Sydney council keeps green with coffee-cup exchange pilot program
The share economy moves to reusable coffee cups with the Inner West’s Green Caffeen pilot program.
Inner West council are keeping green with a pilot coffee cup exchange program, which its founders call “the lazy man’s reusable cup”.
The bright green KeepCups by Green Caffeen will be found in select cafe’s around the inner west from July 30.
People sign up on the Green Caffeen app, pick-up a coffee cup from one of the local shops who have partnered with Responsible Cafe’s.
They then drop the cup off to be washed by the next participating cafe they visit and collect another cup.
Inner West council funds the program by purchasing the Green Caffeen coffee cups.
But mayor Darcy Byrne said “it’s saving ratepayers a lot of money” due to the cost of waste levies.
“The local government is paying huge amounts of money to dispose of cups going into landfill,” he said.
Cnr Byrne first learnt about a “city wide (coffee cup sharing) scheme” being used in Frieburg, Germany.
Similarly, the hope is that a large proportion of inner west cafe’s will participate, with more than 20 cafe’s already part of the program.
“We need to exert a moral pressure on cafe’s,” Cnr Byrne said.
“It’s not a great look if some cafe’s are participating and some are holding out”.
When Cnr Byrne put forward a resolution in council for an inner-west-wide coffee cup scheme about a year ago, Damien Clarke and Martin Brooks, who were just about to launch Green Caffeen, hoped to answer his call.
Five or six councils have since followed suit.
“The re-usable cup 2.0” was based on the fact that people forget their plastic KeepCup’s at home.
They also noticed that the numbers of people using their own reusable cups had dramatically slowed down.
“The disposable coffee cup market is growing quicker than the reusable cup market,” Damien Clarke said.
“(Disposable cups) are just a waste object that’s filling (the council’s) waste stream.
“They’re used for 5 to 6 minutes, then end up in land fills at council sites across the local government area for 50, 60 or 70 years.”
Mr Brooks said: “(Cafe’s) know how big a problem the disposable coffee cup is, but don’t have a solution … Cafe’s profit from the fact they aren’t buying disposable cups.”
“We wanted to make it a barrier free re-usable cup scheme.”
As long as a person returns the cup within 30 days, there are no fees, making the program “like borrowing a library book”.
If they hang onto the cup for more than 30 days, they’ll be charged $12.99 “in late fees”.
The pair have accounted for the fact that users will sometimes forget their cups at home. As such, the app allows you to take out two cups concurrently.
The two father’s started by giving 100 cups to two cafe’s in Kiama. Within 48 hours the cups had all been checked-out.
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