Tacoma coffee drinkers: Don’t toss that cup in trash. City says there’s a better way
.JPG "The city hopes its BYOMug program this month inspires people to switch to reusable mugs or ceramic cups for local hot beverage purchases.")
Tacoma wants you to think before you toss that next coffee cup in the trash.
The city’s Office of Environmental Policy and Sustainability and local coffee shops are using the month of October and the BYOMug (bring your own mug) program to educate residents about how to reduce waste from single cups.
Paper and foam coffee cups are not recyclable in Tacoma, which wants to reduce “nonrecoverable” items sent to the landfill. Those items make up 34 percent of the waste deposited, according to the city’s 2015 Sustainable Materials Management Plan.
The goal of the 2015 plan is to divert 70 percent of the city’s solid waste from landfills by 2028.
Given what people toss, paper and foam coffee cups seem like an easy target.
“Coffee cup waste is one of those things that might seem small, but it adds up, particularly if it’s repeated behavior,” said Patrick Babbitt, project specialist with the city.
The city’s online promotion notes that Americans use 110 million hot coffee cups each day, and estimates “one in two coffee customers in Tacoma use a single-use cup for to-go orders, while 1 in 5 use a single-use cup when they sip their coffee in-house.”
With a $5,000 grant from the Urban Sustainability Directors Network, the city office set out to educate businesses about the problem and provide promotional materials to remind and educate people at the point of sale.
The office also has offered free reusable cups, paper straws (reducing plastic straw use is another part of the program) and other promotional materials. It encourages businesses to promote the program through social media with the hashtags #BringYourOwnMug #BYOmug #WasteFree253.
A list of participating establishments and offers is available at https://bit.ly/2QP108W.
The office estimates that, with a single-use cup costing 15 cents, coffee houses and other establishments could see significant savings immediately by switching to reusable to-go cups or ceramic cups for orders that stay in-house.
A key objective, in addition to keeping cups out of the trash, is getting people to think about reducing their trash load, Babbitt said.
“We are getting better at recycling,” he said, “but reducing our waste on items not recoverable is really important.”
This story was originally published October 16, 2018 at 1:36 PM.