A group of cafés in Southbourne have come together to launch a reusable coffee cup scheme with Litter Free Dorset.
Customers can borrow a cup from any of the participating cafés, enjoy their coffee, and then return the cup to any café within the Dorset Cup network.
Membership costs £5 and the first 50 members will get their first hot drink free.
It’s hoped other areas will follow Southbourne’s lead and also adopt the Dorset Cup.
The cafés taking part are Velo Domestique, Wild & Ginger, Makla, Harry’s and Little Perth.
Dan Armstrong, Southbourne Coastal BID Director and owner of Velo Domestique, said: “Reducing our business’s impact on the planet has always been a core principle, so we’re thrilled to join Litter Free Dorset’s exciting new Dorset Cup initiative.
“Southbourne is a considerate community that thinks about where they spend their money; this, along with the impressive number of well-supported independent cafes, meant we knew Southbourne would embrace the Dorset Cup.
“We hope that the Dorset Cup will be adopted by other areas and collectively reduce waste created by cafes, so please get involved and support the Southbourne cafes involved in this pilot scheme.”
According to Litter Free Dorset, disposable cups are almost impossible to recycle and will likely end up in landfill or incineration.
Even ‘compostable’ coffee cups don’t solve the problem, since most compostable packaging cannot be processed by local authority waste facilities.
The scheme is designed to reduce waste and encourage a culture of reuse, benefiting both the local community and the environment.
Emma Teasdale, Project Officer for the Dorset Cup Scheme, said: “This initiative not only supports our environmental goals but also brings the Southbourne community together in a shared commitment to sustainability; after all, reuse is the only genuine solution to the single-use packaging crisis.
“We hope the Dorset Cup will inspire more businesses and customers to think about the impact of their packaging choices and take steps toward a more sustainable future.”
Logging cup use will enable Litter Free Dorset to gather valuable data about where, when, and how often Dorset Cups are being used in Southbourne.
It plans to use this data to recruit more Dorset Cup partner cafés, and support expansion of the scheme to other locations across Dorset.
Life cycle assessments generally estimate a reusable cup needs to be used between five to ten times to break-even in terms of its net environmental impact.
With the Dorset Cup scheme, this could potentially be achieved in a single day.
The Dorset Cup is supplied by ECoffee Cup and is lightweight, easy to use and designed to stand up to a lifetime of commercial washing and reusing.
Jeremy Hassett, Ecoffee Cup’s Business Development Manager, said: “We’re delighted to play a small but pivotal part in helping Dorset cafés and customers realise the benefits of choosing to re-use.
“In UK landfill sites alone, single-use cups produce an annual carbon footprint equivalent to 152,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide – similar to what 33,300 cars produce each year, so initiatives like these are an important step in the right direction.”
For more information about the Dorset Cup Scheme, including how to become a member and details of participating cafes, visit www.litterfreedorset.co.uk/dorset-cup.