Killarney used to accept it as a price of being a tourist town: ubiquitous disposable coffee cups spilling from bins, littering roads and blighting the area’s national park.
The County Kerry town went through about 23,000 cups a week – more than a million a year – adding up to 18.5 tonnes of waste.
Not any more. Three months ago, Killarney became the first town in Ireland to phase out single-use coffee cups. If you want a takeaway coffee from a cafe or hotel, you must bring your own cup or pay a €2 deposit for a reusable cup that is returned when the cup is given back.
Nothing too vocal that I recall. Was a pretty progressive town. I’m sore about the plastic bag thing though. I reused all those bags for house trash or lunches and had to switch to purchasing separate single purpose bags for those things.
You could get reusable sandwich bags and compostable bin bags.
I lost the ‘just enough’ source for bags to pick up the dog’s shit in.