Impact Calculator | KeepCup

The difference we each make to the world can be profound. We’ve partnered with sustainability consultancy, Edge Environment, to help you quantify the impact of choosing reuse over single-use. Simply enter your average coffee consumption below to find out how many cups you can divert from landfill with KeepCup.

INDIVIDUAL WORKPLACE CAFES

If I drink

takeaway coffees in a

KeepCup per week, in a

I will save:

If my workplace has

employees drinking

coffees in a KeepCup, in a

we will save:

If I serve

takeaway coffees in a

KeepCup per week, in a

I will save:

5

Single use cups

0.18kg

of carbon dioxide (CO2e)

0.02kg

of plastic

4.74mj

of energy

0.11kg

of timber

0

Landfill tax

keepcup.com/impact-calculator

Methodology

Data for the calculator is from our third party peer reviewed Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) by Edge Environment. The LCA has been conducted to international standard (ISO 14040:2006) and is publicly available. The calculator compares using a KeepCup to using a single-use cup.

Workplace Calculator

Workplace calculations assume light use – 250 coffees per person per year. That’s 1 coffee per weekday over 50 weeks.

Café Calculator

We used a 12oz KeepCup Brew Cork.

Single-use cup

An average single-use 12oz cup contains 9g of paper and 3.3g of plastic, including its polyethylene lining and polystyrene lid. 9g of paper equates to 22.5g of raw wood as raw wood is 2.5 times paper weight.

Wholesale cost to cafes of buying a single-use cup:

Currency	AUD	NZD	GBP	EUR	USD	CAD
Unit price	.20	.18	.12	.17	.17	.22

The calculator uses a poly-coated paperboard cup to be conservative in our comparison. Compostable cups have a higher embodied energy in manufacture and higher unit cost.

Compostable cups require a dedicated waste stream to commercial comporting facilities, and ultimately compromise the quality the end compost product.”

Embodied Energy and Carbon Footprint

The energy saved is based on the energy used in production, embodied energy, of 12oz single-use cups. The embodied energy in a KeepCup is not included in this calculation given many people using the calculator will have had their KeepCup for some time already and used it enough to reach the energy breakeven point

The carbon footprint is cradle-to-grave, based on the whole of life impact of single-use cups from production to end of life. It is measured in CO2e, or carbon dioxide equivalent per person per year.

Product	Embodied energy kj/unit	CO2e/person/yr
Single-use cup	948	9.21 kg
KeepCup Original	12412	2.42 kg
KeepCup Brew	10838	2.49 kg
KeepCup Brew Cork	12053	2.35 kg
KeepCup Thermal	23600	2.10 kg

The carbon footprint assumes a conservative KeepCup lifespan of 4 years for Original, Brew and Brew Cork and 8 years for Thermal.

Landfill levies

Market	Cost per tonne
AU	$65.90
UK	£94.15
US	$55.36

Savings shown are over one year and rates are indicative as landfill charges vary per municipality.

You can use the calculation below for an exact figure on how much money your workplace is saving on landfill and waste collection charges by choosing reuse:

Number of disposable cups saved x 0.0123 (weight of disposable cup in kg) / 1000 (converting the figure into tonnes) x [cost of your waste collection per tonne or cost of your local landfill levy per tonne.]

"What makes you feel better quickly is actually to engage in a positive contribution so that you bust through this myth that individual actions don’t count. You begin to realize the world is only made out of individual actions. It does count. It does add up.”

Christina Figueres Former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and architect of the international Paris climate agreement.

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