Coffee lovers are very particular about how they take their coffee. Coffee isn’t just a beverage to them - it’s a routine. Anything that tarnishes that routine needs to go, and anything that makes it easier and more enjoyable is a welcome addition to the routine. Enter: reusable coffee cups!
Getting a reusable coffee cup isn’t a huge investment. It doesn’t cost too much, but if we try to identify all the benefits of using a reusable coffee cup, we quickly realise that this is a good investment. Let’s go through all of them and see how a reusable coffee mug
changes the life of a person that has a passion for coffee.
Let’s get the obvious thing out of the way right at the start. Unlike the cardboard variants you get in coffee shops, reusable coffee containers keep your coffee warm for a long time. This is the primary benefit of getting your own but let’s see what other benefits they bring to the table.
Many reusable coffee cups are made from sustainable materials, and no, we don’t consider plastic reusable coffee cups to be among them. Furthermore, using a sustainable coffee cup over and over again means that you are not a part of the wasteful cycle of creating paper or plastic cups.
How many times have you seen trash cans overflowing with empty coffee cups thrown away never to be used again? This happens daily, and the only way to ensure you are not part of the crowd making a mess is to get a cup you can use again.
Now, if the style is essential to you, walking around with a plain old coffee cup isn’t something you’d prefer. Style revolves around maintaining a recognisable look and picking out a coffee cup that fits your style.
Usually, when people have their cups, they often tend to brew their coffee at home. This might seem counterintuitive but getting your coffee machine and coffee is much more economical in the long run.
What kind of coffee do they use to brew your drinks at the local coffee shop? What type of sugar and additives? Do they put in something that they don’t disclose? You don’t know! When you bring your coffee, in your own cup, you know what you are drinking. This is especially important for people with allergies.
The biggest issue we have with regular coffee cups is that they don’t even fulfil the basic requirements. For example, reusable coffee mugs usually come with silicone sleeves that protect your hand when drinking a hot brew - most cups don’t calculate that into their design.
Continue the grievances we have with regular cups - a coffee cup or a coffee mug is supposed to keep your brew hot for a long time the way ceramic cups do. Your reusable cup is designed to retain heat so you can sip your coffee over a long time without it getting cold. Reusable plastic coffee cups with lids help you avoid spilling your coffee by accident.
Not all disposable cups are made in the same ways, and some don’t meet health standards, putting your health in jeopardy. Sure, most of them don’t contain toxic materials that can harm you immediately, but prolonged exposure can cause issues, and some of them can be quite serious. With reusable plastic coffee cups, there is no chance this can happen.
Finally, getting your coffee cup, reusable and convenient, and after a while, you’ll get so used to it that you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it. It will become a part of your routine, and you’ll make sure you always have it on your person.
If you are passionate about coffee, reusable cups are a must. They are simply a part of the culture in Australia and, as you can see, bring a lot of benefits to the table. They are a small investment that will last you a long while, and once you realise that, you might go on and buy yourself a few of them.
Fabia Pryor, a Sustainability Manager at KeepCup Australia, shared the story and inspiration behind KeepCup. She described how Abigail and Jamie attempted to change the “convenience culture” embedded in society by using their experience as café owners. Their solution was to introduce a product into the market that curbs the single-use culture and resonates with consumers' values.
“It was a brother-sister duo, Abigail and Jamie Forsyth; they owned a series of cafés called Bluebag…they had been involved with their cafés for about a decade when they really started to see an increase in the use of disposable coffee cups, and they wanted to see a solution to that. They started a trial with soup cups which they bought off the shelf and had 15% of people return the cups…They saw that there was a market there for reusables.”
In an interview with CEO Magazine in 2017, the managing director of KeepCup, Abigail, spoke of the inspiration behind the KeepCup. She went on to talk about the journey after finding no reusable coffee cups on the market that were suitable for their own and consumer’s needs. Thus, she started her own revolution with the KeepCup.
“[S]o we looked around to buy a reusable alternative, but we couldn’t find one that would fit under the group head of the coffee machine and that had the same internal raise to dose the coffee correctly. So, we decided to make our own.”
Abigail further went on to to talk about her “eureka moment” in an article released in early 2018 aptly named "The KeepCup Story." She thought of the foolishness behind using a single-use sippy cup for her daughter, whilst comparing that with her own personal coffee habits and deciding that action needed to be taken to reduce this wasteful behavior.
“My moment of clarity was when I was heating the milk in my daughter’s sippy cup one morning. Imagine if I gave her milk in a disposable cup and then discarded it? That idea seemed so wasteful, yet I did it with coffee twice a day! This moment was the call to action.”