The Chairperson of Greystones Tidy Towns has said a ban on disposable coffee cups could tackle the enormous waste the items generate. 

Every year in Ireland, some 200 million disposable coffee cups are used and then thrown away. 

Dave O’Reilly described this as a “frightening” number but admitted that tackling the issue is a “very thorny subject”. 

“A lot of people still feel that the coffee cup is compostable because it feels compostable,” he told Lunchtime Live. 

“It has that sense of it, but it's got the plastic liner inside, so it just goes to landfill or it goes into the recyclable and it contaminates the whole recycling stream.”

Used disposable coffee cups in 2012. Picture by: imageBROKER.com GmbH & Co. KG / Alamy. 

Mr O’Reilly continued that Killarney introduced an initiative where local shops charged customers €2 deposit for every hot drink served in a reusable cup that they could then return.

The so-called ‘latte levy’ is estimated to have cut one million items out of the local waste system. 

It is, Mr O’Reilly argued, an example of what can be achieved when local businesses and town councils work together to cut waste. 

“They got the coffee shops behind them on that,” he said. 

“The shops are very supportive because in a sense, if they were able to avoid the cost to them of buying all the single-use cups, it would obviously make a difference to their bottom line.

“It's just that bottleneck in the middle between the coffee shop and the customer… where the problem is, in my view. 

“That's where we need to tackle.” 

Coffee cups in a waste bin in London. Picture by: Marcin Rogozinski Zwei / Alamy Stock Photo

One possibility, Mr O’Reilly suggested, is for coffee shops to offer a small discount to those who come with their own re-usable coffee cup - something that would both save the planet and the shop the expense of buying reusable cups. 

“So, if people bring a mug with them in their bag or something and say, and hand it to the barista and say, ‘I'll have a cappuccino or a flat white and there's my mug’,” he said.

“And they get a discount or a small discount for that, that will be a big difference.”

Main image: Disposable coffee cups in an overflowing bin. Picture by: Alamy.com.