Photo exposes grim result of daily habit

Picking up a coffee on the way into work or while out for a walk may seem harmless, but in Australia, the habit accounts for a whopping 60,000kg of the country’s annual landfill.

The startling figure hasn’t been helped by a move away from reusable cups in the Covid era, as businesses work to limit physical contact between customers and staff.

A cafe in the UK however has made the bold move to ban takeaway cups completely, highlighting why in one simple photo.

Staff at Otto’s Coffee House and Kitchen, in Kent, filled the entirety of the shop floor with more than 15,000 disposable cups they collected from public bins close to the store.

It was a publicity stunt in protest of council incinerating the cups along with general waste, due to the waterproof plastic lining they contained.

“We passionately believe that single use packaging needs to be banned from production and as citizens, we need to take responsibility to remember a reusable cup, container, box or bag,” the cafe said.

The week-long “f**k the cup” campaign was designed to “serve as a reminder that if we as a society don’t address this problem it will remain a massive inconvenience for us all”.

The move, which initially received some backlash and saw a few customers never return, has since been celebrated by environmentalists across the globe.

The ban will save the cafe’s annual sale of 120,000 cups and lids from ending up in the environment.

According to Planet Ark, 50,000 disposable coffee cups become landfill in Australia every 30 seconds.

It’s estimated that 500 billion coffee cups are produced globally each year, which would wrap around the world 1360 times if stacked end-to-end.

Small moves have been made in Australia to reduce takeaway cup use, with more than 40 cafes in Bondi banning takeaway coffee cups for a week in July.