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Comment by carlob | Hacker News Reader

As a European I really don't get take-out cups, in most Western Europe there are two options: either you have the 3 minutes it takes to sip on a cappuccino or hot tea, or you drink an espresso standing (both in a ceramic cup). If you see someone walking around with a pint of hot beverage, it's a safe bet they are American.

I heard some American friend that it's part of American culture to control climate: drinks must be piping hot in winter and full of ice cubes in summer. Everyone has to look like they are in a hurry and everything has to be BIG. Combine these things and to-go insulated cups become a cultural phenomenon.

Then again it's funny that in Western Europe alcoholic drinks to go are totally a thing and people love drinking beer on a lawn when it's nice outside. Again, cultural differences...

EDIT: I was thinking mostly about Italy, France, Spain, Benelux, but Austria has a pretty solid café culture too.

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Where the hell are you from "as a European"? In Germany you can get a take-out almost anywhere they sell coffee. Vending machines are ubiquitous. It's not just for "Americans".

Having a coffee takes more than three minutes, especially if it's still hot. People don't necessarily have that kind of time in the morning. Or maybe they prefer to drink their coffee at a different place than where they purchased it.

I'm in Italy, but I've seen it throughout Southwestern Europe. If you are in Rome or in Paris, to-go coffee is advertised exclusively in English and cannot be found outside of tourist hubs. FWIW vending machines are popular here too, but they use small plastic cups with no lid.

From my two years living in the Alps region, they are surely easy to find, written in French.

And if you go to Southeastern Europe, it is everywhere, mostly the iced coffee variant.

Happy to hear that Italy maintains some proper coffee-drinking culture :)

Effectively not being able to sit and sip my coffee with cigarettes in peace for few hours was biggest cultural shock when I was in Bari, and I'm just over the pond.

Still fun. :) Hi from Croatia.

Yes, similar situation in Netherlands

It's usually that people want to drink during their commute.

I'm also living in Germany and I don't remember being given a plastic cup - they are always made out of paper, except their lids. I think they should just ban the lids. I also saw a lot of discounted price offers for people bringing their own containers in take-away coffee shops

The lids are easily recyclable. The paper cups have a plastic lining. They can be recycled, but not easily. Most recycling centres can't take them.

As an end user it's really hard for me to know what to do: is this single use hard to recycle plastic environmentally worse than ceramic mugs being washed or plastic reusable cups being reused maybe dozens of times if we're lucky.

Personally, I'd go for single use plastic / paper cups and high temperature incineration, but I have no idea if that's the right thing to do.

Washing a ceramic mug is clearly the better choice environmentally-or bring your own reusable to-go cup.

> a ceramic mug

Not so fast! A ceramic mug takes a huge amount of energy to produce, so unless you reuse it many times, it won't break even:

https://terngoods.com/blogs/learn/cups-single-use-disposable...

Keep in mind that even a ceramic mug eventually becomes trash - with a far higher mass than paper/plastic cups.

Then of course there's the environmental impact of washing the cup, but I don't have any data on that.

You say clearly, but the full lifetime calculation is difficult.

I have no idea how the clay is obtained, transported to the mug factory, how it's turned into mugs, how the mugs are transported to shops and then to cafés and homes. I don't know how to include the detergent used to wash them, or the dishwasher. I guess we need to include the hot water, but how much of the plumbing do we include?

I also don't know any of this for the paper/plastic cups.

True, can't pretend to know either. Reuse, in as many of those areas you mentioned as possible, seems like the key way to optimise.

Using second-hand ceramic or glass is maybe a good thing to think about. No signalling of demand to a manufacturer, maximising return on the initial co2 cost... Perhaps not viable in every situation.

Interestingly, where I live (Calgary Canada), our recycling program says that lids are not actually recyclable here because they’re too small and light to properly classify. This is more common than people realize.

http://www.calgary.ca/UEP/WRS/Pages/What-goes-where/Plastic-...

They have to be larger than 7.5cm in diameter, eg. yogurt lids. So we are told to trash coffee lids, along with metal or plastic bottle caps, which also are too small. Other programs like Recycle BC can handle coffee lids.

And then Toronto accepts White Starbucks lids, but rejects all black plastic (!). https://mobile.twitter.com/cityoftoronto/status/978967494470...

Whereas all paper and plastic cups ARE recyclable here (and in BC), and it’s common for shops like Starbucks to have recycling for cups. Presumably they’re classified and shipped to one of the few batch pulpers. Toronto on the other hand says they can’t recycle such cups

It can get confusing.

seconded, it's pretty common in the UK to grab a take-out coffee too. When I worked in a bigger city it was sometimes a bit of a treat occasionally to grab one on the way to the office.

When I was living in France the concept of take away coffee was absurd to me, it's not really a thing except at Starbucks, but we don't have many. I was doing very well without it. Since I'm living in UK (Europe or not europe you decide :D), take away beverages are everywhere, and I'm myself guilty of asking for it sometimes.

I remember a friend of mine from Perth trying to explain me why a specific model of car was not selling well enough there because it was designed without a cup holder. It sounded very strange to me, but now I understand.

>> Europe or not europe you decide

UK is part of European culture, economy, and history.

Paper cups for take-out coffee are pretty big in Germany, I can tell you. I used to use them pretty often and sometimes still do when I don't have my reusable plastic cup with me.

> you drink an espresso standing

I believe this really more of an Italian thing

At least in Spain and Portugal they do it too.

You sit if it’s “leisure”, if it’s just a 5min pit-stop you stand.

You are missing: car culture

Yeah, good point, it would be great to see some stats on percentage of coffees bought in drive-throughs in America vs Europe.

'as a European'

What are you talking about? I've lived in the UK my entire life and this is completely and utterly incorrect.

> either you have the 3 minutes it takes to sip on a cappuccino or hot tea, or you drink an espresso standing

It's more about having a drink to sip on, when you're driving in your car to work, than about having or not having 3 minutes to sit in a cafe.

If you wanna be a hippie like me, get one of those coffee thermos. Most cafés will fill those up in place of their cups if you ask them. Some even give a discount.

I know it's probably self-deprecating sarcasm, but I wish we didn't have to be hippies to care about the environment.

Or as I did when I commuted to London - make your own in the morning and use a £5 thermos to take it with you on the train.

Is coffee served cooler in your experience. 3 minutes seems like it would still be pretty hot?

Expresso is a small quantity so it cools faster than a big bucket of dark water.

That's understandable, but I guess I was thinking more of a cup of coffee.

Here is Switzerland you have both.

However, a lot of places will give you a discount if you bring your own cup.

They do here in the US too. If I forget, I just ask them for a "here" cup/mug and it seems to make it taste better too.

I'd mostly agree with you but I happen to have a proper European coworker who constantly brings her big coffee to work, so... there's that. Most of the times she gets refills in her own bamboo cup though.

You're forgetting regular black coffee. Which is pretty big in Scandinavia, at least.

> either you have the 3 minutes it takes to sip on a cappuccino or hot tea

It makes a lot of sense to distribute your consumption of caffeine over a longer period of time (say an hour) rather than consume it all at once.

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