Coffee lovers in Brisbane lead the country in reducing disposable coffee cups.
Responsible Cafe, (Responsible Cafes) says 229cafes in Brisbane and the nonprofit have registered. The group encourages cafes to offer rewards and discounts to customers who bring their own reusable cups.
Sydney City Hall was second with 159 business registrations, and Melbourne City Hall ranked third with 109.
Rachel Draper, Responsible Cafes's operations manager, says the reuse of coffee cups has been a big boost since last year's Australian-Guangzhou documentary on "War against garbage" mentioned them.
"the number of cafes in Australia jumped from 400 before the show to 3750 this year." She said.
"We looked at last year's documentary and found that on average each cafe uses 35 to 36 reusable coffee cups a day, based on the number of cafes we already owe," he said. That's 46 million cups left in a year to go to landfills. And after the documentary was broadcast, the use of repeatable coffee cups for those businesses we registered also increased by 117%.
Ms. Draper said incentives offered by businesses could help customers switch to reusable cups.
"about 70 percent of our registered merchants offer a 50-dime discount to customers who bring their own cups, and we find it very helpful to change people's behavior and habits."
CBD's cafe in Brisbane says about 100 people bring their own coffee cups every day.
Data from Brisbane City Hall's 2017 waste survey found that Brisbane consumes 156 million disposable coffee cups a year.