Hastings cafe bans disposable cups
While many cafes will offer you a discount if you bring your own cup, cafes around the country are taking it a step further.
Cartel HQ in Hastings is part of a growing movement to make your coffee fix more sustainable. It has stopped offering disposable cups and as a result is stopping between 150 to 200 cups going to landfill per day.
Owner Mell Anderson said she “just had enough” of the waste caused by single-use cups.
“We wanted to make it as easy as possible for everybody.”
The cafe already sells Sup Cups, meaning people can buy a reusable cup onsite.
They have also set up a “CupCycling” system, where people can take a cup and return it.
Customers give a gold coin when they pick up their coffee, which is returned when they bring the cup back. They also have boomerang cups for people in the surrounding offices to use. “They can just come and grab them and they can bring them back.”
For people who are just passing through Hastings and may not be able to bring a cup back, there are also options.
If we don’t make a change now we are just sitting on the sidelines while another 300 million coffee cups go into landfill. Mell Anderson
“We are currently working with Haumoana School. They are creating something called the Koha Jar Project.”
The kids at the school have been creating insulators for glass jars, which are easily recyclable.
People can offer a koha to give to the school, when they take a jar.
“It’s about raising awareness for the school, the kids, the parents and also finding another option for us,” Anderson said.
They also have four wooden carry trays which people can take their coffee away in and return afterwards.
“Everyone has kind of come to us with a problem, and we want to have a solution,” Anderson said.
She said it was like plastic bags in supermarkets, once the change was made, no one worried about it.
“I’ve noticed with people coming in they’ve been holding off and holding off and then today they’ve brought their own cup, they have just been waiting for the day.”
Disposable cup-free cafes are becoming more common in larger cities like Wellington and Auckland, and Anderson said it would be great to see Hawke’s Bay catching up. “I want us all to work together. “If we don’t make a change now we are just sitting on the sidelines while another 300 million coffee cups go into landfill.”