Have a Conscious Cup of Coffee at the Canopy Café in the Castlecomer Discovery Park
The Conscious Cup Campaign aims to eliminate single use in the Cafe and Food to Go sector by encouraging cafes and other outlets to incentivise customers to bring their own reusable cup. Nine establishments currently participate in Kilkenny with the Canopy café & Jarrow Restaurant in the Castlecomer Discovery Park being the most recent recruits.
The Campaign is non-profit organisation started in 2016 by a group of concerned individuals who, inspired by similar initiatives around the world, are aiming to reduce and eventually eliminate single use cups in Ireland. Sorcha Kavanagh, the campaigns co-ordinator who recently visited the Discovery Park said “Our ultimate objective has always been to increase awareness about waste prevention and conscious consumption thereby changing consumer behaviour. Over the years of our campaign many supporters who made the swap to reusables often indicated that this triggered their journey towards a more sustainable lifestyle. Each individuals attitude towards personal responsibility can have a rippling affect to change others and that is our vision, a world where we respect and value our resources”
The Castlecomer Discovery Park is working with Kilkenny County Council on an environmental project which will see the park tackling different aspects of their operations and to raise awareness of what their visitors can do before they arrive on site and during their visit to help the environment.
Kathy Purcell, the manager of the park commented “We are delighted to be collaborating with the Council’s Waste Prevention Programme and we are committed to take steps to improve the sites environmental performance. We thought the obvious start was tackling some issues at our canopy café, as our bins are often full of single use cups. We signed up to the conscious cup campaign and will promote it on our social media channels to encourage those planning a trip to the park to bring along a reusable cup. The advantage of the scheme is that hot drinks served at the canopy café in a reusable cup receives a €0.20c discount. While we still tackle the issue of the single use cups on site, we’ve swapped over to compostable cups at the canopy cafe, so it’s another positive step for the environment”.
Kilkenny County Council is committed to assisting venues like the Discovery Park in reviewing their operations to determine how small steps can be made to enhance their environment performance. Bernadette Moloney, Environmental Awareness Officer mentioned “We are mindful that destinations like the Discovery Park are now entering their busiest season, so the greening of the Discovery Park is a long-term project allowing the Park to complete positive environmental changes fitting with their schedule and resources. It’s estimated in Ireland that we dispose over 22,000 of these non-recyclable cups every hour, I’d love to see more Kilkenny businesses signing up to the conscious cup campaign as it’s a sustainable long-term solution to the waste generated by our popular coffee culture”. For more information on the conscious cup campaign check out www.consciouscup.ie.
