Instead of the single-use paper or plastic cups that Gearhard would usually line up for the barista slinging espresso, he’s passing over shiny new reusable cups that bear the slogan “Sip, Return, Repeat”. Customers who need their lattes to go can take the purple cups with them, then return them to one of 60 bins scattered across downtown Petaluma when they’ve finished. Each cup comes with a trackable QR code to help monitor results.

  • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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    4 months ago

    The reusable cups are plastic. Can plastic be sanitised as well as glass? We know that glass can be used in such schemes as it used to be in the past.

      • The Pantser@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Using a thin walled metal cup would be super hot and burn people. But using an insulated metal cup would get people to keep them. Idk how to solve that. Make something safe but worthless enough to return.

        • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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          4 months ago

          Ask people to bring their own washed cup with the appropriate capacity. If they don’t have one, provide them with a reusable cup they have to pay extra for.
          You have to make people pay to overcome the path of least effort that single use plastics opened.
          Just like paid plastic bags in supermarkets, I believe it works well.

        • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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          4 months ago

          I suspect that making metal insulated cups is cheap these days. Perhaps this could solve that. I doubt people would hoard mountains of them. Then it becomes a matter of paying for the hoarded ones. People hoarded and still do some glass bottles where glass bottle replacement schemes exist/have existed.

          Thinking more on this point, a genuine replacement for single use plastics for beverages could be a soda can equivalent, cheap, double wall aluminum container. If someone can make such a container for low enough cost, that could be a solution since aluminum is infinitely recyclable.

      • catloaf@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        Most people stop for coffee on their way somewhere. They don’t want to be carrying a cup around all day.

        Takeout cups should be environmentally friendly, or not offered at all. If you can’t make it green, make time to sit down for your coffee (or put up with your own travel mug).