Every Cafe In This Australian Town Came Together To Eliminate Single-Use Coffee Cups – CoffeeTalk

Bermagui, Australia, is the first town in Australia where cafes have partnered to end the use of single-use coffee cups. The town’s cafes are joining a closed loop return-and-reuse system called Good Reusables, which allows the cups to be reused around 1000 times. The cups are then returned to the manufacturer in Brisbane for shredding and recycling. Bermagui’s cafes went single-use free on Sunday 1 December, stopping nearly 200,000 single-use cups going into landfill every year and saving the cafes money.

Good Reusables, a NSW-based social enterprise that provides sustainable cups and bowls to the hospitality industry, was founded by Jonas Benedikt, who used to run Germany’s first carbon-neutral and certified organic cafe. He developed an Australian-made solution, offering coffee drinkers a better experience than single-use cups due to their thicker, better insulated, and tightly fitting lid. The cups are made from food-grade, BPA-free polypropylene plastic, similar to the original material used for KeepCups.

Yuki Bird of Mister Hope in Bermagui was the driver of the town’s cafes dispensing with single-use cups. Cafes pay a $3 deposit for each cup, and each customer pays the cafe a $3 deposit for the cup. The deposit is intended to stop people throwing the cups into the bin. Customers can use the cups however they like, returning them to any cafe after a walk on the beach or immediately after finishing the coffee. Users are encouraged to return the cups to a participating cafe as soon as possible for reuse, but can keep the cup in their car to exchange for a clean one the next time they buy a coffee.

The system caters to visitors, with cafes in NSW, Victoria, Queensland, and the Northern Territory using the Good Reusables system. The hospitality industry has been grappling with the issue of ending single-use cups for years, but the strong support from everyone has driven the compass moving. A German system similar to Good Reusables is available in around 20,000 hospitality outlets in Germany.

Bermagui’s cafes made the shift ahead of the critical summer trading season, as most people were not aware that many cups marketed as recyclable or compostable ended up in landfill. Good Reusables aims to replace single-use packaging in the hospitality industry, focusing on giving Australians the freedom to drink coffee when and how they like, while also providing a system that allows everyone to do it sustainably.

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