Our Town: Getting Rid of Single Use Plastic with Classic Harbor Line
Thank you Meryl Phair from Our Town: The local paper for Downtown for joining us and sharing our initiative! We continually work hard to find new ways to make less impact on our environment. Working with Cup Zero is a step towards cutting down on waist in NYC. Read about what we are doing with Meryl’s article.
“Aboard Classic Harbor Line’s America 2.0 schooner, the guests on the day sail to the Statue of Liberty sit back and enjoy an afternoon on the water. As the boat moves along the Hudson, complimentary drinks are served. Instead of typical single-use cups, the charter and tour boat fleet recently switched over to Cup Zero, a reusable drinkware alternative. The cup says, “Hey I’m worth more than one drink” along with a reminder to “Return me when you’re done.”” Click here to continue reading!
A summary
The article explains that New York City is renowned for its convenience, but this comes at a cost. The city generates more than 14 million tons of trash annually. Among the most problematic items are disposable cups at the present time. In the United States, a staggering 58 billion single-use paper cups are discarded each year. This equates to 110,000 cups every minute.
New York lags behind other major cities in waste reduction efforts. Only around one-fifth of the city’s waste is recycled. The NYC Department of Sanitation estimates that approximately 25% of trash from businesses and 18% from homes reaches recycling facilities.
Cup Zero aims to address this issue by preventing waste accumulation. Co-founder Michael Cyr, previously worked in the waste industry. He witnessed the limited recyclability of our waste firsthand. He met his partner Zsolt Bendel at a climbing gym. Bendel was then working in nightlife production and concerned about the excess plastic cups from events. All in all this sparked the idea for Cup Zero. Together, they conceived a reusable cup service for venues and events.
As a result of this partnership in 2022, Classic Harbor Line saved 24K single use plastic cups from landfill!
