Hoogah’s Guide to Reusable Coffee Cups
Did you know that Britain gets through 2.5 billion disposable coffee cups a year and only 1 in 400 are recycled?!
Last week, I set out on a mission to find out how our customers can enjoy their takeaway coffees more sustainably. At Hoogah, we’re looking at selling new reusable cups and I spent many (sometimes stressful!) hours researching some of the most popular reusable cups on the market. I’ve created this guide to share what I found so we can weigh up the pros and cons of these options together.
Some of the reusable cups I looked into included Circular & Co (previously known as RCup), Keep Cup and Huskee. I compared these cups against each other, focusing on factors such as carbon footprint, recyclability, cost and life-span. Here’s what I found out:
Circular & Co
These clever Cornish reusable cups are made from recycled disposable takeaway cups and as the name suggests, are circular products which can be returned at the end of their lives to be regenerated or recycled through the company’s ‘Take Back Scheme’. Although they have created a product which turns waste into something useful, the company admits that their cups are not made from 100% recycled materials as this is not yet legally possible due to food safety regulations.
They are based in the UK and Australia and previously have solely manufactured in China but in 2020 have brought some of their production to the UK (specifically Cornwall), allowing them to reduce their carbon footprint. Happy days!
Carbon footprint: According to a study by Exeter University, it takes 22 uses to neutralise the carbon footprint of a Circular Cup versus a single use cup.
Life-span: 10 years
Other benefits:
BPA Free
Leakproof
Minimal and Recyclable Packaging
Replaceable Parts
Comes in multiple sizes
Huskee
So, these cups proved to be quite confusing to research into but I’ll try my best to explain exactly what I found out.
Huskee is a company that repurposes waste material (coffee husks to be exact, which is the dried skin of a coffee bean- mmmm tasty…..) and combines it with recyclable plastic to make reusable coffee cups. Sound good doesn’t it? I thought so too.
But this new material actually turns biodegradable husks and recyclable plastic into a material that isn’t actually recyclable or biodegradable and the life-span of the cup is a lowly three years in comparison to cups such as Circular Cup (although longer than that of a disposable cup of course).
It’s worth noting that Huskee runs a HuskeeLoop programme which allows cup owners to return their cups at the end of their life and the company says their ‘goal is to ensure over 90% of everything we make is collected and re-purposed into amazing new Huskee products’.
But this still doesn’t solve the issue of their material using biodegradable husks which usually only take months to compost and turning it into something that could last forever.
Scientist Tania Ritchie did a bit of digging and seems to have found a worrying motivation behind this choice of material. She explains that the only real incentive would be finding an alternative disposal method for lots of unwanted coffee husks, which is suspicious as the one of the main members of the Huskee team includes a coffee grower and director of Yunnan Coffee Traders (who farm and mill coffee in China) and this company seems to be one of Huskee’s main partners. Looks like we might need to wake up and smell the coffee!
Carbon Footprint: Was hard to find any information about this on their websites
Life span: 3 years
Other benefits:
HuskeeSwap is a programme that enables you to swap your takeaway cup for a commercially cleaned one- eliminating the issue of having to clean your own cup
KeepCup
KeepCup is a well-established Australian reusable cup company which has definitely done their research. KeepCup claims to have designed ‘the world’s first barista standard reusable cup’ as their cups come in particular shapes and sizes which help to make a great coffee. The company is a Certified B company which means that they are as focused on their social and environmental impact as they are on their financial gains.
The company manufactures in China but have taken measures to reduce the use of unnecessary packaging and worked with manufacturers there to ensure they use low impact packaging made from 100% cardboard.
The cups come in different materials such as plastic, glass and stainless steel and the website has an impact calculator which helps you work out how many disposable cups you save from landfill by using your KeepCup.
Life span: 8 years
Carbon Footprint: It takes eight uses to pay off that year’s carbon debt invested in the product
Other benefits:
Consistent common parts across multiple products so you can replace the part and not the product
BPA Free
Transparent website- lots of honest information about the company (no green-washing!)
As you can see, there’s lots to think about when choosing a reusable cup and some of us might get a bit overwhelmed when trying to find the best choice. It’s good to look out for signs of greenwashing, for example, when a brand makes lots of big claims but there’s hidden information and their sustainability practices aren’t very clear.
It’s also good to have a think about the different materials that are used to make the cups rather than just the life-span. A cup might claim to last you for 10 years and that sounds amazing for the environment, but if it’s made of glass and you’re as clumsy as me- it could break in 10 days!
We’re not going to find the perfect product, but it's definitely better to use our own cups over disposable ones as it's really difficult (especially in Swansea) to recycle or compost them properly and this adds to the waste crisis. Don’t be fooled by cup manufacturers who claim that their disposables are eco-friendly either, there’s lots of other factors that come into play when it comes to ‘recyclable’ and ‘biodegradable’ products.
Stay tuned for more ‘Cupdates’ from us at Hoogah!
Useful links:
Keep Cup
https://uk.keepcup.com/impact/index
Huskee
Circular & Co (formerly RCup)
https://www.ethicalsuperstore.com/blog/recycling/brand-story-rcup/
What is greenwashing and how do we spot it?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59119693
by Katie
(Hoogah Community Projects Officer)
