Conservation Comment: Single use coffee cups - really?

Photo / NZME

A cup is never just a cup.

Every cup has a past, and every cup has a future. It is easy to spend the small window of present time you have with your disposable cup without being mindful of its past and its future.

Before your barista picks up that convenient disposable cup from the pile and fills it with your morning dose of happiness, that cup has already been on quite the journey. It was born in a large, energy hungry factory overseas.

It was lined with a plastic membrane, put in a large plastic wrapped box with all of its friends, then travelled around the globe via multiple fossil fuelled forms of transportation before finally arriving in that barista's hands. Waste is generated every step of the way.

Once you are finished with your cup, it goes on another voyage from bin to rubbish dump, where it will spend 30 years metamorphosing into environmentally harmful micro-plastics.

Even if your local uses 'compostable' or 'biodegradable' coffee cups, that cup's creation has still required crops or trees to be grown, fertilised, and cut down.

Each compostable cup's creation consumes nearly 3 litres of water, causes electricity eating factories to be operated, and requires the same long chain of carbon emitting transportation services to get it from cultivation to cafe.

Once you are finished with your 'environmentally friendly' cup, the chances are slim that it will find its way to the rare and specialised commercial composting facility required to convert its unique materials into something safe for the planet.

Unfortunately, the truth is that the vast majority of these 'eco' cups end up making their way to landfill where they break down anaerobically and turn into climate damaging methane gas. Even if it is one of the lucky few to make it to an appropriate processing facility, that facility still requires lots of energy to operate.

Tom Hessell urges us to look at the wastage of single use coffee cups. Photo / Supplied

In recent weeks, we have seen the welcome news that our Government has finally gathered its courage and made the decision to take action against some of the other single use products that are clogging up our rubbish dumps and our oceans.

This will remove the need for their wasteful and polluting manufacturing and supply chains. It is incredibly disappointing, however, that the Government has stopped short of making a decision on the future of disposable coffee cups.

It is inevitable that disposable coffee cups will be banned in the future. But every year the Government delays banning them, another 300 million coffee cups are being manufactured, shipped to Aotearoa cafes, and then dumped. Until the Government builds up the courage to bring that outrageous number to zero, it is up to every one of us to reduce consumption as much as possible.

For now, it remains in the hands of us as consumers to be mindful of the past and the future of the items we choose to consume.

Now is the time to make considerate choices that prioritise our natural world over our own convenience. Now is the time for us to have kind conversations with those friends and whanau who are yet to realise the harm that their purchases may be causing. And now is the time for businesses to be brave, and to lead from the front while our Government catches up.

A few years ago, many New Zealanders could not imagine living life without plastic supermarket bags to put their groceries in. And yet, once the Government banned them, we managed to bring our groceries home just fine.

One day we will look back on disposable coffee cups the same way. We will take moments out of our busy lives to sit and enjoy our coffees. Or we will bring our own cups from home. We will not go uncaffeinated. And we will be mindful.

A cup is never just a cup.

For more information on life without single use disposable food and beverage, please visit takeawaythrowaways.nz

- Tom Hessell is, among other things, a waiter in a cafe, an airline pilot, and a long-time conservation enthusiast.