Sharon Connellan and Aoibhin Garrihy of Beo, Siobháin Landy of Sweet n Green, Ennis Tidy Towns Chairperson Mary Howard, Kaiféin’s XX and Sourdo’Farrell founder Keith O’Farrell. Photograph: John O’Neill.
FOUR ENNIS cafés have come together to introduce Cupa an Chláir.
In a bid to reduce the prevalence of single-use coffee cups, Sweet n Green Café, Sourdo’Farrell, Beo The Well and Kaiféin have launched Cupa an Chláir.
At a cost of €6, the reusable Cupa an Chláir can be purchased at any of the four Ennis cafés. Customers will then have the option to bring their cup back to be swapped for a freshly washed one or they can keep reusing their own Cupa an Chláir. Full returns are made at the café where the cup was originally purchased.
Initial conversations on the project began over a year ago when a host of different café owners came together in a bid to help the environment and improve sustainability. Ennis Tidy Towns are also involved in the initiative.
Co-owner of Sweet n Green, Siobháin Landy is one of the central figures behind the initiative, “It is all about trying to reduce single use cups”. She held initial conversations with Chairperson of Ennis Tidy Towns, Cllr Mary Howard (FG), “she knows all about the wastage from the cups they are picking up every week”.
Previous attempts have been made by Sweet n Green to get customers taking ceramic cups and to-go cups but both trials were interrupted by the pandemic, “COVID changed everyone’s habits,” she noted.
“I was always very passionate about this, I was thinking of having a Sweet n Green styled cup ready for Christmas but I said it would be great to reach out to other cafes and see if we could all do something together. It has been done before in other towns, there’s a pilot project ongoing in Killarney with reusable cup schemes also running in Fermoy and Dun Laogháire. It is bringing awareness to ourselves at a personal, business and community level and knowing small changes can go a long way”.
Speaking to The Clare Echo, Siobháin flagged that many coffee drinkers are unaware their single-use cups are not compostable and end up in landfill. “It is all about sustainability, we are a sustainable café, we’ve won café of the year, we are always supporting local produce and efforts, we’re trying to bring it to the next level now”.
Founder of Sourdo’Farrell, Keith O’Farrell is optimistic the project will be a success. “I believe it could be very successful because we’ve got it off ground with busy cafes and it could spread to others in the town and the rest of the county. It is a lovely cup to drink from so the system is there to make it work. What these reusable cups aim to achieve versus your €30 keep-cup at home is people have various keep-cups at home but they don’t always have them when they need them, with this you don’t have to fear buying a second or third one because you get your money back and it suits our busy lifestyles”.
Keith also trialled attempts in the past with Returner Cups, a cup that launched in Australia, the stainless steel cups cost €6 and could be returned or customers got their money back “but it didn’t work in Ireland, it was possibly the price or just not enough cafes getting involved”.
Ennis is an ideal location to show that the scheme can work, he maintained. “There’s a massive coffee culture growing in Ireland. In Ennis it’s probably a really good town to make a project like this viable, we have a lot of repeat customers, we’re not on the high street but it is a town frequented by locals, it is not a major tourist hotspot but we’ve ability to educate our own residents on how we can evolve the coffee culture so we don’t use so many disposable coffee cups because there’s a massive amount of wastage involved and some people see the takeaway coffee cup as an accessory, we see it all the time and we see it as more waste, we don’t want to be a part of that”.
O’Farrell continued, “two to three months after opening the bakery, you’ll notice a dip with any business, I was faced with the challenge of dealing with food waste or any waste for that matter, we had to plan who we donate to and make sure someone is available to donate the food and make sure we never have too much, that is something we can control, we deal with other wholesale businesses to buy our bread, that is within our own control. The coffee cup wastage was something we couldn’t enforce, the customers have to want to buy into it, with this initiative and people will want to support the scheme, we don’t want to force anyone to use a keep cup but we’d like to raise more awareness”.
Sweet n Green would spend in the region of €2,000 per year on single use cups, Siobháin confirmed. “That is sporadic, for more of a takeaway business it could be even more, it is about reducing waste, this is an environmental issue, every customer who uses this cup or a reusable cup gets 30 cent off the price of a coffee, they will get every seventh coffee free then depending on loyalty cards and the squid app in other participating cafes so there is nothing negative about the project, it is saving the consumer and the business money”.
For the costs of single-use cups for Sourdo’Farrell, Keith said, “we go through 150 cups a day and that’s too many. A substantial amount of our costs are packaging, it is unavoidable in a takeaway business to have that, our café is small so it is not that easy to have people sit down but we always encourage it. The café I was in Italy which inspired me to open this in Ennis was tiny but there isn’t a takeaway culture in Italy. We can have a nicer experience and less waste by doing this”.
Takeaway coffee cups can be seen as trendy and an accessory, Cupa an Chláir tries to tackle that while helping the environment, Keith outlined. “It is looking at the plan rolled out in Killarney and looking at the flaws, one of them is the type of cup used and it was made out of plastic and it was too cheap. This cup is a cup I believe people would be proud to use and carry with them, the only thing to stop them is if they can’t get them readily available, I’ve about three on the go, I might have one on my bike and other in my car and at home. I do think it is solving the issue of people wanting to do something because it is trendy, it has. A brand and it is connected with cafes in Clare”.
Having single-use cups almost has to be “frowned upon,” Siobháin felt. “Coffee is a big business and walking around with a takeaway cup is like a commodity. This is Cupa an Chláir, the branding shows that we’re proud of the town and the county, it is about making Ennis a leader on sustainability. The cup is really cool and it looks very well, we’ve designed a cup that is not just for Ennis, we’re really hoping the wider community comes on board, I’d love to see a town-wide commitment to this, there is no reason why shops don’t come on board and for businesses or sports organisations down the road”. She added, “I’d love to see everyone come behind the project, sustainability is the future. The latte levy hasn’t come in yet, it is coming in the future but the more awareness we bring it will drive the project forward”.
This could mark the start of greater collaboration amongst businesses in Ennis, Keith felt. “Things have changed with the way businesses work together since I opened the business, I found there is so much support, there is a massive amount of collaboration even cafes using our bread and shopping local and supporting each other. Ennis has a lot of nice places to drink, eat and go out, customers aren’t associated with one particular business, they tend to see the cohesiveness as a good thing, we share that”.
“It is important for customers to know that we can try put a procedure in place so that we can reduce waste and make a difference together but as businesses we will always try do what the customer wants, it is important that the customer wants to make a difference but we’re not trying to force them to change their habits but I think the people of Ennis are willing to support this. They’re delighted to make this step, if any other cafes busy or quiet want to get on board and get in contact with any of us then please do. We can order more cups and hopefully this will grow, this project has been rolled out before but it is definitely a cleaner project,” he concluded.
