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.
That’s an interesting idea. I can see local businesses having a whinge about it for a couple reasons: 1) people less likely to buy snacks/drinks on the go and 2) the business now has to deal with lots of extra rubbish that used to go in the public bins outside. Was there any push back? People were a bit whingey about the plastic bag ban here at first but I think most people have accepted it now (although I do forget my reusable bags on an annoyingly regular basis).
Nothing too vocal that I recall. Was a pretty progressive town. I’m sore about the plastic bag thing though. I reused all those bags for house trash or lunches and had to switch to purchasing separate single purpose bags for those things.
You could get reusable sandwich bags and compostable bin bags.
I lost the ‘just enough’ source for bags to pick up the dog’s shit in.
Personally, the plastic bag ban has resulted in me just purchasing much less or avoiding purchases entirely, especially if it’s something I’m unable to carry to my home with my bare hands. In hindsight that has reduced a lot of primary waste as well