"War on coffee cups". Landfill is where coffee cups ended.

You may have assumed that disposable coffee cups are paper cups, so they are harmless to the environment. The answer is, you are wrong. Coffee cups are made of paper, but lined with plastics (polyethylene) inside the cup.

Photo courtesy of Lee Say Chuan, taken in Shenzhen back in 2019.

Your fix for a cup of Joe on your way to work, or just for a relaxing weekend caffeine fix renders our environment this sneaky little waste. They are not recyclable and many of us are not aware of it. The plastic lining prevented it. For the coffee lid, some are recyclable. The coffee sleeves which are made of paper or cardboard are indeed recyclable. However, how many of you actually separated them before you chuck the whole coffee cup into a recycling bin labelled as “paper”? Do you know that this action is actually causing more harm than good? The whole lot of recyclable waste in that bin will be considered as contaminated and will all be sent to landfill.

Photo courtesy of Jess.

If these words do not give you a strong visual impact, watch the video below.

Disposable coffee cups may stay only minutes on your hand, but would stay longer than a lifetime on earth. What can you do about this? You can always bring your own coffee cup.

Let's all start now, even if you feel this may be only a small step, but, better late than never.

I have few coffee cups of mine to carry around, including colourful KeepCup, a thermos from Tiger (has been serving me for 10 years now) and Starbucks tumblers (both older than 10 years) I received as gifts.

The habit of bringing your own cup is still not very common here (Malaysia), I often get curious stares on my mugs, which all have traces of aging, and also my act of bringing them out. The sight of me, holding hot coffee (made from home) in my own coffee cup (with my bulky backpack etc), entering my building’s lift during the morning work hour rush, is me being a responsible person. The disbelieving or curious stares do not bother me more. I wish all could be proud to use their own coffee cup (#byo), It does not necessarily have to be anything fancy.