The price of iced American coffee at Starbucks in South Korea has risen sharply. Disposable plastic cups have been banned in Korean coffee shops since April.

In South Korea, drinking a cup of iced American coffee has become one of the indispensable rituals in their daily life. A cup of iced American coffee is refreshing in the morning, a cup of iced American coffee at noon and a cup of iced American coffee in the evening. Even in cold weather, iced American coffee is still in hand every day. Iced American coffee has also become a key to the drainage of coffee shops, as long as there are preferential activities, you can certainly see iced American coffee participate in it.

However, just a few days after 2022, South Koreans' freedom of iced American coffee began to be blocked. Due to the rise in the international price of raw beans, South Korea's Starbucks, which has just been acquired by Emart, first reported the news that it would increase the price of American coffee. Then, some cafes in South Korea also announced that the price of American coffee would rise. While people are still feeling helpless about the rise in the price of American coffee, the South Korean government recently released a message: since April, South Korean coffee shops have banned the use of disposable plastic cups!

As early as the end of December 2018, CNN reported that South Korea had joined the ranks of countries banning plastics and added the ban to the amendment to the law, explicitly prohibiting stores from providing customers with disposable plastic bags free of charge, while plastic bags used to hold wet products such as meat were not included in the ban, while cafes allowed their takeout orders to use plastic cups.

With the wave after wave of COVID-19 epidemic, marine transportation is tight, and even some urgent goods are facing problems such as tight shipping schedule and shortage of containers. As a result, plastic waste also surges and accumulates, which is also unable to be transported to other places for disposal, and the problem urgently needs to be solved. The price of crude oil, as the raw material of plastic bags, has fluctuated greatly since the epidemic, and has even been rising for nearly a year, which means that the cost of making plastic bags has also soared.

South Korea's "plastic ban" has to go further, despite the new wave of COVID-19 epidemic hit again, but still to reduce the use of plastic products. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, South Korea's "plastic ban" has been eased in response to the spread of the virus, and restaurants and cafes have been allowed to use disposable plastic cups, the South Korean media Korea Times reported on January 6. Now, however, South Korea's environmental government has withdrawn the temporary permit.

South Korea has banned the use of plastic cups in cafes since April 1, 2022, according to measures issued by the environment department. In the past 2020, the amount of plastic waste in South Korea was 19% more than in 2019. Disposable plastic products are easy to use, but they produce a lot of waste and pose a threat to the environment at the same time.

Imagine that even in a snowy winter, Koreans walk down the road with iced American coffee, sipping coffee without plastic cups, and paper cups can only be used for room temperature or hot drinks. This doesn't mean that South Koreans' freedom of iced American coffee is gone.

The extreme weather phenomenon is serious in recent years, and the plastic ban is urgently needed all over the world. Today's coffee-growing areas are more vulnerable to extreme weather because of excessive pollution to the environment. Now there is still coffee to drink, and if the situation becomes more serious, the number of areas where coffee is grown will be further reduced, and the production of coffee beans will be reduced, so it will be a lucky thing to be able to drink coffee. So, the loss of iced American coffee is really just a small thing.

Photo Source: Internet

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