Disposable fast food/coffee cups should be outlawed. Instead, you bring your own.

Posted by Josh_Hexx@reddit | CrazyIdeas | View on Reddit | 12 comments

To eliminate waste, disposable cups should be done away with.

Drinkware companies start selling 2 or 3 different sizes of cups, made to a standard set by the FDA or some similar governing body. They can offer them in different colors, materials, etc. Customers buy these cups and bring them themselves.

All restaurants/shops that serve drinks would offer different standard fills, ice amounts and obviously prices based on the cup size. They also are required to buy a standardized automatic cup washer to ensure the cups are sanitized before they're filled. The previously-mentioned standards would ensure all cups work with the washer. However, the restaurant/shop has the right to refuse cups that are damaged or otherwise unable to be cleaned with just the automatic washer. This means you have to at least keep your cup somewhat clean or else you might not be able to get your drink.

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kompootor@reddit

At the level that you can mandate restaurants and shops do stuff, you can mandate them to have separated recycling (enforcement is aided by charging trash disposal by weight+volume, as is already done for commercial trash services). Then you have your restaurants' PET cups or paper cups in nice clean separate streams, that can be disposed quite cleanly and cheaply.

Check locally to see if this is already done. If it's not, ask your city council to do it. Commercial waste disposal should all be more or less like this.

romulusnr@reddit

So at my work place, they recently started replacing the compostable cups and silverware with real mugs and steel silverware, glibly proclaiming it more climate friendly because less waste.

Thing is, there's hardly any mugs left on the shelf or silverware left in the drawer, because people forget to being them all the way back to the kitchen. And also, one week, the diswasher broke, so they were all dirty.

People found the leftover stash of paper cups and started using them again.

poojabber84@reddit

But if my cup is damaged I will die of thirst! I cant afford to buy a new cup and purchase the fluids!

cwsjr2323@reddit

I prefer no disposable containers, cups, or plastic flatware. If we go to Culver’s, I have a canvas bag with stainless steel flatware and Rubbermaid containers with screw on lids. Nobody seems to care.

Coffee brewed using my BrewStation at home is 17¢ per ten ounce serving. I don’t like Starbucks type places coffee as I drink mine black. The shops are selling coffee flavored desserts. Nothing wrong with that just not my preference. The mark up for a cup of coffee at a restaurant at $2.99 is too steep for me. I won’t want more than half a cup during a meal, so refills are not desired.

When out, I get tap water if getting food at a sit down restaurant. Anyplace else, I bring in my own coffee in my insulated travel Thermos. If it is posted no outside beverages, I get tap water.

Piggybear87@reddit

I would never want to wait the extra time it takes to sanitize the cup. It already takes too damn long to get a coffee at a coffee shop. I would just brew my coffee at home or buy one of those gross Starbucks drinks at the gas station.

Not to mention the fact that 99% of to-go coffee cups are usually paper and they're biodegradable (I even know someone that puts them in their compost pile), so this "outlawing" of them makes no sense. Just make them more biodegradable. Sure, outlaw the disposable plastic and foam ones, but the paper ones (the majority of the cups out there) are fine.

notbythebook101@reddit

But aren't the paper cups lined with plastic so they don't leak, as well as hold their shape when a hot liquid is inside?

No, it's more of a glossy paper. Kind of like the type used for fronting pictures on. It's coated in something, but it's not plastic or the ink would just run off. That's why if you let one sit for a long while, it will eventually leak through. The paper becomes so soft it can't support the liquid anymore.

XROOR@reddit

When will Wawa get Blueberry Cobbler coffee again?

IndependentDate62@reddit

cups are cool.

Im_high_as_shit@reddit

At that point I might as well brew my own coffee. Also you don't need a special cup washer.

Josh_Hexx@reddit (OP)

The idea behind the cup washer is to eliminate liability if someone gets sick after drinking something they got at a restaurant. It needs to be quick so it doesn't upset the workflow of whoever is filling the drinks.

So a regular one.