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Comment by chriselles | Hacker News Reader

I have to admit that while our family is as conscientious as we can be with plastic use and recycling, I have a weak spot for coffee cups/lids.

When visiting the US recently I found the recycled paper lids quite distasteful, in the literal sense.

For me, kicking the coffee cup/lid will be a bit harder than other forms of sustainability.

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Compostable plastic coffee cup lids work just fine.

There is no good reason for disposable food containers to not be biodegradable. Consumers can afford the extra 1¢ or whatever.

Many of the coffeeshops in SF use only compostable cups/lids.

How about a reusable cup? $0.10 off at Starbucks.

When I was living in Portland it was super common for people to bring their own mugs (usually those metal camping style cups with closable tops, but I'd see plastic cups too) to coffee shops. The baristas would usually blast them with some steam to clean them out then fill 'em up! Easy as pie.

This is my preference. My coffee cup keeps my drink hot way longer than any disposable one can and I would save a dime. Win, win, from my view.

OTOH it seems like less coffee shops offer mugs for in-house drinking nowadays. Takeaway is harder but there's no reason not to use mugs if you're staying in the store.

In the UK there is a chain called Costa where the in-house mug only comes in one size, and it's a thimble - much smaller than the larger take-away cup. So you end up asking for a take-away cup even though you're staying in and they have mugs available.

So you're saying the replacement has to be good or people won't use it? That's preposterous!

Sorry for sharing.

Well, in my case, I find paper coffee cups make the coffee taste much worse, so I make a habit of using mug cups whenever possible.

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