Here in the UK we get through around 2.5 BILLION disposable cups a year – 1 million trees are felled just for coffee cups, and a typical cup uses around 05 litre of water in being made.

And sadly, disposable coffee cups are very hard to recycle – a 2017 study found that only around 1:400 are recycled – due to the difficulty in recycling the plastic coated paper, and also I would imagine to the large amount of contamination that must occur when trying to collect them as a waste stream.

The billions of coffee cups that are ending up in landfill every year are responsible for around 152,000 tonnes of CO2 which is equivalent to the emissions of 33, 300 cars.
And it’s only going to get worse – WWF predict that our coffee cup usage will increase by 33% by 2030!

So what’s the answer?
Reusables I hear you cry! Well done, bonus points for you.
And I’m sure that most of us have got at least one reusable cup kicking around at home. But how many of us remember to take them out with us every time. Be honest? Research from environmental charity Hubbub found that while 69% of us own a reusable cup, only around 1 in 6 of them remembered to use it every single time.

Enter the Shrewsbury Cup – a simply brilliant project, the brain child of Ali Thomas and Sophie Peach, who both wanted to do something to reduce single use plastic usage where they live in Shrewsbury, and created this wonderful scheme that has been replicated many times, and if I’m not mistaken, might even be being used at COP26 as we speak

• Shrewsbury Cup
  - Website
  - Twitter
  - Instagram
• CanCan - reusable cup scheme being trialled in Bristol
  
• The Sustainable(ish) FB group

• Grab yourself a reusable cup if you haven't already got one!
• Suggest the scheme to your school, community group if they regularly use disposable cups