Vancouver City Council Considers a Ban on Disposable Coffee Cups

The city of Vancouver is considering a ban on single-use cups, or at least finding strategies to lessen their use by consumers on a day-to-day basis. Single-use coffee cups, along with other disposable items like plastic and paper shopping bags, foam food packaging and takeout containers are the city's largest source of waste, and so an initiative to lessen their use is currently underway. Strategies to reduce the use of items such as single-use cups could come in the form of offering consumers incentives to bring in their own takeaway mugs from home when ordering beverages in-store, requiring businesses to ensure that their disposable items are compostable or recyclable, and forming more robust educational initiatives for the public that ensure they are aware of the importance of recycling and composting properly.