I saw it on their website and went yesterday to get one. 
It juuuust came out.
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Louisa allows you to bring your own mug (again) now. I saw someone at Formosa Chang’s getting their take out in glass containers too. I think some places are slowly allowing people to limit their garbage use…
I’m not saying this makes it wrong or right, but the energy and resources involved in manufacturing a non-disposable cup and washing it after every use have significant impact on the environment, as well.
If you’re running the cups in a full dishwasher, probably not. If you’re washing the cups by hand, it’s a trade off: landfill or water use?
Either way, you’ve gotta get a LOT of uses out of the non-disposable cup before it offsets the significantly greater impact of its manufacture and it’s much longer time to degrade.
There’s plenty of studies about it. If I remember correctly (and I might be wrong) I think it’s about 100 uses for a ceramic mug or not painted stainless mug to equal a paper cup’s total environmental impact. Something like 300-1000 uses for a painted stainless mug. I might be mixing those numbers with reusable bags (10,000 uses of an organic cotton tote to equal one plastic “disposable” grocery bag! Yeah. Organic cotton is basically the worst as far as total environmental impact…)
For me, I’m still using the same travel mug I bought in high school, so I’ve probably gotten at least a few hundred thousand uses out of it. (Coffee/tea in the a.m, water bottle, cold drinks in the afternoon, adult beverages when camping…) I have replaced the gaskets a few times. And the lid once. But that’s over almost 20 years. No way the paper cup has me beat.
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Arguably, starbucks isnt going out of business soon, so lots of uses is exactly whats expected from a store that sells over priced and inflated confidence in their products. The only variable being breakage, which is a fair point.
As @nz has said, allowing your own cups/bottles/etc is even more ideal. We use ours constantly as well. Easily more times compared to even just the plastic coating on paper cups we would have used instead, nevermind the paper/bleaching/ink or actual plastic cups.
Tomorrow i will be armed with my drinking container and trying the pumpkin spice, should thy allow me.
Not to mention PFAS. You never know what take out container has used those as a coating, which might actually be the worst chemical no one knows about. (Not that the glaze on a ceramic mug doesn’t necessarily not have lead)
My issue with using ceramic mugs or any cups/plates/utensils anywhere is that I don’t think the dishwashing is taken very seriously here. I see too many places more or less just dunk the dish in a bucket of soapy water , then move it to another and call it good.
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I tend to use the disposable chopsticks if I can for this reason.
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I would expect Starbucks to have higher standards. They get caught once for not cleaning their mugs correctly and corporate can shut them down/fine them for not following protocol.
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Let’s say a SB is getting slammed by a long line of customers… it’s one of those ‘buy 1 get 1 free’ days where the line goes out the door… how long do you expect one of the low-paid coffee jockeys to spend scrubbing the stubborn grit off the edges of your mug when he has a dozen orders to take care of in the next 10 minutes?
Agreed, they tend to be lousy at tgeir jobs. Thungs like cups, chopsticks etc are already normal for people in taiwan to bring their own. We do as well. its pretty convenient and i drink water a lot anyway. Bowls/plates are trickier, sure! So i guess one chooses bacteria or chemicals and environmental pollution. Everyobe should be uppin their stabdards though.
My prefferences for materials are
Glass
Stainless
Wood (if its my own, chopsticks)
Ceramic
Then whatever else is instant pollution.
Actually most of the SB baristas I’ve interacted with here are very friendly and efficient, especially compared to their surly American counterparts. I wonder how you’d do under that kind of pressure when you’re juggling multiple orders for a line of impatient and needy customers and some western guy keeps chastising you from the sidelines about some grit you didn’t remove from his mug.
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I found Taipei weather is not suitable for wooden utensils. it’s humid and I get mold on those things so I had to throw them away
I think the biggest problem for the disposables are those plastic bags for soup, which is both bad for the environment and health.
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Plastic may be bad for the environment, but it keeps a lot of people employed in Taiwan and around the world. IE Formosa Plastic Corporation.
Quoted for truth!
Guy
True. But at some point every government entity ever was giving out bamboo spoons and chopsticks in a little pouch. A little different than wood and very light. I found they work pretty well if you let them air dry before storing. You can also buy the bamboo spoons for like 20NT or maybe less at traditional markets. I’ve had even high quality (from a notable restaurant supplier in the US) s/s utensils rust here if I left them outside/near an open window over night, so humidity just kills everything (ever see mold growing on a single-use chopstick?)
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Ah yes! This is excellent logic! We must pollute our globe with plastic because it provides jobs!!
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Then why are you worried about their mug cleaning skills? I already mad my decisions, i prefer risking bacteria over environmental pollution. I never give staff shit, unless they are rude/abusive to people.
As an aside, they refused my (reusable) mug today for a cold latte, so i didnt buy anything. Should say they refused to give me theirs. Oh well. Hot only…
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