If I’m going green, which coffee mug should I get?
AIn these over-conscious times, where hipster sensibilities and the disposable backlash can’t help but intertwine themselves, many coffee shops around Guru’s neck of the woods are offering delicious discounts to those who bring their own mug. Given your author’s prodigious (perhaps even deadly) daily caffeine requirements, this is a topic he’s researched extensively.
Quick tip, though: Guru’s less-than-friendly local baristas will apparently not accept an artisan 100% aluminium bucket as a vessel. You’ll need to think about your usual order, and what size mug you’ll want; to translate Starbucks terminology, a Tall cup tops out at around 350ml, while a Venti lands at 590ml, or 710ml if it’s iced.
Next, the materials. Plastic isn’t generally sniffed at too seriously if you’re reusing it, but you’ll score more ecopoints if you avoid it entirely. Glass, bamboo and cork
are pretty popular, and perfect for drink-it-now cups – you might opt for the bamboo fibre Ecoffee Cup (from $10, slightly more for larger sizes), which comes in a variety of handsome designs, or perhaps the 340ml rCup which earns credibility by being made of ground up single-use cups and has a neat 360-degree drinking lip.
If you’re looking to travel with your brew, Guru would steer you towards double-walled metal. The beautifully designed but terribly named 720°DGREE PleasureToGo (around $20) is a vacuum insulated stainless steel wonder that should give you five hours of warm brew.
And then there’s the mug for those with full wallets: relieve the pressure on your back pocket and keep your beverage at whatever temperature you like with the app-controlled Ember, which warms your drink for two hours on its battery, or all day if you sit it on its neat charging coaster.