Ireland's Iconic Killarney National Park Completely Banned One Item That Affects Your Morning Coffee

There are a lot of places to visit and many things to do in Ireland, so it's wise for visitors to stay well caffeinated. However, when you're visiting Killarney, the busy tourist town next to Ireland's majestic first national park, there's something you will soon find out when you try to order a cup of coffee at a cafe or even in your hotel. Instead of receiving your to-go order in a paper cup, all patrons are required to buy a reusable cup or bring their own. This voluntary ban – which most businesses in town have opted into — launched in July 2023 as part of the Killarney Coffee Cup Project. The campaign has been massively successful in the effort to reduce pollution and litter in the park.

The travel writer Rick Steves may have once called Killarney a "traffic jam of tour buses," but it is also the first town in Ireland to almost completely phase out single-use coffee cups. Before the ban, an estimated one million coffee cups were disposed of, with many of those ending up as litter in the national park. This agreement between 25 independent coffee shops and 21 hotels has prevented around 23,000 single-use cups from being tossed out every week. Here's what you need to know about buying coffee in Killarney, from bringing your cup to how to get your money back if you have to buy one on the spot.

When you pass by one of Killarney's cafes, like Lir Cafe or LUNA coffee + wine, before your morning tour or a hike up into the alpine lakes, you can order any coffee or tea you'd like to go. However, if you aren't carrying your reusable cup already, the barista will explain the initiative to you and ask you to pay an extra €2 for a cup from the restaurant. This extra charge is totally refundable if you bring it back to any of the participating cafes in town or even any of the more than 750 locations partaking in the 2GoCup initiative across Ireland and the United Kingdom.

This may seem inconvenient at first, especially when you weren't planning on carrying around a cup all day, but the benefits for the environment are undeniable when you see the huge container in Killarney that advertises this initiative and demonstrates how much space 23,000 single-use cups take up. If you want your €2 back and won't be passing through Killarney, check the 2GoCup map to see where you can find a participating cafe before you leave. If not, consider it an extra souvenir from an utterly charming trip to an Irish destination that will most definitely come in handy again.