As plan to introduce “latte levy” languishes, some cafes don’t give or advertise keep-cup discounts

At Off Beat Donuts on Westland Row on Monday, above the coffee machine, the beginning of a sentence is just visible. 

“Get 20c of”, it says. 

The rest is hidden behind stacks of take-away cups. 

Asked about it, a barista clears away the cups to reveal the rest of the sentence. In full: “Get 20c off if you bring your own cup!!”

Of 20 coffee shops in Dublin city visited over the weekend, the standard was this same discount of 20 cents for people who bring a reusable cup. 

At some Dublin cafes, customers were promised 10 cents off if they brought a reusable cup. At others, it’s 15 cents or 10 percent. 

At four coffee spots, customers get nothing at all for bringing in their own cup. They just pay the normal price.

Even at the ones that do give a discount, it’s almost never advertised. Off Beat Donuts was the only one that had a sign that actually spelt it out.

This is no good, says Ronan Quinn, who emailed in about the issue. He picks up litter, he sees it everywhere – coffee cups, lids, he says.    

He wants there to be signs, big ones, reminding people to bring reusable cups – and offering them money if they do. There was an effort at that, but it seems to have fizzled.

In March 2022, the government at that time announced the circular economy bill, which included a provision for “a small charge on disposable cups for takeaway coffees that can be avoided completely by using a keep cup”. By that July, that was law.

But, so far, that charge, dubbed the “latte levy” has not been brought in. And, in some shops, the effort to incentivise the use of keep cups has faded into the background.

Meanwhile, people in Ireland continue to send “millions” of disposable cups to landfill or incineration each year, the current Minister for the Environment, Darragh O’Brien, a Fianna Fáil TD, said in February. “This is an entirely avoidable waste.”

Consultations, objections

The circular economy bill, and the latte levy, were brought in under the previous government, when Green Party TD Eamon Ryan was Minister for the Environment. 

That was followed by a consultation on the idea of “an environmental levy on single-use disposable cups”. There were 2,371 responses to the consultation, a report on it says.

One of the issues raised was that a life-cycle analysis “carried out on behalf of the European Paper Packaging Alliance provides evidence that single-use presents significant environmental advantages compared to multiple-use”.

The Department of the Environment’s response was that two United Nations Environment Programme metastudies suggested the contrary. 

“Reusable cups have a lower overall environmental impact than single-use cups, provided the reusable cup is used enough times and washed efficiently,” the response says. 

“The ‘breakeven’ number of uses required will vary depending on the material a reusable cup is made from, and the type of single-use cup it is compared to, but can be as low as between 10 to 25 uses,” it says. 

Another objection to the proposed form of the levy was that “Recyclable, biodegradable and compostable cups should be exempt from the levy.”

“Single-use cups are not currently recyclable in Ireland and must be disposed of in general waste,” the department’s response says. 

“Single-use cups are typically made from paper which is lined with a plastic coating to make the cups waterproof, resulting in a composite material which makes them difficult and expensive to recycle,” it says.

As for compostable cups lined with biodegradable plastic, the response pointed to the EU’s single-use plastics (SUP) directive. 

“Biodegradable plastic products are designed to decompose at the end of their life while compostable plastic is a type of biodegradable plastic, which is designed to biodegrade under controlled conditions,” the response says. 

“While the [EU] Commission recognises there is an important role for compostable and biodegradable plastic in certain applications, they propose that products which are likely to be littered, including those covered by the SUP Directive such as single-use cups, cannot claim to be or labelled as biodegradable.” 

Still, that government did not implement the latte levy. “The last government ran out of time,” says Roderic O’Gorman TD, now the Green Party’s leader. 

He said the Department of the Environment was focused on getting the deposit-return scheme up and running – which it did. 

“I think that was their number-one priority,” he said. The latte levy, O’Gorman said, was intended to follow. 

Fizzle

At the coffee shop Kaph, on Drury Street, manager Charlotte Richardson said that about 20 percent of their customers bring keep cups and get their 20 cent discount. 

But she said they don’t advertise it anymore, because it’s not a new initiative.

“But I think now people have kind of just caught on and kind of do that,” she said. “Like, people don't know that we do the discount, but a lot of people just assume that we do, because most cafes do.”

In George’s Street Arcade, Bodega Coffee offers 20 cents off, while All Rosey beside the Luke Kelly statue also offers 20 cents off, so does Grove Road Cafe at Portobello Bridge. 

Brew Lab on Aungier Street said they do 15 cents, and sometimes advertise that on social media. 

Caffe Nero on Camden Street Lower said they give an extra stamp if you have a loyalty card, and Insomnia on St Stephen’s Green said they give 30 cents off if you have their app. 

Near Trinity College, at Coffee Angel, there’s no discount for bringing a mug. Barista Jonas Kubis said that instead, the company donates 5 percent of its total profits to environmental initiatives.  

At the Bean Box, a barista said giving a discount to people who use keep cups sounded like a good idea, and he would talk to his boss. 

Two Faced, a coffee bar by day and wine bar by night, said they don’t do it. 

At Cafe Tri Via, also near Trinity, the barista said they don’t offer the discount because their prices are already very low. 

At Spar on Camden Street, the cashier shrugged. They don’t do it. “It’s Spar,” he said. 

The fact that not every coffee shop in Dublin offers a discount for customers who bring keep cups is surprising, says O’Gorman, the Green Party TD. 

But he said he wasn’t surprised that not all of those who do offer a discount advertise it. “I kind of expect it, kind of baked in,” he said.

The assumption that the keep-cup discount is offered is one reason some coffee shop baristas speculate is why their cafes don’t advertise the fact that they offer this discount.

O’Gorman said he loves coffee, and brings his reusable cup all around Dublin. And he said he buys coffee, assumes the discount, and he always gets it.

“Look, everything that's manufactured has an environmental consequence,” O’Gorman said. 

But getting and keeping and using a reusable coffee cup, especially one made from recycled plastic or more sustainable materials like bamboo, is better than using and binning disposable cups, he said.

Next steps

In November 2023, when asked about the implementation of the latte levy, a spokesperson for the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications said that it was “working with the Revenue Commissioners to agree a collection model and alternative approaches are being considered for the collection of the levy”.

In February 2025, the current Minister for the Environment, Darragh O’Brien, asked by O’Gorman about the levy, indicated there had been a little bit of progress. 

“My Department has been working with the Revenue Commissioners on designing a new collection model for environmental levies, which will require changes to primary legislation,” O’Brien said. “The relevant Heads of Bill have been approved and drafting is underway.”

But the implementation of the latte levy was supposed to just be one step along the way to a more ambitious goal.

When the last government announced the circular economy bill and its provision for a latte levy, it said that “Ultimately, the ambition is to make Ireland the first country in the world to eradicate disposable coffee cups.”

This is something Bread 41 on Pearse Street has already done. At the till, there’s a reusable cup, with a small sign that says people can get one for €5 and, if they bring it back, get their €5 back.

Bread 41 supervisor Kyle Grant said that, “funnily enough, our sales actually went up on coffee” after they introduced that scheme. “And it was really nice to see that people were very happy to move forward like a climate objective together.”

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.