Killarney used to accept it as a price of being a tourist town: ubiquitous disposable coffee cups spilling from bins, littering roads and blighting the area’s national park.
The County Kerry town went through about 23,000 cups a week – more than a million a year – adding up to 18.5 tonnes of waste.
Not any more. Three months ago, Killarney became the first town in Ireland to phase out single-use coffee cups. If you want a takeaway coffee from a cafe or hotel, you must bring your own cup or pay a €2 deposit for a reusable cup that is returned when the cup is given back.
It will require rethinking business models. On-site consumption will have to be in ceramic mugs or other reusable dishware, and people looking for anything to-go will either have to bring their own portable coffee mugs and pay by volume or the business will have to sell their own reusable portable mugs and continue to charge fixed quantities.
I would be afraid of the company to sell their own reusable mugs because, if the problem boils down to mostly tourists, most of those would still end up in landfills.