‘It was a plague’: Killarney becomes first Irish town to ban single-use coffee cups

A blanket ‘bring or buy’ reusable scheme has been introduced in the town, which was getting through 23,000 cups a week

Killarney used to accept it as a price of being a tourist town: ubiquitous disposable coffee cups spilling from bins, littering roads and blighting the area’s national park.

The County Kerry town went through about 23,000 cups a week – more than a million a year – adding up to 18.5 tonnes of waste.