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.
There's been plenty of recent developments on plastic-free coffee cups. Even ones that have very thin layers of biodegradable plastic. A few years ago someone came up with fully carton based cups that hold coffee.
But I think that reusable cups are probably more viable. The €2 deposit sounds pretty hefty, so it's going to strongly encourage people to bring their own cups and actually return the reusable ones. Mini-thermoses are cool, I like them.