Oceana says to-go coffee cups are used for an average of just 15 minutes before being thrown away (photo: Starbucks)
Oceana – an organization formed by The Pew Charitable Trusts, Oak Foundation, Marisla Foundation, Sandler Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund that is dedicated to protecting the oceans – called on the Danish government to phase out single-use coffee cups. It wants the government to start by setting a goal that 80% of cups used by 2030 should be refillable.
Denmark’s Ministry for the Environment recently produced proposals that the Danish Parliament (the Folketing) started to review. Oceana says any text agreed-on by the Parliament should lay the ground for an ambitious bill targeting unnecessary single-use plastics, rather than just address the issue by producing proposals to collect and process waste.
Oceana Europe senior policy advisor Naja Andersen said, “Overuse of single-use plastic is undermining the reductions in litter that Denmark had achieved thanks to a pioneering deposit return system for bottles. It is time to take the real steps. Parliament should not give a blank check to the government to put waste management measures in place. If we are to really tackle the plastic crisis, we need to focus on the root causes and limit our use of single-use products. Single-use coffee cups are one of the most used disposable products in Denmark. Phasing them out altogether would send a strong signal in fight against plastic pollution.”
Denmark has the fourth highest coffee-consumption rate of any country in the world. Every Dane drinks an average of four cups of coffee per day. They use around 300 million disposable cups every year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. To-go coffee cups are used for an average of just 15 minutes before being thrown away.
Oceana recommended a number of steps as part of a roadmap to completely eliminating disposable coffee cups. These include banning disposable cups for on-site consumption, for example in cafés and bars; requiring coffee shops to allow the consumer to choose a refillable coffee cup; banning disposable cups at major events such as festivals and sporting events; the introduction of a “latte levy,” that is, a tax on disposable coffee cups like the one on plastic bags; and support for the development of a deposit return system for coffee cups.
As of the July 3, 2021, polystyrene cups will be banned in the EU. To help tackle what it described as “a marine pollution crisis,” Oceana wants them to be replaced by refillable alternatives rather than by other single-use materials. It highlighted the fact that, at European level, it is estimated that only 1.5% of disposable cups are recycled and successful schemes that have been introduced elsewhere, such as a ban on single-use cups in fast-food restaurants in France. Denmark will implement requirements for extended producer responsibility for single-use plastics, under the EU Single-Use Plastics Directive and the EU Packaging Directive. Producer responsibility schemes mean that in future it will be manufacturers who will cover the costs of collecting and handling waste.