This Coffee Festival Saved Over 18,000 Disposable Cups From Entering Landfills With One Simple Switch

This year’s Glasgow Coffee Festival, the biggest event of its kind in Scotland, had a simple policy that saved tens of thousands of disposable cups from entering the environment. The festival implemented a total ban on single-use cups – and by doing so, prevented a grand total of 18,530 containers from going to the landfill!

To do their part in the fight against plastic waste, Dear Green Coffee and the Glasgow Coffee Festival organizers offered reusable cups. This simple, common sense swap helped lower the impact of the event drastically.

The weekend event was a big success, with thousands of people joining in, Glasgow Live reports. Visitors participated in masterclasses, presentations, and competitions, and they had the chance to taste some of the best coffee from all across Scotland.

In January, the Scottish Government announced that they could ban all disposable plastics by 2030. Earlier this year, it was announced that 26 cafes in Glasgow City Council’s museums, sports centers, offices, schools, and the city chambers will stop using disposable plastic straws. The move away from straws will save large quantities of plastic from entering the oceans and threatening marine life. Since the announcement, several pubs across the area have also gotten involved in the plan. It is so great to see these efforts catching on and spreading across the country. As this event shows, making a simple change can have a HUGE positive impact.

Every year, over 8.8 million tons of plastic waste end up in the ocean, threatening some 700 marine species with extinction. Refusing a single-use plastic cup is one of the simple things we can do to reduce the amount of non-biodegradable waste we produce. To find out how else you can help, check out One Green Planet’s #CrushPlastic campaign!

Image source: Glasgow Coffee Festival/Twitter