FOUNDER OF SCOTLAND’S BIGGEST EVER COFFEE FESTIVAL CALLS FOR BAN ON SINGLE-USE CUPS

THE organiser of the biggest coffee event ever to take place in Scotland hopes the event will help to end single-use coffee cups’ grip on society.

Lisa Lawson, founder of the Glasgow Coffee Festival, has teamed up with KeepCup to provide reusable coffee cups to everyone who attends the festival – something which she hopes will show everyone how easy it is to combat coffee cup waste.

This comes as the Scottish Government has established an advisory group on plans to introduce a mandatory charge on coffee cups in Scotland.

Lisa, who founded Scottish B Corp Dear Green Coffee Roasters more than a decade ago, hopes the Glasgow Coffee Festival can push the issue back to the front of coffee drinkers’ minds.

She said: “I hope within this decade, single-use cups can be a thing of the past. Inevitably, this slipped down people’s priority list during the pandemic, but now is the time to put it back on the top of the agenda.

“At the start of the pandemic, cafes were right to take every single precaution with Covid and stop accepting reusable cups.

“However, while the science has shown that reusables can be used safely and most cafes are again welcoming their use, customer behaviour has shifted as far fewer people are using reusables than before the pandemic began.

“But there’s a climate emergency and as an industry, we have to do our bit to turn this back around, and once again encourage people to make a very simple shift.
“I thought COP 26 would make that change, but it hasn’t. Maybe our festival can cause people to ditch single use cups once and for all. Compostable and recyclable isn’t the answer – reusable is the only solution.

“At the very least people should have to pay extra for single-use cups.”

Almost 500 million single-use cups are used in Scotland each year, and more than 95 million in Glasgow alone, with most being either incinerated or sent to landfill.
A survey by Zero Waste Scotland found that almost two-thirds of Scots would support introducing charges to limit the use of single-use plastic and packaging.
Us V Them, a coffee bar and workshop in the Gallowgate, is sponsoring the festival’s cup rinsing stations.

Abigail Forsyth, Founder of KeepCup, which is an event sponsor, said: “We love that Scotland is leading the world in transition to renewables, and now looking at banning problematic and unnecessary packing in the form of the single-use cup. The disposable cup free Glasgow Coffee Festival, and all the cafes and roasters and punters who participated have led the way with cultural change. Power to the people.”

Organisers of the Glasgow Coffee Festival have pledged that nothing will go to landfill.

Lisa believes Scotland’s biggest ever coffee event – a weekend festival as well as two weeks of deals and events in cafes across Glasgow – comes at the perfect time.
She said: “The speciality coffee industry has grown significantly during the pandemic. Speaking to roasters across Scotland, we have all noticed a huge increase in online sales as more people embraced specialty coffee as they levelled-up their at-home coffee game.

“For many people who treated their coffee as a fix on their way to work or after lunch, it’s now something bigger. They have come to appreciate the more delicious, more ethical, more transparent coffee that independent coffee businesses provide.”