Indy coffee chain to ban disposable coffee cups
I’d stop tomorrow but I think it’s only fair to give our loyal customers and fantastic team a month to get used to the idea. — Sam Roberts, Boston Tea Party
Small indie coffee chain Boston Tea Party is to ban disposable coffee cups.
Yes, a step in the right direction.
A real step not the greenwash we have seen from Pret a Manger, Starbucks and Waitrose.
Glasgow Coffee Festival has this year banned disposable coffee cups. It is either bring your own cup or festival sponsor KeepCup will have cups available.
As always, it is the independents leading the way, not the corporate coffee chains, the same corporate coffee chains that lobbied the government not to introduce a latte levy.
Independents are already moving in the right direction, introducing KeepCup or clones thereof reusable cups, introducing compostable cups.
Reusable cups have to be clean and barista friendly. Too many are neither.
An example would be ecoffee cup on sale in Oxfam. Too large.
Reusable coffee cups are of limited utility, expensive, bulky, inconvenient to carry around. Which explains their limited take up. I have yet to be in a coffee shop and witnessed a reusable coffee sold or in use.
Boston Tea Party had offered a 25p discount on drinks if customers brought their own cup. Less than 3% of their customers took up the offer.
This is in line with research. Take up is minimal if only a discount offered, it has to be coupled with reusable cups on sale. But even then the best that has been recorded is around 30% take up.
The target demographics, office workers popping out for a coffee.
Boston Tea Party are to discontinue their discount if bring own cup.
Compostable cups raise a number of issues, a compost heap on which to deposit the cup, do the cups compost as claimed?
The only way forward is to introduce a latte levy, discourage takeaway coffee, encourage sit down and relax in an indie coffee shop with a cup of speciality coffee served in glass or ceramic.
Plastic-lined disposable coffee cups, 2.5 billion a year in the UK, are not the only waste generated by coffee shops. What of the food waste, the waste milk, the coffee grounds?
Small Batch in Brighton, with the help of Espresso Mushroom Company, recycle their coffee grounds as a growing medium for oyster mushrooms, the growing kits are on sale in their coffee shops.
The Boston Tea Party has a similar scheme with Dartmoor Prison, Green Shoots, coffee grounds used for oyster mushrooms, kits on sale and the mushrooms served.
Boston Tea Party are sourcing water from Frank Water, who supply water in glass bottles not plastic. This though is questionable. Why not follow the practice of indie coffee shops in Athens, and what is increasingly becoming the practice in indie coffee shops in England, bring a carafe or bottle of ice cold water to the table or less often help yourself to water from a jug or a large jar with a tap?
Water as a human right. Without asking, a glass and a matt black bottle of ice cold water brought to the table at Tailor Made in Athens.
Boston Tea Party is a small chain of 21 coffee shops in the South West and Midlands. Very odd for a coffee chain, no mention of the coffee on their website.
