MUGS AWAY: NO DISPOSABLES
Coffee shops target waste, litter
Hannah Pepper dropped into Little Victories coffee shop on Bank Street one recent morning carrying her own mug.
The latte she carried out a few minutes later was in another identical mug because Pepper has enthusiastically embraced a new swapping program that makes it just a little easier to do the right thing and bring your own coffee cup.
Little Victories is one of several Ottawa coffee shops that have adopted an international program that aims to reduce the mountains of single-use coffee cups in the world’s landfills.
It works like this: customers buy the Huskee cup, which is made from recycled coffee husks. It’s about $25. They bring the cup into any participating café and receive their drink in another Huskee cup.
The cafés are responsible for commercially cleaning the cups.
“It’s awesome,” Pepper said. “I use it all the time.”
She said she felt a pang of guilt every time she bought coffee in a single-use cup that was thrown in the trash. “I get coffee a lot,” she said. “I felt bad about that. I’m an environmental engineer, so I should stop doing that.”
Pepper said she often ends up washing the mug herself because she uses it at other shops too. “And I don’t want to be carrying a gross cup around.
“It’s a great idea,” she added. “And I hope other coffee shops do the same thing or something similar.”
Little Victories manager Andrew Bonner said many customers keep the mug in their car and bring it in every morning when they get their coffee.
Since starting the swap three months ago, Little Victories has sold about 350 Huskee cups and registered 2,300 swaps, he said.
“It’s really taken off,” he noted. “This is a fantastic idea. We had been toying with ideas to cut down on the waste.”
Ottawa’s Happy Goat Coffee Company also offers the Huskee swap at its five cafés. And soon it will be available to Ottawa LRT riders because Happy Goat won the right to set up four coffee kiosks at transit stations. The kiosks are expected to open in January and February, said Happy Goat co-owner Ahmet Oktar.
The owners of Arlington Five, a Centretown coffee shop, have also been experimenting with ways to encourage reusable mugs.
“The swap programs are great, but they still rely on people to remember to bring their mug,” said Jessie Duffy, co-owner of Arlington Five.
“To me that is the No. 1 problem. People don’t remember their mug. They don’t plan every coffee experience they have.”
Duffy said last summer the café sold drinks in returnable mason jars for a $1 deposit.
This fall she bought 60 travel mugs from thrift stores, washed them and offered them to customers at no charge. Staff put a tonguein-cheek sticker on the mugs saying “This is not my mug ” as a gentle reminder to bring them back.
Customers are also encouraged to donate their own travel mugs. “How many people have five or six of them at home they don’t even use?” said Duffy.
The loan program has been a challenge, though. On a recent visit, there were no travel mugs to lend because customers had not returned them.
Ultimately, the solution is probably more drastic, Duffy said.
“Why do we give people the opportunity to make the wrong choice?” she asked. “How do we set things up to make it really, really easy for people not to use a disposable cup?”
The café will continue to experiment with various ideas. “I’m not giving up on it.”
Her goal? By the end of 2020, Arlington Five will not serve drinks in single-use cups. “2020 is the year we’ll ditch disposable cups for good,” Duffy said.
She’s inspired by the Oddly Correct café in Kansas City, Mo., which stopped using disposable cups in November, offering customers takeout drinks in mason jars with reusable sleeves for a $1 deposit.
Happy Goat’s Oktar said his company had also been searching for ways to reduce waste when he heard about the Huskee program. The program began in Sydney, Australia, a year ago and 300 coffee shops worldwide now participate, according to the company.
“Swapping is a fun idea. And it’s kind of pushing you to do this,” Oktar said.
He said he asked his paper-cup supplier how many they had purchased in the last year. “We were buying 100,000 cups. And that’s just one size. I kind of freaked out. I thought, ‘We have got to change this.’ That’s a lot of cups going in the garbage.”
Happy Goat has sold about 200 Huskee cups since it introduced the program last month.
For anyone squeamish about using someone else’s cup, Oktar said the cups are washed in a commercial dishwasher. “It’s not like a regular, homestyle dishwasher. It has two types of sanitizers so it’s really clean.”
Many coffee shops offer customers a discount if they bring their own mug. Happy Goat, for instance, offers 25 cents off.
Oktar said the company plans an extra incentive for LRT riders when the kiosks open. Happy Goat will offer 50 cents off each drink if customers bring their own mugs.
“We’re being aggressive on this,” Oktar said. “I just think we have to start from somewhere and see if we can save our environment.”