Reusable coffee cups

If like us, you love coffee or another type of hot drink…we’ve been investigating those mushroom coffees and mochas that have recently become popular, then grabbing a coffee or tea on the fly is something that inevitably happens.

In an ideal world, I believe that we should all take time out to sit down and appreciate what we have in front of us. That means taking the time to savour a hot drink. However maybe you’re time crunched, maybe the environment isn’t right, your running late but really need coffee or a multitude of other reasons means that you need to grab a drink on the go. And an easy swap to avoid those takeout cups that sometimes are recyclable, sometimes have a compostable lid, sometimes aren’t is bringing your own cup with you.

There’s a lot on the market for resusable cups. Ceramic, plastic, glass, metal the list goes on. Some innovate companies have produced reusable cups from coffee grounds, like the Australian company Huskee: https://uk.huskee.co/our-story/ and Cornwall based company Circular & Co: https://circularandco.com/reusable-coffee-cups who are focusing on generating cups utilising recycled disposable coffee cups and beach waste. I also noticed that they mention that due to UK and EU legislation that currently some parts of the cups have to still be created using virgin plastic. Which is an important thing to note when looking at who to buy things from. How transparent are they being, as to how much recycled content their goods contain and also why is this. Kudos to Circular & Co for sharing this information!

Currently in this house, we use collapsable coffee cups. I wish I could say they were from innovate sustainability brands but alas. One was purchased about 10 years ago and is still going strong, so until it dies I’m not rushing out to buy a new one. And I think this is an important thing to consider with making sustainable switches. If you have something already that works and isn’t broken, then do not replace this until you need to. Otherwise you are generating waste that still needs to be broken down somehow.

We love the collapsable cups because they are easy to throw in a bag. Unfortunately they are made out of silicon which currently does use virgin plastics but is BPA free. I do wish I could have found a sustainable company for these. However I had to be practical about this. If I had bought chunky cups they wouldn’t have been used as much unfortunately. If one of us is using a large bag, they are easy to throw in but depending on the brand have limitations. We both need a cup that doesn’t leak, either with or without coffee in. Some of the larger cups don’t seal properly. Nor have covers for the sipping part of the cup. With the collapsable cups we have, we can drink our coffees, collapse the cups, seal them and put them in our small bags or a pocket ready till we get home and can wash them up. No leaks, on dog biscuits, laptops, phones or books. Well not to date at least!

So the most important thing in choosing a reusable coffee cup for you in my view, is choosing one that you love and will use. There is no point on spending money on something that looks and sounds amazing sustainability wise but then gets left in a cupboard or donated to a charity shop or goes into landfill. If you can find a brand that produces the cup in a sustainable and ethical way with a low carbon footprint then chose that. If you like us decide to go for something that may not be as sustainable as you would like but know that you will 100% use it regularly, then go for that. Because ultimately you will be saving yourself from all of those single use coffee cups that may or may not be being recycled…