"Coffee chain Boston Tea Party 'first' to ban disposable cups" Topic

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43879019

Or, possibly, Coffee chain Boston Tea Party 'first' to put themselves out of business with ban on disposable cups….

As they're offering people the chance to buy a £3.00 GBP coffee and also but a re-usable £4.50 GBP cup every time they forget to pick up a reusable cup before leaving home! Or "rent a cup" (presumably with a big enough deposit to ensure it gets brought back).

Yeah, it's a nice idea but maybe I'll just go next door to Starbucks and save myself what looks like expensive hassle.

I wonder the impact to the environment (if any) in washing
all the non-disposable cups every day…

They put the waste water out of the environment so there is no impact.

Here is an approach to discussing the issue:

PDF link

Comparative analysis!

But this only looks at energy. Maybe you can assume that the environmental effect of energy are constant, but really not. The focused use of lots of energy in industrial production is different than the low-level, near constant use of energy in cleaning.

The direct environmental impact of washing is related to water disposal where the direct impact of disposable cups is trash management and recycling. Easy things to look at on their own, but cross-comparison becomes subjective.

Interesting analysis – and at a top level says that a ceramic cup used 10 times a day (in a café setting say) reaches break-even against foam after 3 months. Not too unreasonable – I have mugs I use frequently (daily) that I've had for more than twenty years.

And I hate drinking out of foam.

Plus – broken ceramics still have uses: if it's just the handle gone then I use them when cleaning household size painting brushes (for example).

Living as I do in a rural area, our 'household waste'
(basically garbage) and recyclables are deposited in
separate areas at the local waste facility.

The 'household waste' crushers are almost always near
capacity, while the recycle bins are almost always
empty.

We, as a household, bag all our recyclables separately
(metals, plastic containers, rigid plastics, plastic
bags, paper goods) and deposit them appropriately.

Seems as if (observations) most in our area don't.

So, there's a coffee chain called "Boston Tea Party" in *England*?

That's funny in three ways.

Latest news: irate customers of 'Boston Tea Party' have seized large numbers of their re- useable mugs & dressed as s, thrown them into a nearby river.

Starbucks is not an expensive hassle itself?