Campaign encourages coffee-lovers to switch to reusable cups

BYO Coffee Cup encourages Brighton’s cafes to offer rewards to customers with re-usable coffee cups.

The scheme aims to reduce the current figure of 2.5 billion disposable coffee cups thrown away each year.

Less than one per cent of these cups are recycled.

Peter Golton, a physics teacher and founder of BYO Coffee Cup, said: “I do a lot of off-road running along the seafront and on the Downs, and I just saw litter everywhere. It seemed like an insurmountable problem for any one person to solve so I’ve just been doing this one thing and trying to contribute.

“I didn’t really expect it to take off, I just thought I would share an idea with my friends. So, I put it on Facebook and it got shared about 80 times.”

The scheme has already achieved impressive results since its launch in March, with almost 90 cafes in Brighton now offering reduced rates to customers using re-usable cups.

Martin Good, owner of Phoenix Coffee House, said: “We throw away so many coffee cups as a country as it is, so just doing a little bit and encouraging people to bring in their own cups is something we wanted to do. Customers using re-usable items saves us having to throw away so many cups and saves us some washing up too.”

Re-usable cups have also proved popular with regular coffee shop customers.

Loulou Tamadon-Nejad, marketing manager at The Flour Pot Bakery, said: “I own a re-usable coffee cup as well as a water bottle to refill, so there is no need for me to ever use takeaway cups or plastic bottles anymore.”

She continued: “The Flour Pot Bakery have been asked many times to provide a discount for people bringing in their own cups, which we do. We have recently signed all five of our stores up to the BYO Coffee Cup campaign and hope to promote it over the marathon weekend.”

Following on from the scheme’s early success, Mr Golton now aims to grow its influence through the 150,000 spectators expected to attend the Brighton Marathon on April 15.

He said: “I think it could go national, and at the moment my main interest is the spectators coming to Brighton for the marathon.

“There will be people from around the country coming and it will be such a big event, I’ve run it myself a few times and I love it.”

The campaign will spread its message through Twitter with the hashtags #reusablecupday and #brightonmarathon to persuade spectators to purchase and use re-usable coffee cups.

Mr Golton said: “If you go anywhere where they use disposables, very nearby you will find there are cups thrown away. But, I’ve never seen a re-usable cup thrown away.”

To support this cause, follow BYO Coffee Cup on Twitter, and use the hashtags #reusablecupday, #brightonmarathon and #byoCoffeeCup.