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30th Apr 2018

These beautiful cups are the perfect sustainable alternative to throw away coffee cups

Every year, millions of disposable coffee cups end up on landfills in Ireland.

Trine Jensen-Burke

If you are anything like us, you cannot face starting your day without a coffee in hand.

Many of us (myself included) get this coffee on route during our morning commute, enjoying the convenience of being able to drink this while on the go.

However, our collective takeaway coffee addiction comes at a huge cost.

“We are throwing away millions of coffee cups every year, which end up in landfill or incineration,” Green Party councillor Claire Byrne told The Journal a while back.

And while studies show that as many as 80 percent of consumers believe that disposable cups are being recycled, when in reality, a mere 0.25 percent of them actually are.

The result? Millions of disposable coffee cups are ending up on landfills every year – and that’s just here in Ireland. The problem is just as big – and bigger – elsewhere too.

In Australia, this number is a whopping 1 billion disposable coffee cups ending up in the trash every year – which is what prompted Australians Renton Bishopric and Clare Botfield to step up and try to do something to counteract all this waste.

Enter Pottery for the Planet – a gorgeous and sustainable alternative to throw away coffee cups.

“It’s time for the disposable culture to change,” says Bishopric and Botfield. “Our aim is to remove single use disposable cups from our coffee culture by creating a beautiful product that will be loved and used again and again and help reduce the amount of throw away cups going into land-fill every day.”

The gorgeous cups are handmade from vitrified ceramic and fitted with a 100 percent silicone lid, providing a sustainable alternative to throw away coffee cups.

The Planet Cups cost AUS$35 (approximately €22), and really, it seems a tiny price to pay to help save the planet.