Why I festival with my Reusable cup.

Our guest contributor this month is Amelia Womack, the Deputy Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales since September 2014, with a short thought piece.

To me the epitome of summer is taking time off work and enjoying the range of festivals on offer across the UK and even in the rest of Europe. It’s such a perfect way to absorb yourself in culture and soak up those summer rays.

As I pack my tent and sleeping bag, I always ensure that I have my trusty keep cup packed and ready to go. I feel like my friends used to think it unusual that my commitment to tackling single use plastics means that despite always packing light I prioritised my cup…..but actually I think that festivals are a perfect place to take it.

Many festivals across the UK are currently trying to cut their waste, often introducing cup return schemes in their bars, but for their sales of hot drinks they’ll often encourage traders to use compostable cups, which still take energy to be made, and create waste instead of genuinely tackling a throw-away society. Even at festivals I still use my reusable cup for that morning cuppa.

It’s not just music festivals that I take my cup to. At the Edinburgh Fringe last year my cup came in handy yet again when organisers request you decant your drinks out of glasses and bottles and into plastic cups. Once again, I instead poured my drinks into my cup (I even worked out which bottle of IPA perfectly fitted into it).

Our cups now plant trees
Amelia at a stage at Boomtown festival

However, one of the main reasons I take my keep cup with me isn’t just about drinks, but also money saving. Festivals are expensive places and food especially can hit your bank balance hard. So my final festival trick is to take my cup to vendors who will happily fill it with hot water (usually for a small fee) to soak up some sachets of cup pasta’s bought from a supermarket. They’re light to carry, easy to use and once again show how you can save some cash in your wallet with a reusable cup at your side.

About GoReusable

Launched in 2018, GoReusable was inspired by the pressing need to reduce the world’s dependency on single-use cups – an estimated 500 billion disposable cups are made and discarded globally each year.

Now your coffee will just taste all that better with a GoReusable.org cup! With our latest Plant One Tree Cups and our partnership with the National Forest Foundation not only are our cup helping to reduce the world’s dependency on single-use they also plant a tree. One cup purchased = One tree planted.

They are available for consumers to purchase through Amazon or for organisations to buy in bulk, either wholesale or branded.