Killarney used to accept it as a price of being a tourist town: ubiquitous disposable coffee cups spilling from bins, littering roads and blighting the area’s national park.
The County Kerry town went through about 23,000 cups a week – more than a million a year – adding up to 18.5 tonnes of waste.
Not any more. Three months ago, Killarney became the first town in Ireland to phase out single-use coffee cups. If you want a takeaway coffee from a cafe or hotel, you must bring your own cup or pay a €2 deposit for a reusable cup that is returned when the cup is given back.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Killarney used to accept it as a price of being a tourist town: ubiquitous disposable coffee cups spilling from bins, littering roads and blighting the area’s national park.
Eliminating single-use cups sounds a relatively modest goal but only a handful of other towns, such as Freiburg in Germany, are known to have tried similar initiatives.
“We were looking at options for community projects, and we thought, ‘Oh, coffee cups, that’ll be quick’,” said Louise Byrne, a sustainability manager for the Killarney Park Hotel and The Ross.
The campaign sought to enlist all of Killarney’s 21 independent cafes, a lengthy process of individual face-to-face meetings, research, negotiations, a town hall-style gathering, a video, and more discussions.
In addition to environmental benefits, the organisers said cafes could save money – each disposable cup costs 20 to 30 cents – and enhance Killarney’s brand.
He had no objection to paying a €2 deposit for a takeaway cup that could be returned to any cafe in Killarney or 400 locations across Ireland, including Dublin airport, that are part of a wider campaign.
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The tl;dr at the beginning of the post was shorter than the auto tl;dr and was enough info.