The morning struggle of clambering to our favourite coffee shop is one many of us know all too well. Like sloths we drag our bodies out of bed for the soul purpose of getting our caffeine hit.
There is just one element of this routine that one billion of us Aussies make per year that is causing one billion one-use coffee cups to end up in landfills for hundreds, if not thousands of years to come.
If sloths can find the motivation to reach for the perfect leaves on the tree, us humans can reach for a reusable coffee cup as we head out the door.
Let's crunch some numbers...
If you divide that one billion cups over the course of the year, that's roughly 2,700,000 paper coffee cups thrown out every day. THAT'S A LOT!
Did you know? If stacked end-to-end, one billion coffee cups would stretch 120,000km, or three times around the world.
Here's another hypothetical to wrap your head around. Ever watched the Tour de France? It’s really long, right? Well, one billion coffee cups could complete the tour de France 34 times. I’m out of breath just thinking about it.
According to Australian non-profit organisation Planet Ark, plastic waste from coffee cups accounts for a heaving 60,000kg of Australia’s landfill annually. Planet Ark further calculated that every 30 seconds in Australia 50,000 disposable coffee cups become landfill.
While we’re talking about anxiety-inducing numbers, a 2016 World Economic Forum report declared that by 2050, the world was on track to have more plastic in its oceans than fish. Anyone else feel like they're drowning yet?
Before you say "well I recycle my cups so I'm not doing any harm," let us interrupt you with some bad news... NONE of them are being recycled.
Paper-based takeaway coffee cups are usually lined with a membrane of polyethylene (aka plastic) to make them waterproof, which means they are not recyclable alongside other paper or cardboard, nor are they biodegradable.
What’s even more alarming is that well-intentioned coffee enthusiasts throwing their takeaway coffee cups into the recycling often end up doing more harm than good. By mixing them in with other paper and cardboard, they may actually contaminate the entire collection of legitimate recycling and send the whole lot off to landfill.
Every small change makes a huge difference...
If 100,000 people change convert to reusable cups and they each have the average of 3 coffees a day then over the course of a year we will have saved 109 MILLION cups from landfill.
Ready to stand up for our world? Purchase your own KEEPCUP today!
