Coffee drinkers in the county could be paying an extra 20c for their ‘cuppa’ in the next few years.
A circular economy bill went before the Dáil yesterday which has the aim of reducing waste nationally, as well as paving the way for the use of CCTV to detect illegal dumping.
One of the proposed initiatives is stamping out single use coffee cups, or imposing a ‘latte levy’, however Mark Jenkins from Releaf Coffee in Clonmel says this doesn’t target the real waste issues for coffee shops.
Mark says that a lot of the companies use huge amounts of plastic packaging which could be reduced and wouldn’t have an impact on the customer.
He told Tipp Today that not only does the cost of a coffee for consumers, but it also doesn’t tackle behavioral issues around littering:
“Is it just another way to hit the consumer, is it just a revenue trap?”
“To me it’s not the way to tackle our waste problem. Coffee cups is very minimal, our plastic waste would be a hell of a lot worse than our coffee cups. Like, they should be going after the bigger companies and pushing it down the line and looking at more sustainable products and sustainable packaging”
