Would paying 25 cents for a coffee cup make you bring your own? This Montrealer hopes so
Olivia St-Laurent wants Montreal's independent coffee shops to charge an extra 25 cents to customers who don't bring in their own cup.
St-Laurent is inviting the city's independent coffee shops to produce less waste. Getting people to pay for their single use cups is a good first step to doing that, she said.
St-Laurent consulted with a number of cafés in Montreal and says she's garnered interest in her initiative. She is holding a meeting on it with the participating cafés Tuesday evening.
"We want this to become the norm and hopefully we can influence the other independent cafés in Montreal, who haven't joined us just yet, and all the other bigger companies, like Starbucks and Tim Hortons," St-Laurent said on CBC Montreal's Daybreak.
The idea came to her when she was volunteering as a barista in Australia for 10 months, said St-Laurent, who is in environmental studies at McGill University.
"The amount of waste just really blew my mind and so I offered them to instill more environmental practices and they went really well."
She said she wants the Montreal cafés to commit to composting, buying more biodegradable packaging as well as using less of it.
"The end goal is setting new industry standards for cafés in Montreal," she said.
