Better latte than never to join KeepCup brigade
LIKE most inner-city latte sippers, I’ve been feeling pretty helpless since Scott Morrison returned to power by pulling off the greatest miracle since I passed my arts/law degree.
But instead of begging Jacinda Ardern for citizenship, threatening to excise Queensland, or Face-blocking everyone who has ever disagreed with me, I committed to putting my despair towards something practical.
If our returning Prime Minister isn’t going to take climate change seriously – I’m still not convinced a bloke who brings coal to parliament does – I decided last week that I would have to take matters into my own hands by, drum roll please, buying a KeepCup.
Now, before you roll your eyes, it’s worth knowing that this is a big deal for me.
Last year at my work’s Christmas party, I was awarded the “Not A Keeper Prize” for the most takeaway coffee cups consumed throughout the year. It was even endorsed by “Mother Hature” herself, so I’m pretty sure it was definitely a legitimate prize.
Much to my colleagues’ dismay, the Not A Keeper Award didn’t shame me into buying a reusable coffee cup, which I’m sure was their desired effect. In fact, it did the opposite.
As a product of the slacker ’90s generation, I’d rather the Earth be subsumed by rising sea levels than be told what to do.
But even more than that, I felt climate change was something only corporations, the government, or Elon Musk could actually fix. But after
Musk began to go weird on Twitter and smoke weed with Joe Rogan, I started to lose faith in him controlling the climate in his own Tesla, let alone the planet Earth.
The other reason I kept adding to landfill with reckless abandon was simply because I’d also never met a KeepCup I liked.
After years of drinking two lattes a day, I’d become accustomed to having $3000 less a year and the distinct and familiar feel of a disposable lid touching my lips twice a day.
I had become conditioned to the way that insulated cardboard strip felt in my hands, keeping them warm but also safe from the near-boiling organic Jersey milk steamed at the optimal temperature between 91 and 96 degrees.
But new drastic times call for new drastic measures. And seeing a Coal-a-lition government return to power was the non-biodegradable EMERGING MARKETS MAJOR EVENTS RESORT ISLANDS CULTURAL TOURISM JOB OPPORTUNITIES plastic lid that broke the camel’s back. If the government isn’t going to tackle climate change properly, I’m going to do my bit and reduce my size 12 carbon footprint to a dainty size 8, damn it.
Or so I thought.
I started out well last week, paying $17 for a reusable cup that replicated the disposable coffee drinking experience described in needlessly vivid detail above. Rookie mistake.
Not only did my cup feel like its disposable counterpart, it also looked exactly like one too, meaning I received the same dirty scowls from Gen Y passers-by and received no kudos for my noble gesture of attempting to save the world by investing in my own quaint bit of landfill. What’s the point of a KeepCup if you’re not banking any hipster points, right?
There was also a mild sense of panic when the office cleaner mistook it for a disposable cup and nearly threw it out into the (non-recyclable) rubbish bin.
Needless to say, my weeklong adventures in KeepCupville haven’t been going as planned. But that’s just the price you pay when you place the future of the planet in your own hands.
Not all coffee-drinking climate heroes wear capes, right?
DARREN LEVIN IS A COLUMNIST FOR RENDEZVIEW.COM.AU