside is that we don’t have to look too far into the past to figure out a solution.
The solution
The solution to take away cup waste is easy. And it involves something you almost definitely have. And all it needs is one thing. One very simple thing. Your memory.
When you are heading out the door, remember your cup.
Bring a cup with you, we will be delighted to make your take away coffee into that and your impact on the planet will be significantly reduced. This one tiny action, if done by everybody, would stop take away cup waste immediately. It would stop the waste of 388 million take away cups each year. Just imagine the saving of resources used in the manufacture of all those cups and how those resources could be put to better use?
The impact of the plastic carrier bag charge has been huge (use has fallen by 98% - hit link to read about it), the impact of the deposit scheme coming into force in Scotland in 2027 is hopefully going to be equally impressive - read about it here. Although the proposal for a so called ‘latte levy’ (a 25p charge on all disposable cups) has been kicked into the long grass for now, we are hopeful, with public pressure, that it will come. It has to. We can’t go on this way, burning through the planet’s finite resources unnecessarily. It is a shame that retailers' consortiums are celebrating this delay, they would do better to support their members in taking responsibility for their impact rather than continuing to blame ‘litter louts’ for the waste problem caused by their economic activity.
Reusables
Frequent visitors to steampunk will know that we have worked hard over the years to encourage the use of reusable cups. Remember the mug amnesty we did in 2018 where people donated their old mugs and you could use them for take-aways? From then until Covid we offered a 50p discount on reusables and charged 20p for disposable cups, meaning you could basically save 70p each time you got a take away if you brought your own cup. We got reusable use up pretty high for take aways during those 2 years (from 2-3% to around 25%). But then Covid happened and although we continued to accept reusables throughout the pandemic a lot of cafes (especially the chains) refused to accept them so people lost the habit of bringing them. We stopped the 20p charge during the pandemic which had helped subsidise the really big 50p discount but we do still offer a 25p discount when you bring your own cup. We have a few regular customers who always bring their cups for take aways and we applaud them - they come in pretty much every day and have saved hundreds, even thousands of cups from landfill over the years.
In addition to offering this discount, we have been collecting as many disposable cups back as we could over the years - you will have seen this sign on the terrace:
We are aware that most take away cups get taken far away on walks along the beach, into your cars and end up in the bin. But nevertheless we have collected bags and bags of these cups from our terrace. We had an arrangement with Tommy Dale from Caledonian Horticulture to compost the cups. Tommy reached out to us during Covid when our former waste solution (Vegware’s Close the Loop) stopped collecting from outside the Glasgow-Edinburgh corridor and we no longer had any way of composting our cups. He offered to trial composting them in his windrows and they broke down well so we had an informal arrangement for them to take our cups. For years I have been driving bags of stinky used cups a mile up the road to their composting facility. You can see a video below about what happens next.
Unfortunately, they have had problems with composting the cups because the wind catches them, blows them from their windrows and litters them into nearby fields. This is obviously not what they (or we) want to happen with our waste. As a result, in a chat with Tommy last week at FBTS we agreed they could no longer take our cups for composting. I’m sad we no longer have this facility but I want to make absolutely clear that we are super grateful that they have tried to help, have composted many cups over the years, and that this cup waste is actually not their responsibility in the first place.
Decent packaging, who are our current cup supplier, do not offer any composting facilities for the majority of their customers. Their collections with partners First Mile only cover an area of London.
So whose responsibility is this thorny problem of take away packaging?
Where the responsibility lies
Well obviously it is ours. We run a business selling coffee and we put that coffee into disposable cups which go out into the world. So yes, we shoulder the responsibility. That is why we are trying to come up with the best solutions for this issue. Believe me when I say I lose a lot of time and no small amount of sleep over this. And guilt. A lot of that.
Although we have made various attempts to address this issue over the years, maybe we have not done a good enough job. When I look at Bristol 'chain' BTP who banned disposable cups in 2018, I do feel shame that we have not done more. They took a massive hit to their sales when they took this action but they are sticking to their guns and furthermore putting pressure on the big guys to do the same. I applaud them. I will look hard over this winter at what we can do better in the form of reusables.
But when it comes to take away cup waste, I think we have partners in crime.
First, let's look at our culture that makes the very idea of 'disposability' a thing. Fundamentally we are all star dust. Every atom that exists will always exist and although it can be endlessly remade it will always be here. In some forms those atoms are dangerous and humans have certainly been adept at making neutral things into harmful things over the years. So basically, there is no 'away' in 'throw away'. Everything that ever was, or was ever thrown away is still here in one form or another. Whether it is here as a beneficial particle of soil that can nurture life or whether it is here as a harmful piece of micro plastic that poisons us and other creatures is kind of down to us.
Much blame can certainly be placed at the feet of the consumerist culture post war onwards (and capitalism in general of course). Massive corporations spend billions in marketing bombarding us with the message that we need to use things and throw them away so that we can buy endless amounts of new things to replace them. They have turned us into consumers rather than citizens. This system is fundamentally extractive and exploitative. It has made the vast majority of the planet worse off and a small minority of people very much better off indeed. I do think that the writing is on the wall for this sort of culture and the smartest in our society know that this kind of behaviour is just not sustainable on a finite planet. The rest of us just need to catch up and we need to refuse to be a part of the mindless consuming. In our current attention economy, they are now literally consuming our minds.
Secondly we can blame the manufacturers of all of this ‘disposable’ stuff. In that I certainly include the manufacturers of ‘compostable’ packaging. They hold themselves up as better than plastic based packaging and sometimes that is the case (for example our cups, when they blow into the fields next to Tommy’s windrows, at least they do not disintegrate into microplastics contaminating the soil). But cup manufacturers make their money using scarce resources to make stuff that is used for 5 minutes at most and then thrown away. Then, they offer no solutions for what to do with the waste stream they create. They are putting the stuff out there, making money and then washing their hands of any responsibility for the waste it creates. If you would like a quick run down of the different types of coffee cup out there and how to dispose of them, you can find that information HERE.
Thirdly we can blame our government (UK, Scottish and local) for not leading with legislation. And for not providing sufficient public education about the impact of disposables on our planet. A latte levy would force change. It would make the chains (the ones responsible for the vast majority of cup waste) change their ways and create a more level playing field so that tiny businesses like ours were not unfairly disadvantaged by trying to effect change on our own. Our compostable cups are much more expensive than the regular plastic lined ones that chains use (not even considering the massive volume discounts they must enjoy). Not only this but they actively promote misleading messaging on their cups about their recyclability creating confusion for customers and therefore contamination of recycling streams.
Finally, the blame can be laid at our feet - the citizen, the consumer of take away coffees, me as a person who has rushed out the door this morning and forgotten my cup.
It begins with you and me
Contrary to the hopelessness many of us feel at the moment about the state of the world, every single one of us is able to effect change.
Every single one of those 388 million cups was a decision made by someone.
We can choose to make better decisions. We can create change in a multitude of ways: we can write to our representatives in government, we can educate our family and friends, we can use our influence wherever we have it (just look at the amazing work Fringe by the Sea have done using reusable cups in their bars at FBTS 2025). I have just spent an afternoon writing this blog post. Most directly, we can just remember our cup.
Tips to remember your cup:
- A note on your front door
- A cup in your car
- A cup in your bag
- A tattoo on your hand?
I promise, if you do it regularly, it will become a habit and then it will be easy. You will no longer be a consumer, you will be an active citizen. Your small action will spread - to your friends, your co-workers, the person behind you in the coffee shop queue. You will be a change maker.