Cork City Council has become the first local authority in the country to stop supplying single use disposable tea and coffee cups in their offices.
From January 15th, council staff will be asked to switch to reusable environmentally friendly ‘keep’ cups. The cups will be supplied free of charge to employees, reports Irish Times.
The move comes in the wake of the UK government’s announcement that it is considering a 25p ’latte levy’ on disposable coffee cups. The UK currently throws away approximately 2.5 billion disposable coffee cups every year with only a small number being recycled, while in Ireland two million disposable coffee cups are sent to landfill sites every day.
A new ‘latte levy’ is being considered by the Irish government, which would see an additional 10 to 15 cent added to the price of a coffee. A number of coffee shops around the country already offer discounts to customers who bring their own takeaway cups.
The Green Party have put forward a number of recent initiatives to cut down on plastic waste. These include a deposit-return scheme on drinks bottles and a phasing out of all single-use, disposable plastic products by 2020. The latest Eurostat figures show that Ireland is the top producer of plastic waste in the European Union, producing 61kg of disposable plastic per person per year.
© 2017 - Checkout Magazine by Maev Martin
