Cupán with cop on to help cut litter
DINGLE’S latest contribution to the battle against litter and the over-use of disposable plastics was launched last week and it comes in the form of a very simple but very special coffee cup.
The cup, known as the Dingle Cupán, looks like the disposable cups that are filled at coffee machines in restaurants, petrol stations and supermarkets, used once and then dumped. Those disposable coffee cups sometimes end up as litter on our streets and along roadsides after they are carelessly tossed out of car windows, and it’s no small problem.
The Irish are the biggest users of disposable plastics in the EU, it’s estimated that 2,000 disposable coffee cups are used daily in Dingle during the summer, and on County Clean Up Day in April coffee cups were the most common item of litter picked out of the roadsides around Dingle.
Conscious of the extent of the problem, Transition Towns Chorca Dhuibhne set up a sub-committee in February to examine solutions and they came up with the Dingle Cupán. It’s a coffee cup in every sense of the word – it doesn’t just hold coffee, it’s made out of used coffee grounds. On top of that novelty value, the heavy duty cup is shatter-resistant, naturally insulated, it’s reckoned to have a 20-year lifespan and then it can be recycled again.
Máire Uí Léime of Transition Towns Chorca Dhuibhne (TTCD) said the idea for the Dingle Cupán grew out of the group’s involvement in providing recycling facilities at the Dingle Food Festival over the past two years. They were concerned at the huge volume of litter, especially single-use cups, produced at the food festival, but they also discovered that people were interested in finding a waste-free alternative.
With financial assistance from Kerry County Council’s Waste Prevention Fund, TTCD ordered 524 cups from the German coffee shop, turned coffee cup maker, Kaffee Form and they’re now available in Garvey’s SuperValu, Sheehy’s Spar, the Grá Dingle health food shop, Dingle Surf Shop, and My Boy Blue café. The cups cost TTCD €9.30 each and they’re for sale at €10, which is cost price or even a little less.
Kerry County Council Environment Awareness Officer Oonagh O’Connor said Transition Towns Chorca Dhuibhne was leading the way once again with dingleplasticfree.org, which is “a fabulous community initiative”.
“It’s all about making these small changes. If everybody starts with something small, like abandoning disposable coffee cups and using the Dingle Cupán instead, we will go a long way towards reducing our litter problem,” she said.