Galway City Council urge coffee drinkers to ‘’Use your Mug!’’

Galway City Council and 2GoCup are launching a major new environmental campaign to dramatically reduce single use coffee cups in Galway City.

For a 3 month trial period, 10 cafés in Galway City will not sell any drinks in single use cups and instead sell drinks exclusively in reusable 2GoCups. In return, they will each receive a total of 1400 cups free of charge from Galway City Council and 2GoCup. A customer will pay €1 to "borrow" the deposit scheme cup and get it refunded when they return it or alternatively swap it for another 2GoCup for free at any of the 10 participating businesses.

Speaking about the campaign, Tiarnan McCusker, Environmental Awareness Officer with Galway City Council said; "In Ireland, every year we dispose of 200 Million coffee cups, that’s a whopping 560,000 each day going to landfill or incineration! There are huge environmental consequences with this in terms of litter, waste and climate. 9 Cafes in the City are leading the way in bringing about a local circular economy with coffee cups and are only selling drinks from the deposit scheme 2GoCups. This is the first time that it has been trialled on such a scale in an Irish City and we are looking forward to sharing our findings with other cafes and indeed other Local Authorities."

In addition, many cafés in Galway City have signed up to ‘Use Your Mug!’ and are offering a 50cent discount to customers who bring in their own reusable mugs from the 8-15th April. From a recent survey completed by Galway City Council, four out of five respondents have a reusable cup but only one out of five use them regularly. A large green coffee cup called ‘Muggins’ will also be placed in various locations around the city to hammer home the point. Locals and tourists alike are being encouraged to take a selfie with Muggins and post it to Galway City Council's social media accounts using the hashtag #UseYourMug.

The 9 cafés taking part in the 2GoCups exclusive trial are: Mocha Beans (Salthill), Mocha Beans (Cross Street), Mocha Beans (Newcastle Road), Temple Café (St. Augustine Street), The Creamery (Salthill), Rouge (Dominick Street), Ces’t la Vie (Terryland), Anton’s (Fr. Griffin Road), Greens & Co (Henry Street). There is still space for one more cafe to join up so we encourage all local coffeeshop owners to consider getting involved. For more information email environment@galwaycity.ie or visit www.galwaycity.ie/useyourmug

The Use Your Mug! Campaign is supported by the Local Authority Prevention Network (LAPN) fund from the EPA and the Waste Prevention Fund.