5 Reasons you shouldn't buy a reusable cup
There is a lot of hype at the moment surrounding the environment/saving the planet/being green and all that jazz. Rather than jumping on the bandwagon, we thought we would highlight the negative aspects of owning a reusable cup, that which seems to be ignorantly overlooked by those eco-warriors who hate single-use-anything-at-all.
A HUGE COST
Reusable cups are extremely expensive. You’ll spend around £10 on average for any of the many reusable cups out there - money which could be put to far better use. That would cover the cost of 1 ½ pints at the pub on a Friday, having worked the prior week tirelessly and mindlessly, purchasing two coffees a day in single use cups to ease the painstaking graft of your dull 9 to 5 office job, the latte levy for which is still not as costly as purchasing your very own cup - who in their right mind would do that?!
ANOTHER THING TO REMEMBER
If one was to fork out their hard earned dosh for a reusable cup, a second plight immediately rears its head; you have to actually REMEMBER to take it with you when you leave the house. You may be intending to buy a coffee on your way into the office, or meeting your friend at Pret, meaning you have to go through the two-second thought process required to conclude that you will, in fact, be needing your reusable cup that day. On the other hand, those days that you don’t necessarily intend to purchase a coffee could indeed turn out to be ‘one of those days’ during which a coffee is all but necessary to get you through. You therefore have to consider this possibility when packing your things in the morning and use that extra bit of brain power to REMEMBER to pack the cup, regardless of whether you intend to use it. You’re going to need a lie down soon and it’s not even 9am.
MORE WEIGHT
Once you’ve overcome the initial challenge of remembering the cup, next up is having to lug it around with you all day. The average reusable cup weighs around 100g, the difference between a heavy bag and a really heavy bag. Firstly, this is only going to make your bad back worse, that which is already causing you rather a lot of grief as it is thanks to being stuck in an office chair for eight hours a day. What’s more, that cup then takes up valuable bag space for other important objects you might need throughout the day; how will you fit in a cup AND a book to pass the dull minutes of your twice daily commute? Hopefully someone will invent a City Sherpa service soon to cater for this.
WASTED TIME
Having purchased, remembered, carried and succeeded in ordering a coffee whilst simultaneously handing your reusable cup over to the barista with a yes-I-do-care-about-the-planet nod/smile/twitch the worst part is yet to come - hard to believe, I know. Having enjoyed your morning flat white with oat milk (do you know how much water is used in the production of almond milk?!) you now have to wash up your cup rather than tossing it in the recycling as you would with a single use cup, knowing full well that it will not, in fact, ever reach recycling and will instead end up polluting the Earth. Two whole minutes of your life WASTED. To those of you privileged enough to own a dishwasher-friendly reusable cup and have access to a dishwasher, well, life ain’t no walk in the park for everyone so count yourself lucky.
A FUTURE GENERATION PROBLEM
So, all that just to do your own tiny part in protecting a planet which is inhabited by 8 billion other people who just wouldn’t bother to put themselves through the aforementioned hell. Sounds like a problem for future generations to me.