Coffee-to-No-Go Campaign

The municipal committee of Munich has unanimously voted for an extensive campaign against the usage of disposable paper coffee cups.

Environmentalists nationwide are worried about the immense amount of garbage that is caused by disposable cups. Almost 3 billion cups are thrown away every year in Germany. That is 7.7 million cups a day, 320.000 per hour, 40.000 tons of garbage a year - for a usable product lifetime of only 15 mins. Also the waste of resources needed for the production of the cups is huge.

Munich faces the problem of having to handle the piles of garbage caused by this needless waste. The cityscape suffers from overflowing dustbins and empty cups lying around on streets and in parks.

Reason enough for the city of Munich and the Abfallwirtschaftsbetrieb AWM München (the state company for waste management) to start a big information campaign. One of these actions will be to erect giant coffee beakers the volume of the 190.000 cups of coffee consumed in the city daily. Those oversized cups are 4 meters high and have a diameter of 2.5 meters at the bottom. The will be put up at strategic points such as Marienplatz, Viktualienmarkt, Münchner Freiheit and English Garden in the hope of raising people's awareness of the problem.

In parallel with this activity, there will also be a big radio and online campaign with the purpose of calling people to change to reusable cups and will be supported with a 400.000 EUR investment.

Private initiatives such as "Recup" or "Coffe-to-go-again" are very welcome when it comes to develop a reusable cup deposit system, as the city itself or the AWM is not allowed to do so.

The city council wants to give a good example though and therefore ban the giving out of paper cups in their city council buildings, cantinas, libraries, schools or cafeterias.